Bad Elderly Driving the New Internet Love Story Sensation

I haven’t climbed on my elderly driving soapbox in a while. Not for lack of blog fodder (there are accidents daily I could write about), more for lack of time and also that the sheer number of accidents and deaths caused by elderly driving is just flat out depressing. Heaven forbid we cheese off the AARP hordes and require that everyone get tested yearly, equally, to keep their license starting at the arbitrary age of 60 (eye, medical, driving skills, paper driving test). Much better to kill off as many unrelated people as we can so we have some semblance of normalcy as we enter our doddering years.

The story that got my goat today is going around Facebook as a touching love story – a couple celebrating 72 years of marriage died holding hands. How sweet, I thought, clicking through to read. Then it was revealed they died because the man pulled in front of another car. That’s right – 90+ and stil driving, and he and his wife both paid the price. But hey, let’s cherish the fact that they died holding hands – never mind it was while on adjacent, tube filled ICU beds. I also noticed a lack of news on how the other driver that was put at risk fared, so I’m assuming they were ok.

I’ll spare you going off on yet another rant about this, and simply point you to my previous yammering about it below. And before you comment “Oh you won’t know until you are 40, or 50 or… how it feels to have your liberty taken away”, a) I am 40, and I’m well prepared to put myself to my own rule of yearly testing. Starting at age 40 for everyone is fine with me, 60 was arbitrary as an idea; and b) ask any driver, pedestrian, innocent farmer’s market shopper or random restaurant diner sitting too close to a window how it felt to have their liberty taken away by an elderly driver careening into them.

The original rant, full of great ideas, from back in 2006 (Also, holy crap I’ve been blogging a long time – I had a Live Journal before that, and others before that. Whew.)

Another incident sparked a post in 2007, with good statistics

The astronaut’s mom story sparked one in 2007 also

Some commentary on elderly driving sparked by CNN in 2008, with great information from a study

A sad tale about elderly drivers and newlyweds from 2010

And one on teen drivers, in the interest of fairness, from 2007

And from June 2012 – the first texting and driving manslaughter case

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