Mature Life Features

. . . try to recruit a hide-and-seek team here

because good players are hard to find.

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Mature Motorists Slowing Down

The “get ’em off the road” gang keeps going after older drivers. Take away their licenses. Test them every year. Let them walk. It’s safer. They bring out the statistics that cite senior drivers as the second-most accident-prone segment of our motoring public. The single-most road-risky group are teen-aged drivers. But no one suggests taking away their licenses when a group of teens are killed or maimed when their overloaded vehicle rolls over or smashes into another.

Detractors of senior drivers suggest taking driving licenses away at a certain age. How about holding back drivers’ licenses to young people until they reach a certain age? Neither of these suggestions make sense. Just as there is a majority of older drivers who pose no hazard on the road, the same is true of teen drivers.

So age is not the problem. The problem is common sense and competence behind the wheel.

It is estimated that 20 percent of the nation’s drivers will be older than 65 by 2030, according to an AARP report. Results of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study indicate that most older drivers limit or stop driving as they perceive their capabilities diminishing. About 70 percent of the more-than-3,800 50-years-and-older drivers queried said they restricted their driving under a variety of conditions. These included bad weather, heavy traffic, rush hour, night time, long distances, and freeways.

Older drivers apparently develop strategies to compensate for failing vision, slower reflexes,

stiffer joints, and medication, according to researchers. One thing they discovered was the drivers are more at risk for injury to themselves as they grow fragile with age.

The transportation needs of some 70 percent of the people in this country who live in the suburbs or rural areas are a major hurdle to such simple solutions as forcing seniors out of their cars and forcing them into buses, subways, trolleys, and trains.

It’s been proved that the cost of car payments, auto insurance, fuel, upkeep, and maintenance can buy a lot of taxi-cab rides. But that alternative is not always available. Older drivers can help their cause by supporting physical improvements such as signs that are larger and less complex, improved lighting and enhanced visibility at intersections, and remedial-driving programs.