Comment by calpaterson
18 days ago
Unfortunately what is needed are tests of driving ability. Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It is unfortunate that things like this become politically impossible because older people are one of the most reliable voting groups out there.
I will always be bitter that older voters chose Brexit by a large margin, in opposition to the younger voters who will actually be around to feel its long term effects. Not taking that into account in voting feels wrong but there’s no politically palatable way of addressing it.
Didn't the UK just start allowing 16 year olds to vote, which presumably helps offset the impact of older voters? I remember not getting around to voting in my first election (USA, Colorado). The outcome was George W. Bush being elected president, who favored policies not well-liked by younger people at the time.
>It is unfortunate that things like this become politically impossible because older people are one of the most reliable voting groups out there.
They become politically impossible because they're not a front burner issue for anyone so the only people who are driving the issue are extremists who want the criteria set at like 10 whereas normal people want it at like 5 on some arbitrary scale of extremity so whenever it goes up for public consideration it gets shot down. You see this across all areas of mundane policy.
Give parents extra votes for their children who are not yet eligible to vote. Perhaps half a vote per child for starters.
This assumes parents would vote in the interests of future adults. In my experience, parents are quite happy to vote against future adults, even their own. Housing policy is the most obvious example.
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Is that a reference to one of the sources of the civil war in the US? Voting rights for disenfranchised (literally enslaved) people?
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Make voting be based on military eligibility. This is something Starship Troopers was sort of correct about.
You can't be drafted in war time emergencies? You can't vote (also yes I do want women to be draftable)
> This is something Starship Troopers was sort of correct about.
It might also suggest further reflection is warranted.
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I think people should be able to get up to 3 votes:
1. Veteran
2. Property ownership
3. Having children.
If you dont hit 1 of those criteria, you dont get a vote. You need skin in the game. Letting anyone vote is why “tax someone else, give me things” is such a popular platform. Politicians should have to hit maybe 2 out of 3.
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You're right about military eligibility, but also that you shouldn't make calls for a nation which you will never see. Doubly so if one does not have children. No skin in the game, no alignment of incentives, no moral right to choose.
Even moreso when you consider basically the whole generation relies on leeching off the young and have continued to capture an ever-increasing proportion of public spending across the western world despite owning an outsized proportion of both real estate and wealth overall.
What about people with a medial disability?
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So, only people aged 18 to 25 year olds should be able to vote in the US?
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The worst age group behind the wheel is by far 16-25. The middle age group is the safest and the gap is actually moderate compared to 70-75.
You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous. Most of them only stop driving when they cause an accident. Sometimes its a serious one.
There are already some measures for young people, like the 6 point thing. Maybe there could be more. Doesn't change the facts about dangerous OAP drivers
> Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
> You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous.
You sure about that?
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“I'm talking about a significant minority of [under 25 year olds] who are wildly dangerous.” (Edit mine)
Don’t you think that statement is also true?
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Yes - I’ve seen the pricing algorithms at several large insurers. Massive surcharges for young people 16-25, rates level out 30-55, and then slowly start to go back up, but it’s a slow increase compared to the young ones.
> The worst age group behind the wheel is by far 16-25. The middle age group is the safest and the gap is actually moderate compared to 70-75.
Retest everyone's skill every 3-5 years (whenever up for driver card renewal).
AIUI, that's a misleading figure, because the elderly self-correct, in awareness of the greater difficulty, by driving a lot less, so the greater danger is masked in the per-unit-time accident rate.
So, in theory, policy could appropriately adjust for this dynamic by only requiring the test of over-70s driving more than X miles/year, but that adds hassle to enforcement.
Especially in the US. In countries with more robust public transport, you can get away with not having a car. That's basically impossible in the US.
As European, that has lived across multiple countries, that only applies to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Also healthy enough to be able to walk stairs, as very few places care about people with disabilities, or carrying stuff that is a pain to transport across stairways.
People visit the touristic centre of the main cities and assume we all enjoy nice public transport systems.
There's definitely a lot of truth to that, Europe is not a monolith in terms of transport infrastructure.
On the other hand, it's hard to overstate just how radically car-centric the majority of the infrastructure in the USA is.
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UK transport is much worse than the continent. London is fairly well served but elsewhere not so much, especially not the countryside. The trains are very expensive (even with an old person's railcard) and the buses are often irregular or non-existent in large areas of the countryside.
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> to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Which is also, to some extent, the reality in the US as well. Some number of the "city centers" have better public transport and/or walk-ability [1] available than what is available just outside those city centers.
One big difference in the US is the massive land area difference as compared to Europe means there is a huge amount more land area (and therefore population) with little to no public transport or walk-ability available and a car becomes mandatory rather than optional in those areas.
[1] It's not perfect, I'm sure there are plenty of city centers in western states where even the city center itself is so spread out that walk-ability suffers and that a car tends to become more necessary.
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I’m an American and my vision, fully corrected, is right at the legal borderline to get a license without restrictions. I’ve never “failed” a vision exam at the DMV; one time the clerk even said, “good enough”. (Don’t worry, I never drive, I only keep my license up to date for serious emergencies).
A serious emergency isn't going to be helped by someone with very little driving experience. I don't follow your reasoning. If it was a serious emergency who would care if you had a license?
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You also need a drivers license that doubles up as a real id if you want to travel by air. So the issuance of a DL isn't just for driving.
I'm not sure if they give regular state id's as real id.
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UK public transport is not good, especially when you get out of the major cities. Better than the US, but worse than Continental Europe.
The buses turn up when they feel like it, and there are problems with antisocial behaviour on a lot of them, including assault.
This depends a lot on where you are. I've lived in York, Darlington, Leeds, London, Oxford, and Liverpool for decent periods and used buses in all of them regularly. Only Darlington was really unpleasant for buses - they were often every half an hour and if one came early and you missed it you would be left in the cold for ages without information.
Oxford was great (though cycling was even better); Leeds, Liverpool, and York were perfectly fine, with regular and reliable services; London's are famously efficient.
Antisocial behaviour isn't honestly that common in my experience, though I'm sure that varies by location. Had some aggro in London once, and again on a London night bus. The football special to the LNER stadium in York was properly boisterous, and quite threatening to the poor away-supporting family on the lower deck, but that at least carried a copper to make sure nothing stupid happened. Other than that, I've only ever really seen loud schoolchildren - who can be annoying but have never caused difficulty for anyone outside their group. I've honestly seen worse behaviour on the tube (and been the object of it on Cross Country Trains).
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I know it doesn’t work everywhere, but I’m happy there are services like Uber and Lyft when I get older. I could see myself using those services a lot when I am no longer able to drive.
I wonder if communities will move away from things like buses to public autonomous cars.
If you could run a fleet of $30k Waymo’s, that would be nice
Nope, even best countries in the world with great public transport like Switzerland have tons of remote places basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
Guess what, mostly old folks live there and all this applies there. Its just not financially feasible to cover everybody. Proper full self driving should fix this, nothing less I am afraid.
> basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
This sentence is hilarious from an American perspective. There are central business districts of major US cities that are less connected to public transit than the most remote rock at the end of a steep canyon in Switzerland.
A bus that ran 1x a day on any day of any week would be a drastic improvement for nearly all of the US.
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Proper self driving is furthest away from being able to handle these cities as well, don't see these driving in Sicily before 2040.
Many of these older people don't even know how to use a smartphone so even a 'perfect solution' will take some effort.I still have to help my grandpa with landline calls because he never had one himself (I live in one of the most developed countries in the world).
Not impossible, with uber/lyft being available. And yes public transit is not good everywhere in the US, but in high density cities it generally is.
> Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Evidence? I thought over-70s were on average safer than young drivers
UK statistics here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The issue is that the rate of accidents rapidly increases after 70 and the easiest detectable indicator is deteriorating eyesight.
I opened the link and didn’t expected a report about younger drivers. This link is about older drivers: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...
Yep. In practice, you've probably got a group of over 70s who are much safer drivers than the average 17-24 year old and some with declining eyesight who are worse. The test proposes to distinguish between the two
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https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/study-sheds-light...
I imagine there’s something of a bathtub curve where young (under 25) drivers have higher accident rates due to some combination of inexperience and immaturity, while older drivers (over 70) have higher accident rates due to disability creeping up on them without them noticing.
Seems that is true, at least for the ones currently on the road https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-dr...
After think about this a little: since these charts are per-driver, rather than per-mile, they're probably not as favorable as they seem. I would guess that retirees drive much less on average than working individuals.
Agreed over 70s are safer than younger drivers, but consider young drivers in most jurisdictions face restrictions while elderly drivers do not.
Further I’d say anecdotally that past a certain point, certainly by 80s, elderly drivers are not accident free. It’s that they have an increasing number of small accidents until someone takes away the keys. If they do not have someone in their life to do that it’s probably reasonable that the government make that determination.
At some point the reduced vision and reflex speed makes them too hazardous on the road to others, even if they are driving slowly and carefully. Parking lot accidents, hitting kids, slamming the gas instead of the brakes, etc.
> Agreed over 70s are safer than younger drivers, but consider young drivers in most jurisdictions face restrictions while elderly drivers do not.
What jurisdictions? The one that is proposing the eye tests?
Teenagers have obligations. Retirees don't or if they do they're far more flexible. Grandma can just not drive at night or in bad weather. Somme teenager typically can't.
So the inherent risk of the situations in which they drive does tend to favor seniors generally
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I wouldn't say over 70 year olds, average 70 year old is fine. Problem gets a lot worse at 75 or 80. Most these people don't drive nearly as much as younger people anyway.
My grandma is 90 and drives 5 miles to the grocery store, a slow road. I don't think she'd pass a driving test but she drives during the day when barely anyone is on the road, chances of serious injury are nil.
Is it worth it to spend large amounts of money on testing these people, taking their license away if they fail? Getting rid of their car will force them to replace it with someone else driving or cycling which could be a problem in many places. Worst case scenario they'll need to go in a retirement home.
For my parents it was 65-70 when I noticed and started to become very concerned for their ability to drive safety. At 75 now, my dad at least only drives during broad daylight but even so he can't maintain a safe speed and does barely half the speed limit, then complains about tailgaters not liking his "retired lifestyle" (which is his personal excuse for driving slowly, when in reality he lacks the skill to keep up with traffic, which is very dangerous in my view...)
It's a danger for sure, I think for many the best they can do is limiting their driving as much as possible to 'safe' roads. With elderly driving slowly it's more a problem of ruining their car when they crash than endangering lives. Wish there was a better solution for all of them.
Maybe less of an issue if they’re given taxi vouchers to the value of about the typical amount of driving they would have done?
Across the western world, elderly benefits increasingly outstrip the growth young workers paying taxes for their benefits are able to eke out. I do not think they need free taxis as well.
For UK in particular look up triple lock pension.
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There's not many taxis in most places, I come from a town of 400 people it'd be a very uneconomical solution.
I'm not saying it's great for them to drive, I just doubt there's a way to fix it in these sort of places. My grandma cycles to the small store for most of her groceries everyday, it's only the big store she drives to bi-weekly. Honestly the cycling is probably more dangerous, and there's some elderly in my town who're pushing 100 cycling daily.
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Well the obvious solution is take away the vote for over-65s!
/s … maybe
They do have less stake in the future and want short term policy payoffs...
Combine that with the initiatives of many a conservative or liberal political party to raise the retirement age beyond or up to 70 years.
Yeah, you have to work but you are not allowed to drive or vote any longer. Sounds fair.
It's not like voting does anything, anyway. Once elected, they do what they want.
I’ve come around to the belief that the biggest benefit of democracy is not choosing the best and wisest leaders.
The benefit is the regular ability to remove bad leaders. It doesn’t always happen as fast as we want but it happens eventually.
It’s not perfect, but imagine your least favorite president instead presiding for decades until death or coup.
The purpose of a system is what it does. There's lots of literature on what the best, or at least better, voting systems (hello preference voting) and decision making approaches are. Getting them implemented is another story.
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In Switzerland we do it all. After 75 there is requirement for periodic health check by doctor which consists of various mental checks and eyesight. I would put it at 70, everybody degrades with age at different pace, some lose it even before 50 (ie sclerosis or parkinson) but cca 70 is an age I can see clear mental decline in every person I ever interacted closely.
Wife is a GP and she regularly faces this at her work. I begged her numerous times to take away those licenses without mercy if the person is unfit, no amount of pleading, begging, crying of threats should change that. And they do it all, oh so much - to the point she is giving up this revenue stream, too much emotional burden (from somebody who sometimes has to tell patients they have ie cancer).
Why so harsh - we live in more rural place with tons of old folks. They are properly dangerous behind the wheel - they can't handle any sudden situation, heavy traffic is a challenge at best, they need to drive at absolute minimum speed at bright daylight to handle situations.
Its tough, they live their whole lives in the middle of nowhere, too stubborn to sell and move someplace more reasonable and without a car they can't easily take care of themselves in their remote places (but its 2026 we have ubers, taxis and home deliveries, and once further down the road good social housings for elderly). Often, they know old but still working doctors who turn the blind eye because they are old buddies and then its sometimes sad news.
When they handle 1.5 tonne of steel that accelerates fast and easily kills others, very easily it stops being primarily about them but about rest of society. When you see them barely managing driving around local primary school, its either them or us/our kids
> Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It shouldn't be permanent. If they can improve, then why not? Maybe illness causes their poor driving and they find a treatment for that illness.
> If they can improve, then why not?
I'm talking about removing licences due to cognitive decline. It's not a temporary condition
Theoretically it can be, though usually not, so the question is what should be the law to cover the general case. It wouldn’t be such a problem if it were easy for them to get around without driving. Either self driving cars, subsidized Ubers, public transit, walkable cities, home delivery, etc.
My opinion is that in the general case people over 70 shouldn’t be driving and I say this as someone who has 4 spritly grandparents in their 90s. I really don’t like how dangerous roads are, a fact that we accept because we did not really have good alternatives, now that we do we should implement them.
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> It's not a temporary condition
You have no way of knowing that. There's no reason it should be written into law. If they can pass the test, then they can drive. Testing already takes care of what you want. If it truly isn't a temporary condition, then you have nothing to worry about.
It can be for "3 months" (with a low expectation that after 3 months they improve enough to get the licence again).
It's a vague definition though.
All cognitive decline is not equal.
If they're able to drive they should be allowed to
In my experience, the 70+ are bad at driving in ways that do lighter accidents. Typically: Drive 50 km/h everywhere, even if the road is 30 or 70. General weird behaviour. Swerving slowly left right left forever.
They do cause a lot of cursing, but they are signalling hard enough they're bad at driving and other drivers leave huge margins, overly grant right of way, don't cross the road, etc...
Fairly regularly an 80-something will end up driving down the wrong carriageway of a motorway or dual carriageway. Fairly regularly this results in deaths.
This is good, no? The intent is obvious, it's likely improving the current situation, and I don't see any reason not to applaud it as an low-barrier incremental improvement.
Of course it makes their lives worse. In a lot of parts of the UK, the public transport is barely fit for purpose, irregular, non-existent (in much of the countryside) or dangerous (in the city). I speak from personal experience. I've been harassed and assaulted on British buses and trains on more than one occasion. Once had to phone the police to get rid of someone who started to follow me home, after he had hit me getting out of a train in a small branch station. It's like the Wild West. In one village I visited, there was only one bus there a day, and a bus back on a different day. How are old people supposed to function with that?
As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
> As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
This is zero-evidence bullshit. On and after the age of 70, all UK drivers have to renew their licence every three years anyway - it's been like that since 1976. This new change just adds a requirement to get an eye test (which the government doesn't "make money" from) as well, rather than self-certifying.
Starmer was talking about getting over 55s to get a new licence every five years a few months ago. He hasn't managed to push that through. Of course, you would have to pay more money to them every time you get one. British TV licences are overpriced as are British passports, but you have to have one or the other as ID. I have one just now, but no car. The public transport is awful.
Most of the price of petrol in the UK is government duty and VAT, then there is the extortionate road tax etc. The British exchequer rakes it in off motorists but fails to help provide safe and reliable alternatives.
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In fact the government pays for eye tests once you are over sixty.