Alcohol and distractions, such as texting, are the cause of
a majority of traffic accidents. However, there is another factor that
contributes to the accident total, age.
The general consensus is that the older people get, the
sooner they should have to renew their license. Even Scott Rohde, chief of
police at UWL, weighed in on the topic. “There are five incidents that I can
think of where we had elderly drivers try to go through campus. If we’re
concerned about the mental or physical health of an older individual we can
refer to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and they can force a driver
to re-take their exam.”
On the topic of
automatic retesting after a certain age he commented, “I would support
retesting after age seventy-five or above.”
There is a natural decline in a person’s vision, reaction
time, flexibility, hearing, and memory retention. While the age varies from
person to person, the age when driving becomes especially dangerous is past
seventy years old.
Elderly people only account for roughly nine percent of the
population. But according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
they cause fourteen percent of all traffic fatalities and seventeen percent of
all pedestrian related fatalities.
Cars are a common form of transportation, also the leading
cause of death for healthy individuals. And almost every fatality is the
product of human error.
Each state has its own laws regarding elderly drivers, but
there is very little consistency across states. Virginia, Florida, and
California all require elderly people to renew their license after a specified
age. The states require them to pass an eye exam and a written test. This is
repeated every so many years. In Arizona, a license won’t be renewed until age
sixty-five, and then it’s renewed every five years. Wisconsin has all of its
drivers renew their license every eight years, but has no special revisions for
elderly drivers.
These accidents don’t occur because elderly people are
reckless drivers, quite the opposite in fact. Elderly people tend to avoid
driving at night or in bad weather, they don’t drink and drive, and they are
less likely to speed. The problem is the physical decline of health that comes
naturally to all drivers.
