from the NYTIMES:

[mimitabby]

July 17, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
A Crash Course for the Elderly
By ANDREW L. HAAS

Armonk, N.Y.

ON a Saturday afternoon last July, I was riding my bike not far from my hometown, training for the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. Training for the Ironman, which is reputed to be the most challenging single-day athletic event in the world, is almost like a second job. It requires three to five miles of swimming, 30 to 40 miles of running and 150-200 miles of riding each week. I was in fantastic shape and just three months away from competing against the best triathletes on the planet. That’s when everything came to a screeching halt.

I remember nothing of the accident. Local police and ambulance reports indicate that a 75-year-old man turned left and drove directly into me, cracking my bike in half and sending me to the operating room and intensive care unit, where for the next three months I fought for my life. My injuries included a fractured pelvis, 15 fractured vertebrae, multiple facial fractures, an open triceps laceration, two collapsed lungs and severe blood loss. While I was in a coma, my family was left to wonder whether I would survive, and how functional I would be if I did.

In the year since the accident, I have learned to walk again. The Ironman, however, is well beyond my ability. I cannot run down the block without serious pain, especially in my pelvis. Professionally, I missed almost a year of work, which forced me to restart my orthopedic surgery practice from scratch. I have a long way to go before I regain even a semblance of my former life.

But the driver who hit me has scarcely been inconvenienced. He was charged with failure to yield and issued a $128 fine. He is permitted to drive without restrictions and without any assessment of his competence. In all probability, he has had no legally mandated driver training since he received his driver’s license more than half a century ago.

Doctors are required to take continuing medical education courses each year in order to retain our licenses and hospital privileges. We must also take our board specialty examinations every 10 years to maintain our specialty certifications. We do this in order to reduce the risk to patients of injury or death caused by medical errors.

Yet there are few such precautions taken to reduce injury and death on American roads. Someone can get behind the wheel of a potentially lethal automobile without having had his basic competence tested in decades. Most drivers receive their last exposure to driver education and testing in their mid-teens.

This makes no sense. Given their great, and frequently proven, capacity to do harm, drivers should be required to take a continuing driver education course every 10 years.

Special emphasis should be placed on elderly drivers. Motor-vehicle injuries are the leading cause of injury-related deaths among 65- to 74-year-olds and are the second leading cause, after falls, among 75- to 84-year-olds. Older drivers have a higher fatality rate per mile driven than any age group except drivers under 25. The American Medical Association estimates that as the population of the United States ages, drivers aged 65 and older will eventually account for 25 percent of all fatal crashes.

Accordingly, it makes sense to recertify drivers at age 65 and require subsequent recertification, based on road testing, every five years thereafter. Yet only two states, Illinois and New Hampshire, require road tests for older drivers — and those only after age 75. Some states actually reduce requirements; in Tennessee, licenses issued to drivers over 65 do not expire.

More than 40,000 people die in auto accidents each year. Well over two million more are injured, some, like me, quite severely. In July 2003, an 86-year-old driver plowed through a crowd in Santa Monica, Calif., killing 10 and injuring dozens. Yet here we are three years and many tragedies later, and still nothing has been done to prevent this recurring nightmare.

Continuing medical education and board recertification are inconvenient and time-consuming, but doctors recognize that they benefit the profession and society. The nation’s 199 million drivers should receive the same level of attention that the nation’s 900,000 doctors do.

We should require continuing education for all drivers and licensing recertification and mandatory road testing for drivers age 65 and older. It would make the roads safer for all.

Andrew L. Haas is an orthopedic surgeon.

[emily_in_nc]

AMEN!

I can't think of anything else to say...

Emily

[SadieKate]

Absolutely. Dealing with this issue in my family now. Unfortunately, it is my MIL and I can only do so much. I haven't yet personally called the DMV but that is next on my list after this week's visit by one of the daughters. I think they finally got it when I convinced them that she had no ability to deal with the unexpected, that planning trips with right hand turns only and the inability to back out of her driveway in a straight line was a signal.

[Geonz]

An Illinois cyclist was killed by an elderly driver - who wasn't even fined a red cent or even given a ticket. I understand he's not driving any more. Still, fact is that he killed a mom.
I find it hard to believe that the driver was so utterly fragile that it would do him more harm to at least acknowledge that HE DID SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG. If he does, in fact, recognize that, then I find it hard to believe that he shouldn't be willing to at least pay a ticket or do community service - hey, go out and walk along the road and pick up some litter! Sweep off a bike path! I wasn't there so I can't assume this is so, but somehow I suspect that the reasoning was that well, he didn't *mean* to do anything, so we shouldn't do anything either. Or, he's from X family, and we don't want to make them mad.
My momma didn't let that be an excuse for me, any more than "she made me do it" would be. My momma shoulda been a judge.

[KnottedYet]

A friend's grandma hit a 10 year old girl on a bike and didn't stop. She drove home, and then called a daughter all upset because she thought something had happened when she was driving but couldn't figure out what.

The daughter did a court appearance and took guardianship of her mom and the whole works. Took away the car. Moved her into a nursing home shortly after.

She took the whole thing very seriously.

[DDH]

First let me say to you how sorry I am this happened to you. I am so glad that you are slowly recovering. This must be a very hard thing to have to go through.
I don't mean to open a can of worms here but I have to say, I agree to an extent with what you say, however there are always exceptions.
New drivers, teenagers cause more accidents than any group, however we do not intend or even suggest that we take away their priveledge to drive.
I agree with your statment that all should be recertified or some kind of re-testing every 10 years or so.
I wonder if we will all feel the same way as we get older though. A lot of time that is the last of the independance that the elderly have and when we take that away from them, they sit in their houses with nothing to do.
It's really a very touchy thing and should be looked at on an individual basis and not just a broad range of age be given the boot on when they have to stop driving. I know that is not what you had said, but a lot of the times when this gets brought up, that is the general consenses, "just take it away from all, say, 65 year olds" and I just don't think that is the answer.

I think the main thing I see these days is that people in general seem to think that they have some right to drive. The fact of the matter is, is that driving is a priviledge not a right. People seem to think that they own the rode when they are on it and by God everyone else better get out of their way.
I live in an overcrowded military town, and we don't have the big city traffic so to speak, but we have a problem with the roads not being able to handle the amount of traffic we have and it is causing major impatience problems and people being discourtious, rude and just plain taking way to many chances. No one knows what speed limits signs are for, or at least it doesn't pertain to them. Everytime I go to town, I see people do the rolling stops at stop signs, run red ligths because they just aren't going to wait through one more light cycle. I mean it is just down right scarry to drive. I try always to do all my running during non peak hours, and rarely go into town after dark, and I am only 42.
Okay, sorry, I didn't mean to get on a tangent. I'm done. I apologize really. I don't want to offend anyone or get any dander up it's just a sensetive subject with me. I have a mother and MIL that I have to do all running for because neither can or will drive and it takes a tole on me at times. I guess the good side is at least we didn't have to fight for the keys from them before they did hurt someone.