Elderly drivers

[davidc4430]

Elderly drivers: Grieving family calls for greater political courage to deal with 'growing deadly problem

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-20/grieving-family-calls-for-older-drivers-to-be-taken-off-the-ro...

i see where this mother is comming from but geeez, attacking all older drivers because 1 killed her son!

how many sons and daughters are killed by younger drivers each year? is that a "deadly problem" too?

its not worthy of a story.

same as the 'we must kill the sharks because someone got killed by one'

people of all ages die from all sorts of things, we have rules and laws to help protect us but in the end, life is fragile. you can die in a thousand ways, and accidental death is very common.

[givemeaspell]

I heard of police booking people staying in the right lane last week on a well known highway.  I drive on the princess freeway and what annoys me more than anything in that when there are road works (yes there are a few!) and the speed limit drops it appears Im the only one doing that.  Most cars are flying past me at 100 when it is 80 or even 60.    As for elderly drivers IMO I think there needs to be testing my a medical practitioner or the roads authority once a person turns 80.  My father was still driving when he should not have been, his relfexes were very slow, it was very difficult for us as a family to have to tell him he should no longer be driving.  Would have been better coming from his doctor.  

[springyzone]

I think we have a huge problem in that unless you're living in the inner city suburbs, getting around these days is reliant on having a car.

Back when i was a child, there was a set of 5 little shops around the corner. Milk bar, hairdresser, butcher, fruit shop and what became a mini mart. So people in the area could walk to a shop for milk and their daily needs. My mother was always sending me over to the shops after school to pick up chops or other meat we needed for that night. Little shops were very common everywhere.

The shops are all still there but the only one now open to the public is the milk bar, the rest are all used for businesses of some sort but not open. So now people drive to the nearest supermarket I suppose & they are a few kms away.

I know people will say there are services for the elderly but I think we could do a lot better. Even the free taxi service to take people to medical appointments. My father tried it once and it was stressful. The journey home was slow, it took hours as a lot of people had to be dropped off. So he was away about 4-5 hours for one short appointment.

I can't see why there could not be some provision for the elderly who qualify-perhaps access to so many hours a week for someone to do grocery shopping or take them to the shops, the Dr and so on. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would jump at the chance to do part time work too, even though the pay rate was minimal.