Very old folks on the roads--OK, or a serious danger? (adult, legal)
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Old men are not the only stubborn ones. My mother was stubborn to the point of pigheadedness all her life and it did not get any better with age. If anything, she became even more pigheaded as she got older.
Watch it lol...I'm male and following every docs orders to a T since I laid my bike down at 50mph. Between the hospital, follow ups, my regular docs AND my physical therapist, I've seen something like 9 docs. I paid attention to every word they said, which in turn has me in shape to be back in the saddle next week.
Without reading through 400+ posts, I see a greater danger of young people on the road who insist on texting or playing games .... and driving at the same time! I've never seen an 'older' person doing that, therefore, almost all of the significant accidents attributed to this practice ... are caused by young(er) drivers.
If he was rear-ended while stopped, how does that indicate a problem with driving on his part??
Older people (at least some I know) tend to get rear-ended because their driving can be "out of synch" with the behavior of younger drivers. For example - an older person may slam on the brakes if he or she is very near a stop light - and it turns yellow. While most drivers would simply continue through the yellow light (in Miami - where I used to live - you always expected about 2-3 people to run a light that had just changed to red as well). IIRC - my parents got rear-ended twice when trying to merge onto I-95 when they slammed on their brakes because they didn't have at least a clear 1/4 mile to merge into traffic - not exactly the way most people in south Florida drive. Robyn
Watch it lol...I'm male and following every docs orders to a T since I laid my bike down at 50mph. Between the hospital, follow ups, my regular docs AND my physical therapist, I've seen something like 9 docs. I paid attention to every word they said, which in turn has me in shape to be back in the saddle next week.
Without reading through 400+ posts, I see a greater danger of young people on the road who insist on texting or playing games .... and driving at the same time! I've never seen an 'older' person doing that, therefore, almost all of the significant accidents attributed to this practice ... are caused by young(er) drivers.
We've already acknowledged that. This is about very old folks on the road.
We're talking apples and apples - young, responsible people who drive and old, "supposedly" responsible people who drive.
The good thing is that old drivers don't drive much - usually, to get groceries and to church, sticking to a route they know.
However, my Mom knows this magpie who kept driving in LA's suburbs and then began going downhill. Nothing happened, but one of her kids saw to it to take her car away, giving it to a younger family member who needed one, and she deteriorated so rapidly that she ended up in a nursing home. Not because the car was taken away, but because she was becoming more of a magpie who couldn't manage on her own.
We're talking apples and apples - young, responsible people who drive and old, "supposedly" responsible people who drive.
The good thing is that old drivers don't drive much - usually, to get groceries and to church, sticking to a route they know.
However, my Mom knows this magpie who kept driving in LA's suburbs and then began going downhill. Nothing happened, but one of her kids saw to it to take her car away, giving it to a younger family member who needed one, and she deteriorated so rapidly that she ended up in a nursing home. Not because the car was taken away, but because she was becoming more of a magpie who couldn't manage on her own.
There's other ways, in very advanced age, to maintain independence without driving a car. With the $ savings, local taxis and senior vans can easily keep elders out and about. My mom was sharp as a tack til the end (92) but wisely gave up driving at 78. She never missed the car. She got around, and was the mother of all independent old ladies.
I retired from a career that had a maximum age limit (56) because it was safety-related. A lot of guys wanted to work past this age, and they would claim that they could still do the job (the real reason was probably that they didn't want to sit at home with their wives, but that's another story). The folks who protested that they could still do the job were ironically the poster children for why that age 56 rule had to be in place. People who deny the facts of life and don't know their limits are often great dangers to themselves and others. The same principle applies to driving. Hell, my wife's uncle (who is legally blind) got pissed off when the DMV wouldn't renew his license. I presently live in an area where I can easily walk to a main street village area and public transportation, and any place that I move to in the future will have to have the same benefits.
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