Wisconsin legislators draft a bill to change senior driver license renewals after 12-year-old Emmet Zodrow was run over and killed in a June crash. His family speaks to NBC 26 about the development.
“They have a lifetime of driving experience,” Jim Flaherty, communications director for AARP Wisconsin, said over Zoom Wednesday.
Flaherty said every senior driver is different, and the decision to put down the keys should come from a person’s family or their doctor.
The AARP has been talking this shit for a long time. I’ll repeat something I posted on another thread today: for a “personal responsibility” argument to make sense, the consequences have to go predominantly to the person who lacks personal responsibility. In the case of cars and pedestrians, the pedestrians can do absolutely everything correctly and still get hit. The consequences to them can easily be severe injury or death. The consequences to the driver are comparatively small, even if it involves damage to the car and long term PTSD. Therefore, the consequences are not at all matched up with personal responsibility.
I get why the AARP does this. Being able to transport yourself without help is an important part of feeling independent to older people, and that’s important to their mental health. The solution is better public transportation for everyone, not letting people drive who have no business driving.
There’s definitely a point that only taking away driving privileges only hurts some of our most vulnerable people. We should feel responsible for providing alternate support for their independence
And no, self-driving cars is not a solution even if we eventually get it. Firstly it doesn’t exist yet and secondly it may never. However just as big a concern is that not everyone will be able to use it.
I know it’s anecdotal but the reason we finally took the keys from my grandmother …… she had long agreed to drive only to church, the same route she’d taken for like 60 years. However then we got a call from the police that she was lost and disoriented on the other side of the city. She appears to have held onto the physical skills of driving even while losing the awareness to know where she was going. Self-driving would not have helped. Plus she was uncomfortable with technology, self-driving would not even have been usable. Self-driving cars are not the answer
Anyhow, I don’t know what the renewal requirements are but I hope they would flag people like my grandmother, even if she passed the skills test
The AARP has been talking this shit for a long time. I’ll repeat something I posted on another thread today: for a “personal responsibility” argument to make sense, the consequences have to go predominantly to the person who lacks personal responsibility. In the case of cars and pedestrians, the pedestrians can do absolutely everything correctly and still get hit. The consequences to them can easily be severe injury or death. The consequences to the driver are comparatively small, even if it involves damage to the car and long term PTSD. Therefore, the consequences are not at all matched up with personal responsibility.
I get why the AARP does this. Being able to transport yourself without help is an important part of feeling independent to older people, and that’s important to their mental health. The solution is better public transportation for everyone, not letting people drive who have no business driving.
There’s definitely a point that only taking away driving privileges only hurts some of our most vulnerable people. We should feel responsible for providing alternate support for their independence
And no, self-driving cars is not a solution even if we eventually get it. Firstly it doesn’t exist yet and secondly it may never. However just as big a concern is that not everyone will be able to use it.
I know it’s anecdotal but the reason we finally took the keys from my grandmother …… she had long agreed to drive only to church, the same route she’d taken for like 60 years. However then we got a call from the police that she was lost and disoriented on the other side of the city. She appears to have held onto the physical skills of driving even while losing the awareness to know where she was going. Self-driving would not have helped. Plus she was uncomfortable with technology, self-driving would not even have been usable. Self-driving cars are not the answer
Anyhow, I don’t know what the renewal requirements are but I hope they would flag people like my grandmother, even if she passed the skills test