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Comment by Numberwang | Hacker News Reader

Do you have numbers on these people causing a lot more than the average of accidents? Taking away driving licenses for old people is a big thing to do, especially if there is no need for it.

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I have anecdotal evidence of old people with dementia driving and not having any idea where they are or what they are doing. https://www.thelocal.se/20170809/swedish-experts-call-for-ne... claims that they do recall licenses, but evidently not as thoroughly as they should.

I'm just thinking that to my mind it is very rare to hear about old people causing accidents (injuring someone else.)

Alcoholics on the other hand cause a massive amount of accidents.

> accidents

Engaging in criminal behavior would be negligence, not accidental.

http://justicespeakersinstitute.com/traffic-crashes-theyre-n...

Interesting article. Negligence sounds like such a mild word though.

They seem to be well aware of their short comings & drive overly slowly instead of risking accidents.

It depends how you group the age cohorts, but my recollection is that the second oldest cohort (something like 65-75) actually has one of the lowest accident rates, and the oldest one has a higher accident rate per mile but tend to drive fewer miles total (in particular, because they're not commuting to work.) So the benefits of taking away licenses from the elderly might be fairly limited compared to say, more strict testing for teenagers and tighter DUI rules.

Also, a good point someone was made is that it may be easier for technology to solve the problems of elderly drivers who still have good cognition. E.g. you can make up for their limited neck flexibility with blind spot radar and backup cameras, and poor reaction times with collision detection systems. It's harder to do that for a teen who wants to drive too fast or make aggressive lane changes.

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