Buick’d (A personal plea to keep those too old to drive off the roads) | Hacker News Reader

Buick’d (A personal plea to keep those too old to drive off the roads)

le.mu.rs

8 pointsalanh9 comments

This guy does know he has a valid tort against this person, right? If he wants to discourage them from driving, he should sue her for damages. She was negligent, he was damaged while he had a reasonable expectation of safety (crossing walk sign gave the OK), and there were many witnesses. If that isn't a preponderance of evidence, I don't know what is.

Instead of taking responsibility for himself in the commonly established method of the tort, he wants to force the state to get involved. As if that would ever fly -- the old have a stranglehold on voting; getting the state to restrict their rights is a fantasy.

The author should stand up for his rights in an effective manner if his audience is to respect him.

He's looking at what could have been done to avoid this situation.

How the hell do cops and firefighters right off a car accident like this, as if its nothing?

People are ignorant.

Obviously he was trying to avoid that. It looks like the second the firefighters tried to convince him to not go to the ER, they were trying to pass off the situation as "no harm done" and siding with the lady. If he objected, he would be that dick who picks on an old lady. Society is moronic sometimes. Being good to senior citizens needn't override being just to them.

So your solution to the authorities not doing their job properly is a potentially long and expensive lawsuit against a plaintiff people have a lot of sympathy for?

I'm really not sure how this strategy is supposed to deliver a net benefit to the victim.

There's been a really strong and justified precedent set for using regulation for this; drunk driving. In fact, regulation for impaired elderly drivers may be even more justified than it is for drunk driving. (I'm not defending drunk drivers, here, just to get that out of the way. Driving while drunk is an incredibly stupid decision.)

Drunk drivers are only impaired some of the time, whereas many elderly drivers are impaired all the time. Because of this, it's possible to test, in advance, whether or not an elderly driver is safe behind the wheel. You can't give a drunk a sobriety test every 12 months to certify them safe to drive; you could do that for elderly drivers.

Enforcing testing for elderly drivers also has the advantage of being a largely preventative measure, rather than a punitive one. The demographic it targets is also more likely to obey or respect that law, generally has more options for free or cheap transit, and is likely to be more deterred by the prospect of a sentence.

The downside, of course, is that being old is not a preventable condition; ompaired elderly drivers don't go out to the Frothing Otter on weeknights for bottled arthritis. Drunk driving can be easily demonized because the drunk driver made a choice to be impaired. The elderly can't be demonized for being too old or crippled, so it would be hard to push anything through. They're also extremely sympathetic defendants.

Elderly driving certification is certainly bad PR. But it's as justified as the original drunk driving laws. (Original meaning before they evolved into the nightmare they are today.)

he should sue her for damages.

I'm just speculating, but given the author's description, I doubt there was much money to be sued for.

At the end of the day -- nothing that bad happened to the guy. He's still alive (and healthy) to blog about it. But like he said -- others might not have been.

While you're point about it not flying is perhaps valid (one of the lovely things about compulsory voting here in Aus is that the AARP equivalent doesn't weild that much power) -- at the minimum there could be some progress towards a better outcome. (ie -- if you are >80 and have a traffic incident you need to restest for your license, retests at 90, 95, 100, etc)

I respect him because he has no interest in looking after himself -- he is attempting to look after others.

Buick? That's half of your problem right there. I used to drive a Buick (inherited), and I got rid of it as soon as I could. The handling, visibility, and overall user experience seem to be designed to create bad drivers. The seat backs force the driver to hunch over. The steering wheel either blocks visibility of the speedometer, or interferes with pedal access. The side mirrors are tiny, covering only a small fraction of the car's enormous blind spots. The suspension is so squishy that dodging an obstacle, making a turn, and even changing lanes all feel unsafe. The side pillars are directly blocking the important peripheral vision area, and the widshield pillars obscure multiple degrees of the driver's field of vision. I could continue. The only good thing I can say is that I was able to fit all of my DJ equipment, speakers included, into the car.

Note: my experience was with a mid-90s model. Newer versions may have improved, but I'll stick to my 3 series, thanks.

many states now have mandatory tests starting at 80. My late stepfather lost his license, as did my MIL. Good decisions in both cases.

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