Although elderly people do not get into more crashes than young drivers, most of them still suffer from the effects of old age like visual impairment, slower reflexes and the many other medical conditions that come with old age. More than 70 percent of motorists are concerned by the behavior of older drivers! I will tell you what they should stop driving at a certain point and the solution to their transport needs.
One of the issues around the health of elderly drivers is the fact that their sight and hearing is worse than younger drivers because of their old age. A loss of visual accuracy can make it harder for elder drivers to see essential traffic signs on the road. For instance, I have seen signs of incompetent elder divers myself, I was on the bus on my way to school and I saw a elder driver driving up to the parked bus at the bus stop in the wrong direction and wrong lane on the road, this man obviously had vision impairment and could not see the signs and just carried on like it was Normal! A solution to this is to have a younger experienced driver drive the older driver to their destination or just drive them about if they want to go for a relaxing drive, depriving them from even being in a car can be very upsetting for an elder drive as it takes an enjoyable element out of their life. Statistics show that older drivers are more likely to be involved in car crashes according to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), this doesn't mean that older drivers always cause accidents, it means that because of their slow reaction times and bad visual accuracy, they can't see or react to oncoming traffic as fast as younger drivers.
There are a lot of old age related diseases that may put the elderly driver in the car and the pedestrians on the pavement in danger these diseases include, dementia, diabetes, macular degeneration, arthritis and strokes. Strokes and arthritis can be the most dangerous health condition to drive with. Stroke can make you suddenly lose control of your steering because your arm is no longer functioning and the symptoms of a stroke include tingling in the limbs and restricted movement which is not good for if you're driving at high speed and need to turn you cannot stop because you can't feel your legs or arms and then Crash! life ending injuries are assured. Arthritis on the other hand really makes your hands unstable when on the wheel as they are shaking. This will make the car sway to the left or to the right, on a windy day this can be lethal because lots wind makes your car sway more than usual causing your car to flip over when you're making a sharp turn or make the car sway onto the other side of the road if the wind is strong enough this can also cause life threatening injuries and hurt others on the road. Dementia is also very dangerous as when you are about to start the car you could just suddenly forget everything you know about driving and go into a panic and then the case of I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching...my car into reverse and driving away from the accident happens.
According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) the risk of being injured or killed in a motor vehicle increases as your age increases. there is a 34 percent increase of older drivers since 1999, meaning that there are more older drivers on the road than ever and all of them have a high chance of getting killed during a crash because of their weak bones and macular degeneration. A way to stop incompetent old drivers of the road is to make them retake their driving test. Three-in-five motorists think older drivers need to retake the driving test when they reach 66 according to a recent survey. This will eliminate weak and sick drivers of the road and there will be a lot less crashes caused by older drivers.
The hardest thing about getting a elder to stop driving is the fact that you need to take away their keys and you don’t know how they will react to this, they might be thankful that you are saving them from a potential crash or they might be distraught because they love driving. The best thing to do is to present the option of taking away the keys in a thoughtful and loving way to encourage them to make the right decision. You can tell them that they can just take the bus instead of driving everywhere as it is free and that public transport is 170 times safer than driving a car and the fact that it will lower car emissions as there will be less cars on the road this is good for convincing them of they are into the environment and stuff. You can also tell them that by taking the low costing transit and not owning a automobile they are allowing many people to live in better housing.
One problem with my argument is that is the fact that more recent statistics say that older drivers are safer than younger drivers. To this I say that this is obvious actually, yes this statement is true because of two reasons, first reason is that there is a three to five year difference in the surveys and in five years many elderly drivers may have passed away due to their illness or old age, meaning there are less older drivers on the roads than the past. Second reason is that there are more first time, young drivers on the road and most to them maybe passed there driving test by luck or they maybe had a pretty chill driving instructor that would rather be a friend than a teacher. Young drivers also are dangerous because they may crash because the rush of adrenaline from going fast on their new car, it is usually their human error and they can react faster to ongoing traffic so they can stop themselves from crashing and causing life ending injuries. Overall younger drivers are only more dangerous because they and young and like to take risks but older driver most of the time, can't help themselves from crashing because they have forgotten how to drive, lost control of body parts, can't react because of slow reactions or just simply passed out while driving.
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