Presumably this is someone we want in congress
/s
There should be a maximum driving age.
You need good public transportation as well.
Agreed.
People lose their faculties at vastly different times. There should be mandatory re-examinations for older drivers with increasing frequency, not a hard maximum.
I disagree. If there’s a hard minimum, there should be a hard maximum too. By your logic, I could argue that younger people mature at different rates, but no one wants to see 14-year-olds on the road. The same should apply to older drivers. If you’re 80+ (or whatever age is deemed most appropriate), you’re just not sharp anymore. Stay off the road for the safety of everyone involved.
Not to say 80 year olds should be driving, but a 14 year old kid has nowhere near the same amount of need for a car as an 80 year old would and the 14 year old can just as easily hop on a bike or have their parents drive them somewhere. I would hope an 80 year old wouldn’t have their parents driving them to the grocery store or doctors appointments.
No, I disagree. I know 80 year olds who won the genetic lottery and are still sharp and can operate a car just fine. I know others who probably shouldn’t be on the highway anymore, but they have accepted that and only use their car to get around locally. They know their limits and work within them.
One older person I know is a perfectly safe driver, who used to be an expert navigator, but now once you get him off of his well-known routes he will spend forever looking for “that next turn” and end up driving off in a random direction. His family tries very hard to discourage him from driving alone now.
Yes, younger people mature at different rates, but the decline of older people is much more varied and there is a much larger range of age and abilities to consider. There is no practical way to differentiate solely based on age. Even in states where they periodically retest older drivers, all 3 of the cases I stated above would probably pass. (While a 4th older driver, who is perfectly fine driving by themselves but gets confused while being talked to while driving, would fail because they wouldn’t process the tester’s directions in real time).
Actually that is a good point. The hard age limit is stupid. We need a regular adequacy test for min and max and whatever.
