There was a man who lived on my street who drove way way way into old age. His car was literally covered from front to back in dents. You’d see him walking to his car so slowly it was painful. He’d struggle to get the door open, hop in, and take off. It seemed like he had a new dent every time he came home.

I knew another man though, WWII vet, 98 years old. His wife was 93. He’d come to my store and buy cigars for himself and cigarettes for the wife. He had no issues getting around at all. I was legit shocked when I found out how old he was. His health deteriorated so quickly seemingly out of nowhere and he was still trying to drive, but fortunately his daughter stepped in and put an end to it.

Now his daughter has dementia. One day she stopped in to buy cigarettes for her mom and she asked me if I knew her son. It kind of took me by surprise. I’ve known the whole family for 20 years at this point.

Her son had a serious car accident in the mid 2000s and he’s been in a wheelchair since. He lost both of his legs, half of one of his hands, fingers burned off at the ends on the other. He barely survived.

She was telling me about the accident like it had just recently happened. She was crying, said almost word for word what she’d said to me all those years ago while he was in the hospital. Such a surreal experience.

Next time I seen her she asked me again, “Do you know my son?”

Then she tried to pay for her fuel 3 times back to back.

She’s still driving. Everyone knows that she’s experiencing these problems including the local police, but she’s still out there driving around.

I feel like this makes for a good argument for adequate public transit in the United States. If elderly people had access to public transit, then they might not feel like they are losing their independence if they can't drive.

Mobility for the eldery IS important but IMHO there should be affordable, easy accessible options without the use of a personal vehicle. Otherwise it get's harder and harder for the eldery to participate in social activities which are beneficiary to mental health and prevent early symptoms of Alzheimers disease.

If a german pensioneer can't drive a german car with more than 250 kph on the german Autobahn from north to south, west to east: how can we have EINIGKEIT UND RECHT UND FREIHEIT?

/s

Does the German automotive industry also exercise immense power and influence in both politics and society?

Why 80 years old even needs to drive? Their reflexes are slow, their vision is bad, their hearing is catastrophic. Why just dont let someone drive them/use taxi/public transport?

Reaction speed in particular.

I kind of agree with this, I do think that an exam should be done every so many years, but I don't think that full on driving test should need to be done. At most maybe a minimal test like make sure you can still do intersections fine and make sure you still know how to use your blinker in Etc but honestly I don't feel like a full-on test is going to be beneficial for anything, a timed exam with common sense questions such as who has the right away in this situation, or when is it appropriate to go through a yellow, basic stuff

In the case of the eu, this isn't an actually a driving test; it is more so of a medical test so like vision and memory tests to verify that you still have situational awareness, which I think will do tremendously more then your standard driving test where you may not even hit a situation that requires a lot of situational awareness

I agree with this except im too cynical to believe people just forget about safety. People learn to pass the test and then drive how ever the hell they like. Granted alot of people are safe but i see far too many people just completely disregarding anyone else on the road and their only goal is to get to the front of the line as fast as possible and screw everone else.

They can retake their test, they will drive safely and carefully that one day and then go right back to being selfish idiots.

I would maybe go as far as to say thst there is a requirement to have a black box installed in all cars that gets switched off/removed after a number of years of safe driving. And if you drive badly or unsafely then your insurance goes up every year until you prove you are safe.

Maybe it goes up by x amount £100 or like 10% or 20% a year until you stop driving badly but remains at the price it was when you start driving safe for 3 years before dropping back down to the price it would be without the increases you incurred. That would stop people from trying to cheat the system.

It may be extreme but if you are driving safely you have nothing to worry about.

Of course we would have to nail down exactly what counts as unsafe driving so it wasnt overly/unjustly critical.

I mean.... maybe its a bad idea. But again. If its not you then you needn't be worried.

My father has heart + breathing problems causing him to randomly get dizzy+out of breath whilst sitting down doing nothing. We've told him he shouldn't be driving but he says he knows what he's doing as he's been driving for over 60yrs. We reported him to the DVLA because he's going to kill someone.

!rentnerfahrenindinge@feddit.de done

My country has this system, and at the check the doctor also can determine how often you need to take a check.