Crash – The Car Accident

Social mobility, increases in life expectancy, cities and towns (and low-density communities where retirees are common) with poor access to mass transit, folks working into later years unable to retire, etc. are among the litany of factors that place more folks over 65 (politely called “the elderly” or “senior citizens”) on the road behind the wheel. The National Transportation and Safety Board tells us that within 15 years, 20% of American drivers will be over 65, and since many live in communities where automobile access is a necessity, we have some interesting questions about safety on the road.

The NTSB is currently looking into the impact of elderly on expressways on the general safety for all drivers… assuming there will be enough gasoline or alternative energy to let folks drive at all in 15 years! The November 9^th Washington Post provides some interesting observations on point, wondering why the surge of older drivers hasn’t already impaired our roads and highways: “‘Why aren't they getting into more crashes?’ asked Sandra Rosenbloom of the University of Arizona during the conference at the NTSB's L'Enfant Plaza headquarters. ‘I don't think we have good data on that.’

“Though highway fatalities have dropped overall in the past few years, the declines have been dramatic among the elderly, declining by half among those over 80… ‘Drivers who drive a lot tend to have fewer crashes than those who don't,’ said Ann Dellinger of the Centers for Disease Control... ‘When there is a crash, older drivers are less likely to die," said Anne T. McCartt of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety and author of the most recent comprehensive research on older drivers. ‘We don't have a good explanation for this yet.’” Oh great, we can eliminate more elderly drivers by letting them drive, crash and die?

And why I am thinking about 89-year-old George Russell Weller who, in a 2006 incident in Santa Monica, California, ploughed into a crowd of people at a farmer’s market killing ten folks, and injuring seventy, unfortunate enough to be in his path (pictured above)? There was this defense claim that he mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal. The court called him callous and showing “an enormous indifference to human life.” He was convicted of ten counts of vehicular manslaughter, could have received 18 years in prison, but didn’t serve any jail time because of extreme ill health. And yeah, we all have heard descriptions of Florida as the state of the perpetual left turn signal because of its reputation as a retirement haven.

The problem arises because we are living longer, and if you don’t have a car in many communities, cruel isolation may be the reward. Continuing to live in your home although a better choice might be more “transportation-appropriate” seems like a harsh choice to impose on someone. Selling a home and buying another has tax consequences and is not easy under the best of circumstances, but exceptionally difficult in these real estate-impaired times. Further, healthcare combined with modern diet and exercise programs probably effectively makes someone seventy five more like a sixty five-year-old a couple of decades ago. Bottom line people are different, but we still love to drive.

“‘It's usually illness, not age, that impairs an individual's ability to drive,’ said Bonnie Dobbs of the University of Alberta. ‘Men outlive their driving careers by six years. Women outlive their driving careers by 7 years.’… Older women often stop driving before men of the same age… ‘It tends to be women who give up driving earlier than they need to,’ Rosenbloom said. ‘One of the reasons women give up driving is that their husbands tell them they're bad drivers.’” The Post. Oy! With social programs clearly not on this Congress’ agenda, it is unlikely that there will be new governmentally-sponsored alternative transportation alternative provided to the elderly. Forcing them into retirement homes is simply not the American way and for many is not financially viable anyway.

Many states have more frequent and more stringent tests for elderly drivers, a reasonable approach. Other states allow a physician to notify the licensing authorities that they believe a repeat drivers test is required when one of their patients’ mental capacity or physical ability crosses the line. My guess is that the patient might just find another doctor, but with low payments from Medicare being the new “reality,” that just might a doctor’s way of jettisoning his Medicare load!

Families are also loath to accept the limitations on their elderly: “Family members sometimes step in to encourage parents to give up driving, but they often are slow to accept the older person's declining capabilities… ‘The driving is the canary in the coal mine,’ Dobbs said. ‘When driving becomes impaired they can't explain it away anymore.’… Rosenbloom said children often ‘willfully ignore’ their parent's deteriorating driving skills because they won't want to face issues of ferrying them around or relocating to their own homes or another facility.” The Post. In the end, this is the story of all of us… except those unfortunate enough to die young; what is “their problem” will someday be “your problem,” one way or the other.

I’m Peter Dekom, and growing old is not for the faint of heart.