Are the rules for drivers license renewal too lax.

This is why I'm in favor of lifelong intermittent behind-the-wheel tests. Every time I get to a new state and have to take a written test to get my license, I see many people who are probably perfectly good drivers struggling over the written test. They're not good at taking tests, is all. Now, a couple of months ago, I rode with an elderly couple -- she high-strung, he losing his sight, neither wanting to drive (but neither wanting anyone else to drive, either) -- who would have been perfectly capable of passing the written test, but she was laying on the horn repeatedly at every intersection so that people could hear her coming -- because she couldn't tell whether they were or not.

All a written test tells you is how whether the person can take a test.

pd, Good point. There's a big difference between answering questions on paper and actual driving. Never the twain shall meet. c.i.

(As someone who's very goot at taking tests, I can tell you just how poor an indicator they are of actual intelligence or competence. )

Just found these websides:

Older Drivers Fact Sheet

Safe Senior Citizen Driving

Two more websites:

www.aaafoundation.org/quizzes

and

www.seniordrivers.org


Of course De Nile is more than a river in Egypt.

Elders Behind the Wheel
In the absence of any foolproof system of weeding out
dangerous drivers, society will have to rely on the elderly
to recognize their own limitations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/opinion/27SUN2.html?th

There's an article in the most recent AARP newspaper about how most older drivers know when they are unsafe to drive, and many stop on their own. c.i.

C.I.
I have a friend that just gave up his car after being urged to do so for the last 3 years. He gave it up after smashing into 3 cars in our parking lot and totaling his car. It is a very difficult decision to make and unfortunately I fear many decisions are made just that way.

au, That may be true, but it still represents a very small percentage of older drivers that cause accidents or fatalities while driving. Here's the link. http://research.aarp.org/consume/fs51r_older_drivers.html#Older
c.i.

elderly drivers
Hey all...this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I live in a metro-Atlanta suburb where traffic congestion is at a national high. The only times one can even consider getting from point A to point B with relatively light traffic is between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. However, in the past 5 years these times have been renamed "Senior Citizen Rush Hour". The dangerous elderly have figured out these are the "light times" of traffic, and proceed to get wherever they're going, usually as slowly as possible. This is absolutely the most frustrating thing to have to be somewhere with your kids that's generally 10 minutes away, yet you need to leave a good 30 minutes early in order to get around Old Farmer Wilson or Grandma Gertrude in their oversized Buicks.

I have 4 "traffic laws" for seniors that I can spot from my car when I'm driving behind one of these geezers. The two "men's laws" are called the Cap Law and the Ears Law. Even when standing still, I know I have a dangerously old driver in front of me if he's wearing a golf cap from the 1930's, or if his ears stick out more than an inch from the side of his head. For women, the two laws are the Hair Law and the Invisible Law. If the old lady has hair so thin and teased-out that you can see the outline of her scalp through her hairdo, OR if she's so shrunken and short that it appears that no one is behind the wheel, WATCH OUT. All these drivers invariably choose oversized tanks to drive, so they're easy to spot.

When my grandma started losing it due to Alzheimers, she'd go to the bank and return three hours later, confused and shaken. She'd get going somewhere and forget where she was. No one on these threads or articles on the elderly ever really mention the dangers of memory loss. Grandma's reflexes, eyesight, and hearing were great...but she had no memory! How scary is that????? We told her we'd drive her wherever she wanted to go, wheich was easy since she lived with my parents and me...but she refused. Insisted she'd drive til the day she died.

So we sold her car.

Great thread, guys! We NEED to do something to retest the elderly. The AARP can shove it, in my opinion. We make teenage drivers jump through all sorts of hoops, yet no one is lobbying to Congress or screaming "discriminantion" for them!

We need to retest the ladies, who're in the 30-40 year old age range, who think it's cute to drive an SUV, while smoking a cig, drinking coffee, talking on their cell phone, and...talking to their 3-4 kids in the rear of the SUV.