In Denmark, you also have to have a medical exam to maintain your drivers license after you turn 70, but they have no problem with carpenters running around on roofs until they're 74.
Running a car at highway speeds into something or someone else has a much higher chance of injuring or killing multiple people besides the driver.
My point is, if you're unfit to drive a vehicle due to cognitive or physical decline, you're probably also unfit for most jobs involving those skills, and yet you have to soldier on for 4 more years.
What happens when they're putting a new roof on a building next to a crowded street, and the 73 year old carpenter drops a bunch of tiles to the ground 6 floors below ? or he falls and slips off, taking another colleague with him ? Or he simply operates heavy machinery somewhere and gets caught in it.
Many craftsmen in Denmark are working contracts where they get paid more the faster they finish the job, and nobody wants a 70 year old dragging down their hourly wage just because they can't keep up, so the 70 year old will just have to "keep up", either making mistakes along the way, or wearing out their already worn out bodies some more.
There are options for "early" retirement at 70, provided you've spent 46 years employed. That means you started working at 24 at the very latest, and was not unemployed for longer periods.
Saving up for your own retirement is also hard with low to medium income wages in a country where you pay 40-50% income tax, 25% sales tax and retirement funds are taxed at deposit (meaning capital gains will be lower).
> South Korea; high elderly poverty
We simply don’t have those data for roofers.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...
If not, I think you may have missed the point that licensing is to protect others rather than the driver/roofer themselves.
Like motorcycles are orders of magnitude higher risk for (including fatal) accidents - but they aren't as dangerous for other traffic participants so they get licensed.
If motorcycles were killing orders of magnitude more pedestrians or other traffic participants than cars they would get banned immediately.
My point is whether it’s others who are dying is irrelevant. We have evidence of increased mortality with age for driving. I’m not seeing similar evidence for roofing. If geriatric roofers were constantly falling to their deaths, we’d see a movement to regulate them, even if they’re falling on flowers and not people.
Every single craftsman I know have abandoned their craft for something else because of body issues or injuries. Also, you’re nowhere as nimble at 50, 60 or 70 as you were when you were 20 or 30, so the risk of work related accidents increases, assuming you’re still doing the same tasks.
This is a good hypothesis. Whatever the reason, I see no evidence for old roofers causing death or injury to anyone, including themselves. There is zero hypocrisy in regulating old drivers while being laxer with old roofers.
Nice theory. Doesn’t work in practice. Most societies are not okay with people taking excessive risks, even if it only impacts them. It’s why we require seatbelts even for single-occupant vehicles.
I for one use seat belts, and I want them to be required to be manufactured in vehicles, but I believe it should be a personal choice whether or not you wear them.
You are straining credulity.