Weed Out Bad Elderly Drivers

A San Diego parking enforcement officer (meter maid), on patrol in the uptown community of Hillcrest, is struck by an elderly driver. On Interstate 8, an elderly driver travels 40 miles at freeway speeds, driving the wrong way in the eastbound lanes. She ignores all the drivers who honked at her because she thinks they are just being rude.

In Florida, Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, jogging near his home, is struck by an elderly driver who did not see him. The driver only stopped when Wakefield’s body hit the hood as he was being flung in the air. In the Midwest, an elderly driver plows into a business, strikes several customers and kills one of them. Incredibly, all these incidents occurred since mid-December.

In August 1994, an elderly man driving his own vehicle and not fleeing from a crime scene, led police on a four-county ride from Ventura all the way to San Diego at speeds of up to 100 mph, oblivious to his speed or that he was the subject of a pursuit. The saga ended only when freeway traffic stalled in Oceanside due to someone threatening to jump off an overpass.

In November 1992, an elderly Port Hueneme woman lost control of her car, veered onto a putting green and rammed the car into a tree, causing herself critical injuries. What if that had not been a tree she hit?

There is a national epidemic of elderly drivers whose reflexes have diminished with age, whose driving judgment is now slow and clouded, and who easily get confused while driving. As America’s senior population grows, so does a sad fact of death: Drivers 65 and older are involved in more fatal accidents than all other motorists except teenagers. By age 70, adds the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, the elderly overtake the teens, and their risk of dying in traffic accidents becomes three to four times greater than for any other age group.

A 1991 California Highway Patrol study showed teenagers involved in 42,523 serious accidents compared to 24,403 for elderly drivers. But a Michigan study showed that the elderly drive far fewer miles than their younger counterparts, and mile-for-mile are involved in far more fatal accidents.

Many senior citizens are still quite capable of driving well, but there should be a way to weed out those who cannot. To the best of my knowledge, there is no discussion of this going in Sacramento. Politicians must be willing to incur the wrath of the elderly’s advocacy groups in order to protect the public.

I suggest that beginning at age 70, every driver have a full physical examination (not just vision) with a state-contracted doctor each year, paid for by the driver. Anyone who fails would forfeit his or her privilege to drive.

Driving is always touted as a privilege, as opposed to a right and it certainly is. That adage applies not only to teenagers, but to those at the other end of the chronological spectrum. We as a society, cannot and should not permit innocent lives to be ruined because of no-longer-competent-to-drive elderly people or politicians afraid of offending powerful political lobbies.