It’s my god given right to drive a 5,000lb vehicle. Any attempt to make sure I’m fit to drive this safely is an assault on my god given rights.
It’s my god given right to drive a 5,000lb vehicle. Any attempt to make sure I’m fit to drive this safely is an assault on my god given rights.
It’s hard to fault elderly drivers for holding on to their ability to drive. In the United States not having a car is the same as being isolated from your community, ostracized, excluded. That everybody can afford a personal driver, few can.
They’re so few transit oriented communities in the United States, it’s sad. People need to drive. It’s just part of life. As much as we issue the changes of self-driving cars they can’t happen fast enough, it’ll enable people to have quality of life in these large automobile driven communities.
We could go with tried and true methods, like trains, buses, etc. Much better overall result, but yes, not a simple change.
In any case, the sooner we take the steering wheel out of human hands, the better. Too many people are unfit to drive.
Many middle-class Boomers are are emotionally invested in their houses, which locks them into their cars. They were taught to tie their self worth to their big house in the suburbs, and our car-based transportation infrastructure was designed to get them into those houses. Now they are living in houses they do not need in low-density areas but they will not move not because they like driving, but because they cannot imagine living in an apartment.
My mom does not like cars, does not like driving, and is not a safe driver, but will not consider moving out of her house that she has been in for forty years. So she keeps driving.
Most people that have reached the point of the person in that article would probably spend less just hiring a cab when necessary than they do on car maintenance, gas, insurance… It doesn’t solve the issue for rural elders, that’s all.