How old is too old to drive?

[cpzilliacus]

Case in point from KNX Radio: 11 Injured When 100-Year-Old Driver Crashes Near South LA Elementary School

As many as 11 people were injured Wednesday afternoon when a car jumped a curb outside Main Street Elementary School.

CBS2 confirms the driver is 100-year-old Preston Carter, who will turn 101 next week. Police reported that he had a valid driver's license.

Nine of the victims were reportedly children and the other two were adults.

[NE2]

53.

[agentsteel53]

-101

[US71]

I'm not sure there is an "etched in stone" age where one is "too old".  While it depends on the individual, I think there should be a way to test.

My mom is 88 and voluntarily quit driving 2 years ago.  Her eyesight is slowly going and her hearing is fading.

[corco]

Depends on the person, but a person is probably too old to be driving as soon as they do something like this. The trick is to yank their licenses just before they're too old to be driving, so we should have taken his license away yesterday.

My mom is 88 and voluntarily quit driving 2 years ago.  Her eyesight is slowly going and her hearing is fading.

Exactly- my Grandpa passed when he was 90 and he was still comfortably driving. He lived in Greenfield, Ohio and just drove around there and took the backroads to Chillicothe every once in a while, but that's it. He stopped driving to Columbus or Dayton when he was 80 or so.

My Grandma in Idaho is doing a similar phase-out. She's 84 now and lives in Boise, but she only takes routes and goes places that don't involve using major streets (she's come up with some ridiculously convoluted routes to get around town that are really slow but probably safer) and has talked about stopping driving altogether.

On the flip side, my uncle had a bad stroke at about 55 and lost the capacity to drive safely, but he insisted that he could and totalled several vehicles before the state finally pulled his license. Fortunately he didn't hurt anybody. Unfortunately my aunt enabled it and they lived in New Hampshire, away from everybody else, so nobody could really stop it.

[Alps]

It should be based on a reaction time test. Too slow to react, bye bye license.

[hbelkins]

My dad quit driving three years before his death at age 79. Prior to that, he quit driving long distances and only drove from home to our small-town county seat, and he gave up driving to Lexington for doctor's appointments.

I know some elderly drivers who are better than some younger drivers. It's not a function of age, but of ability.

[formulanone]

It should be based on a reaction time test. Too slow to react, bye bye license.

Drag racing it is, then. Set up the christmas tree...

[DTComposer]

I'll hold judgement until we know the whole story - the driver seemed coherent, aware what had happened, said the brakes went out. If true, that could've happened just as easily to a 35-year-old.

My grandfather kept driving into his 80s - he was physically fine (reaction time, eyesight, hearing), but fading mentally. Once on his way to our house after a new freeway was opened right before the exit he would normally take he got befuddled, took the new freeway, and was 35 miles away before he decided something might have gone wrong.

If cost were no object, I would have drivers tested every 7 to 10 years until age 60; every 5 years until age 75; every 2 to 3 years after that. Infractions or accidents would accelerate the re-testing schedule.

[3467]

Like US 71 my mom stopped because of eyesight at 89,but she self limited her driving over the years first cutting out nights.
I had a freind who was an insurance adjuster who told me most elderly did and because they drove slowly seldom had the really expensive or fatal accidents.

[Scott5114]

My father advocates the idea of requiring renewal driving tests at increasingly small intervals as you get older. Perhaps after your initial test at 16, you could have one at age 36, 46, 56, 60, 65, 70, 72, 74, 76... He claims that something similar is done with pilot licenses. It seems like a reasonable idea and would hopefully catch people that are just shitty drivers as well as age-impaired ones.

[J N Winkler]

My grandmother reached the age of 92 and the very last thing she did before she died was to park her car.  However, she had pretty much given up driving herself on out-of-town trips by the time she was 80.  When her brother-in-law died in western Kansas eleven years before she died, it was my parents who took her there in their car for the funeral.

My mother had a maternal aunt who also drove until she was 86 or so, but only on county roads with relatively low traffic volumes; if she had to come into town for doctors' appointments and the like, she usually arranged to park at a supermarket in the outskirts and have someone else give her a lift.

[US71]

My dad quit driving 2-3 months before he passed away. He was put on O2 24/7 and was afraid to leave the apartment, even with a portable machine. The weekend he passed away, we had planned to take his car around the parking lot of the retirement home to see if he could at least drive to the store or his favorite restaurant.

Probably 5 years before that, he had quit driving out of town. He was 80 and didn't have the stamina for long drives.

[texaskdog]

I think everyone should be tested at least every 5 years, and annually when youre really old.  So tired of dealing with people's poor driving habits.

[bugo]

There should be yearly tests given after a certain age.  These should be extensive tests, driving on a variety of city streets, country roads, congested commercial strips, and highways.

[agentsteel53]

There should be yearly tests given after a certain age.  These should be extensive tests, driving on a variety of city streets, country roads, congested commercial strips, and highways.

a friend of mine from China says that they tried that over there... and gave up because too many of the driving instructors were dying.

[1995hoo]

I'm not sure there is an "etched in stone" age where one is "too old".  While it depends on the individual, I think there should be a way to test.

....

I agree with this 100%. People age differently and a one-size-fits-all bright-line age standard is a bad idea, but testing that assesses an individual's performance against certain objective standards is very reasonable.

Put differently, I had one relative who had to stop driving in his mid-80s (he was 87 when he died), but from everything I see on the news I'd wager that HM the Queen (who is 86) would be highly competent to drive if she wished to do so (not that she needs to, of course).

....

If cost were no object, I would have drivers tested every 7 to 10 years until age 60; every 5 years until age 75; every 2 to 3 years after that. Infractions or accidents would accelerate the re-testing schedule.

Here in Virginia we have a version of that last part. If you get two moving violations during your license period, you have to re-take the knowledge test at your next renewal. That means renewing in person and undergoing the vision test.....supposedly, anyway. I had to re-take the knowledge test in 2003 and the woman forgot to administer the vision test. I didn't prompt her about the error.

I've long thought it would be a good idea to require the knowledge test at every other renewal anyway, regardless of age or violation history. Laws change. Standards of care change. A lot of people grew up without antilock brakes and never learned the proper way to operate them, for example. That would be a good thing to put on the test. A lot of people profess not to know how to drive through roundabouts, and as they become more common that knowledge is increasingly important. We require people like doctors, teachers, attorneys, etc. to take continuing education to maintain their licenses. Why shouldn't the same be true for drivers? Especially as license terms get longer and longer? (Virginia used to have a five-year license term that expired on the last day of your birth month in a year when your age ended in "0" or "5." Now it's an eight-year term.)

[kphoger]

Back in Atwood (KS), there were little old ladies who had to have the large-digit alarm clocks and telephones because they couldn't read the normal ones.  Yet they kept on driving, usually ignoring those annoying eight-sided red signs that were recently installed (meaning, the last thrity years).  Not exactly heavy traffic in that town, though.....  The only fatal car crash I remember while living there was by a driver who had only scraped off enough ice from the windshield to peer through–just a little circle–and then run smack into a pedestrian.

[vdeane]

It depends on the person.  My Grandpa will be 99 in December, is mentally more functional than many people my age, physically like someone in their 70s, and the only reason he can't drive is because he fell and broke his spine 15 years ago (combined with polio when he was a kid, but that didn't stop him before the fall).  Both Grandmas voluntarily stopped driving, one after a few minor accidents (no injuries thankfully) with things like parking meters.  One of my great aunts was perfectly capable of operating a motor vehicle safely but would forget where she was going; testing wouldn't have stopped her!  I believe my other great aunt was driving all the way until she died.

[corco]

Wait, so something could happen to me between now and 2053 when my Arizona license expires to make me incapable of driving?

[agentsteel53]

Wait, so something could happen to me between now and 2053 when my Arizona license expires to make me incapable of driving?

2053 

most people in Arizona will expire well before then.

though, isn't the year of expiration set to a particular age of the holder?  so, if someone first gets an Arizona license at age 60, they won't be issued one valid for 41+ years, as yours is.

[corco]

I know mine expires on my 65th birthday, but I'm not sure what happens after that.

I hate that policy if only because I still get carded when I buy liquor and that expiration date scares people- I got questioned in Idaho and in Arkansas while buying alcohol because of that expiration date.

[Brandon]

I know mine expires on my 65th birthday, but I'm not sure what happens after that.

I hate that policy if only because I still get carded when I buy liquor and that expiration date scares people- I got questioned in Idaho and in Arkansas while buying alcohol because of that expiration date.

Wow, that's a long time period.  The ones here in Illinois usually expire after 4 years.  Of course, the time before last, since I had no moving violations, I applied for and got a sticker to add to the back of the license, extending the expiration date for 4 years.  Made people out of state look when they saw that the expiration date had passed and I had to redirect them to the back of the license.

[Roadgeek Adam]

My grandmother on my dad's side is 79. Last year when we were in FL, no one noticed her driver's license had expired. However, my grandmother has Alzheimer's and we decided (my father, myself and her nurse aide) that she will instead get a state ID and will be driven around everywhere by her nurse aide (which she already was.)

[cpzilliacus]

Just requiring people to get an vision test somewhat frequently screens out a lot of people that are suffering from dementia and should stop driving for that reason, even if their vision is still O.K.

Maryland requires a test every 5 years regardless of age.