Testing Elderly Drivers

Older Age Limit on Driving

Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:27

http://www.gloucestertimes.com/puopinion/local_story_168223946.html Editorial: Testing elderly drivers a necessary step in the name of safety A string of accidents involving elderly drivers — including one that seriously injured a 1-year-old Gloucester girl at the Danvers Wal-Mart two weeks ago, and one that killed a 4-year-old in Stoughton last weekend — has renewed a push in the state Legislature to require new road tests for drivers above and beyond the age of 85. That, in turn, is renewing familiar complaints that such a requirement would be discriminatory. It would. In fact, it would be the right kind of discrimination. While the word now carries almost exclusively negative connotations, many kinds of discrimination are necessary and good. It is good to discriminate between good and evil, between something of value and something that is worthless, between food that is good for you and food that will harm you. And it is good to discriminate in issuing driver's licenses when a group is at risk of putting themselves, and others, in harm's way. Society has imposed discrimination on young drivers for generations. The age at which they are allowed to get a license keeps creeping up. They have to operate under "junior operator" rules at the start. And while, yes, that's discriminatory, too, there is a justified context to it. As any insurance actuary will tell you, young drivers are some of the most dangerous out there. Not all of them, of course, but enough to matter, and enough to merit these blanket limitations. The same, for different reasons, is true of elders as a group. The recent accidents were not isolated anecdotes. It's right there in broad statistics. The number of accidents per mile driven spikes as people get older. And statistics show that drivers over the age of 85 are 3 to 4 times more likely to be involved in an accident than even their teenage counterparts. That requires some "discrimination" — and some regulations as well. Some elders have attacked proposed legislation filed by state Sen. Brian Joyce, D-Milton, to require the testing of drivers aged 85 and older as if the Legislature is out to confiscate their licenses on a given birthday. They complain that lawmakers want to punish all of them for the infractions of a few. That is demonstrably false. Anybody who is 85, 90, 100 or even older can indeed keep driving — if he or she passes the necessary test. A test is no more a punishment for an 85-year-old than it is for a 16-year-old. All it does is screen out impaired drivers. State Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, says he is trying to "balance the demands of the advocacy groups with the interests of public safety." Fair enough. Elders deserve a respectful hearing. But they have received that, and their contention that driving is a right they have earned is not what they taught their children a generation ago. They taught them that driving was a privilege, not a right, and that public safety must trump individual desires. That's still the case today, perhaps more than ever.