A friend recently shared her support of a piece of legislation folks here in Colorado would like to move through the process. The legislation would require that folks who are over 75 need to re-take a driving exam and an eye test every 5 years.
There’s a fair amount of resistance to the legislation – mostly from seniors as you’d expect.
My friend strongly supported the bill – for reasons both logical and personal.
I get it, and I understand how it’s easy to support the idea. When I was in my early 20’s, and elderly lady ran a stop sign, broadsided me, sending my vehicle into the median. She calmly looked at the accident she’d caused, and drove off. Witnesses gave the police her license number, so they tracked her down, but no ticket was ever issued to her. No consequence at all. She was an old lady, and didn’t really realize what she’d done after all. There was no ill intent, the police said. The little ‘ol lady lived by herself, and she needed the car for her independence.
I understand the push to make the roads safer, but I think there’s a more equitable way to get there. Folks supporting the bill complain that driving is a privilege, and older folks should be required to prove they deserve the privilege every few years. I agree, but why are we limiting this idea to older folks? Why isn’t everybody required to prove the same thing every few years? Driving is a privilege, and we shouldn’t view it as a right.
As a cyclist, I’m subjected to absurdly unsafe drivers more often than I like to think. Folks who have no regard whatever for the safety of other folks on the road – sometimes folks that literally run you off the road intentionally. Call that in to the police, even with witnesses, and you’ll be lucky if there’s a slap on the hand. Out on the open road, I’ve had many very close scrapes with big RVs, giant behemoths driven by amateurs who require no special training or licensing, and are a menace on the road.
I’d take it so far as suggesting that in order to have a driver’s license, the applicant must ride a bicycle for a mile down a busy street – just to experience that thin white line and the tons of metal speeding by sometimes within inches. I suspect this would have a dramatic impact on the safety of America’s highways.
But where does driving fall on that “rights vs responsibilities” scale? When younger folks argue for laws to restrict older folks, driving feels very much like a privilege to them – something you have to earn. But I suspect when I talk about a requirement that ALL drivers be retested on the same schedule, and that ALL drivers be required to ride a bicycle on the side of a busy road for a mile to understand the dangerous nature of the vehicles they drive, I suspect those same people start to lean a little more toward an attitude that this is too intrusive – that it impinges on their “right” to drive.
I’m very conservative on most issues. I don’t like government intrusion into my private affairs. I’m certainly against the sort of government-driven hysteria that created the gestapo we have at airports these days, and have argued many times for the abolishment of the TSA. There’s no such thing as total security, so all we can do is decide how much absolute control we give to the government in the name of protecting our safety.
Keeping roads safe is one of those places where we have to draw a fine line. We want safe roads, and we depend on our collective “self” (through the government) to do this. I think it’s reasonable to ask EVERY driver to take a driving test every 5 years, and pass an eye exam. Is it reasonable to make them ride a bicycle? I think so, do you?
Too Old To Drive? – http://t.co/GFmendO1
Too Old To Drive? – http://t.co/GFmendO1