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Japan Moves To Ease Aging Drivers Out of Their Cars (nytimes.com)
As Japan's population ages, so do its drivers. Japan has the oldest population in the world, with nearly 28 percent of its residents above 65 years old. One in seven people are over 75. In the United States, by comparison, that figure is closer to one in 16. From a report: According to data compiled by Japan's national police agency, drivers between 16 and 24 are more likely to cause traffic accidents than any other age group. But last year, drivers over 75 caused twice as many fatal accidents per 100,000 drivers as those under that age. Among drivers over 80 years old, the rate was three times as high as for drivers under that age. The news media regularly features grisly reports of deaths caused by older drivers, some of whom are later discovered to have Alzheimer's disease.
Since 2009, all drivers 75 and older must submit to a test of their cognitive functioning when they renew their licenses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled], typically once every three years. Under a new traffic law that took effect in March 2017, those who score poorly are sent to a doctor for examination, and if they are found to have dementia, the police can revoke their licenses. More than 33,000 drivers who took the cognitive test last year showed what the police deemed to be signs of cognitive impairment and were ordered to see a doctor. The police revoked just over 1,350 licenses after doctors diagnosed dementia.
Since 2009, all drivers 75 and older must submit to a test of their cognitive functioning when they renew their licenses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled], typically once every three years. Under a new traffic law that took effect in March 2017, those who score poorly are sent to a doctor for examination, and if they are found to have dementia, the police can revoke their licenses. More than 33,000 drivers who took the cognitive test last year showed what the police deemed to be signs of cognitive impairment and were ordered to see a doctor. The police revoked just over 1,350 licenses after doctors diagnosed dementia.
"But last year, drivers over 75 caused twice as many fatal accidents per 100,000 drivers as those under that age. Among drivers over 80 years old, the rate was three times as high as for drivers under that age."
Yes, that does make some sense. But are we talking about 200000 drivers, 2000, or 2? And "twice as many" is how many, exactly? Also, what percentage of people in that age bracket still drive?
Telling us the rate "per 100000 drivers" without context doesn't actually explain how large or small the problem is. It just tells us that any particular older driver is more likely to cause a crash than any particular younger driver.
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Many US states have stepped up testing and medical requirements for people over 75.The older you get, the more frequently you must take a driving test.
The Japanese have just put a more specific requirement on it.
Addicts get awfully cranky whenever you try to cure them of their addiction!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
While I do agree with you, the article specifically mentions people who live in rural parts of Japan, where there is no public transportation.
Absent safe and affordable self-driving cars that can handle senile users (rambling, contradictions, references to old landmarks, etc.), we have to find a way to transition old drivers in every country.
My Dad was stubbornly holding on to driving despite failing vision and increased confusion, the police stopped him driving down the highway the wrong way. Nothing happened, but the next day, they suspended his license.
There should be a better way than waiting for "driving in the wrong lane", for example.
Mostly random stuff.
My Japense father in law had tunnel vision and still got his license renewed. And we literaly see Japanse elderly people have caused accidents every month. Usually they just hit a wall by putting the car mistakenly in reverse. The Japanese government should make it compulsory for elderly people to have car with driving assistance like anti-collision prevention. Those features are currently available for any small car at almost no extra charge.
I'm not sure how revoking a dementia patient's license is going to help, it's not like they're going to know they aren't supposed to drive.
I've known a few people who lost their license due to dementia. None were so far gone that they didn't understand and most got rid of their cars.
Here in BC, you start having to be retested at 70 or so depending when the license expires IIRC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What makes it worse, as you go further out from the cities the percentage of elderly population gets higher too, with some towns over 50%.
It's a screening test, designed to be performed by people who are not doctors.
It's supposed favour false positives and minimise false negatives. Failing the test simply means you need a proper test.
Like the eye test machines some counties have. I fail them everytime, and every time I have to get a certificate from an optometrist that says I have good enough vision to drive without glasses.
Also like the breath tests police conduct for driving under the influence, the machine you talk into while sitting in your car is a screening test. Failing that test requires you to do an evidential test.
That'll work great in the rural towns where there is no public transport and the elderly population exceeds 50%
In my experience it's people who live close to the city who don't benefit from extending public transport who complain the most.
The actual reason these rural communities have poor public transport is because of their low population density. No one is going to use a bus route that either a) doesn't stop anywhere near their house; or b) stops near everyone's house so takes them 2 hours to get to the shops.
It's one of the rare occasions where the Japanese willfully break the law. It is considered morally OK because it balances out the useless land problem:
1. Old rural person dies.
2. Next of kin living in $BigCity inherits useless rural plot of land, and annoyingly, the tax burden on said land.
3. No one wants to buy the useless plot of land, and there is no mechanism for abandoning the land. Until every last member of your family line dies, that land will have its taxes collected from whoever is still alive.
Basically, the next of kin will collect the dead person's pension and send the money back to the government to pay the tax on the land they don't want. In a strange way this works out.
Age discrimination of young and old over "safety" related arguments is repulsive. People were once free to travel anywhere they liked without the permission of governments. The idea that safety is so much more important than the population's right to travel is disgusting. And don't go tell me how its a privileged and not a right. It's been understood that people have an inalienable right to travel and the courts reckless disregard for that right has resulted in all sorts of discriminations and tragedies that mostly have no significant impact on safety- but it's an irrelevant argument to me because no amount of improved "safety" can justify the restriction on peoples rights to live outside of a repressive regime.
While the famous Ben Franklin's quote below may be understood out of context to mean something that was not intended it is that interpretation that sums up nicely what I believe:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The young are discriminated against and hindered from gaining the skills needed to drive safely and this results in less experienced older drivers. By increasing the age you end up in a never-ending-cycle and argument for increasing the driving age. You can continue this up to and past age 28 because of "brain development". It's ridiculous when you can't hire a kid out of college because the state demands a year of experience with a parent or other adult before they can drive. This has literally prevented me from hiring numerous young persons out of college! At least until I moved my business out of an insane state with this requirement.
Then there are laws in other states where they suspend peoples drivers licenses for "crimes" or debts that have nothing to do with safety and safety isn't even why we have drivers licenses. It was bigotry back in the early 1900s against motor vehicle owners and up until the late 1960s there were even states that had no testing of drivers either oral or road to get a drivers license.
One example of a "crime" that is punished via the restriction of ones driving "privileged" is a NY law that applies to juveniles only (or did) that says if you are caught committing a graffiti crime that you will be prevented from getting a drivers license for a number of years after you otherwise would be able to get one. This doesn't apply to an adult who commits the very same crime! In theory we're suppose to be more lenient with minors and yet frequently the opposite is true. It's a more serious crime or only a crime in many states for a young person to smoke weed- but it's either legal or merely a violation for an adult to do the same thing!
Another group that is discriminated against via drivers licenses suspensions that has nothing to do with safety are people indebted to the state for child support. You might think "Good." because those people are costing us money. The problem with this thinking is a lot of these people didn't even know they had a child because mothers have denied that these kids are the father of the father. When it finally comes out that a father is in fact the father and should have been paying child support the debts to the state (to reimburse the state for welfare basically) have there drivers licenses suspended. Not everybody has 20 or 30 thousand dollars to cover the costs the moment it is decided in court that they are the father and in debt to the state. It's entirely unreasonable for a person to be made to pay on the day of the court ruling that kind of money to the state else face a suspended drivers license. And it doesn't even make sense because you are not hindering that father from employment that would enable him to repay that debt. It's another form of debtors prison that even the British understood hundreds of years ago was a bad idea- and so it was abolished- but not here in the good ol USA.
Then there are laws that discriminate against old people rather than incapable drivers. There are lots of peo
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I'm in Canada. Doctors are required by law to report any medical condition that may affect one's ability to operate a motor vehicle, and such a report triggers an immediate suspension of your driving license. (Driving while Suspended carries the same penalties as Impaired Driving).
In my case, at age 57, due to a mix of medication my doctor prescribed me, I began experiencing dizzy spells. Combined with low blood pressure (which is actually good, as you age, but when I was a young adult I would get a dizzy spell for about 1~3 seconds if I stood up quickly from a seating position) I fell and hit my head while in the doctor's office, and he sent the report (and paid for a taxi home for me).
Now my Driver's License is pretty much exactly like how all Pilot's Licenses work ... it's dependent on a medical. I take the medical every year (the licensing agency pays the fee to the doctor) and if I pass (I always do) then I can renew my Driver's for a year. This will never go away; I will be doing this for the rest of my life.
Note that the medical also includes a vision test, which I also always pass (20:20 & 15:20), but should I fail then there would be a requirement to get another medical from an optometrist, and I know many drivers who cannot see as well as I can and don't wear corrective lenses. But they don't need a medical to drive.
A more moderate version would be that cars give people mobility and that is worth a lot. Therefore the threshold for allowing people to drive should be as low as possible and a modest increase in death toll should be allowed. It's always tempting to put the bar as high as possible because it's good for the traffic deaths, but you have to balance it.
A way to shift the balance then is to take in account driving aids: autopilot/lane assist/collision detection etc allow the driver to act more competently, so you could have a category of drivers who are not allowed to drive in a basic car. I imagine some 'moderate epileptics' to be allowed to drive that way.
There should be a better way than waiting for "driving in the wrong lane", for example.
There is but we're too much of a bunch of self indulgent asshats to do it. The answer is EVERYONE should have to retest routinely (say every 3-5 years) and the test should actually be challenging to pass in a sense similar to a pilot's license. (doens't have to be as hard as a pilots license but it should be a lot harder than it is and include cognitive function testing and a physical exam) Do something stupid like drive drunk and your license gets revoked on the first offense because you have clearly demonstrated you cannot handle the responsibility. If you are getting older and lose the ability to cognitively react fast enough and properly while driving, that should result in your license being suspended. I don't see why that should even be controversial. Simple fact is that you become dangerous when that happens. I expect/hope I live long enough it happens to me someday.
Unfortunately we've designed far too much of our infrastructure around a presumed ability and "right" to drive a car so the other half of this is that we would have to actually invest in decent public transit for those who are unable to pass the test. I don't actually see this as a bad thing. A good public transit system is something worthwhile. If we need to have subsidized access to taxis (or Uber/Lyft) for those unable to drive themselves then let's do that or something similar. Probably some people to assist the elderly and disabled who need a little extra help getting around. Heaven forbid we actually act to help those who need a little extra assistance.
A more moderate version would be that cars give people mobility and that is worth a lot. Therefore the threshold for allowing people to drive should be as low as possible and a modest increase in death toll should be allowed
That's frankly an idiotic suggestion. If we want mobility it doesn't have to come in the form of a car. Heaven forbid we have a public transit system that doesn't suck. Stop thinking cars are the only possibility and the answers become obvious.
EVERYONE should have to take driving tests that are harder than the current ones and there should be a cognitive function test to go with them. If you cannot physically/mentally react fast enough to safely operate a motor vehicle then you should not have a license.
It's always tempting to put the bar as high as possible because it's good for the traffic deaths, but you have to balance it.
No you really do not have to balance it. You simply have to recognize that we've designed our infrastructure too heavily on the false presumption that anyone above the age of 16 is physically and mentally capable of driving a car. This is obviously and manifestly not true and therefore is stupid policy. The answer is to build our transport system to rely less on the presumption that everyone can drive. Public transit, subsidized taxi service, housing relocation assistance, etc. If this requires people to give up their car fetish and self indulgent assumption of a "right" to drive then so much the better.
If we actually prioritized safety over practicality and freedom, then driving would be handled by professionals.
Nonsense. Stop making perfect the enemy of good. A large majority of the people can handle driving a car with reasonable safety. But doing so requires a certain standard of physical and mental ability to do it safely. One of the problems of growing older is that many people experience mental decline and slowing of reaction times. Other people for reasons beyond their control (genetics, disease, accidents, etc) never achieve this level of function. People in this category should not be driving under any circumstances because they are a hazard to themselves and those around them. Right now we have frankly set the bar too low. It's too easy to get a drivers license and we do not retest at reasonable intervals. I've seen far too many people who are able to retain their driver's license long beyond when they should.
But we don't prioritize safety over practicality and freedom, because that would be idiotic.
Idiotic is letting someone who is CLEARLY dangerous and incapable of safe operation drive. Drunk, senile, etc. If we let people who are clearly unable to operate a motor vehicle with a reasonable standard of performance then we are idiots.