from the NYTIMES:

[xeney]

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.

Sure we do. Well, it depends on the state, but California keeps imposing more and more restrictions on teenage driving in response to the number of traffic fatalities in that age group. These days there are limitations on when kids can drive, how many other kids can be in the car, when they can drive without an adult present ... it's a long way from when I was 16 and suddenly had all the rights and privileges of someone who'd been driving for thirty years.

But laws won't do everything. Even if states restricted licenses for seniors, it might not help, because the same factors that make some people unsafe to drive could also make them unwilling to respect the fact that they no longer were legally permitted to do so. Families have to take responsibility, and that is much easier said than done. Elderly people have been known to actually steal cars. (Not that anyone I'm related to ever did that, ahem.)

I think the answer is probably for people to be aware of this issue when they are younger. Talk about it with your spouse, with your kids, with your doctor, so that you have more objective people around to let you know when it's time to give up the keys. And, from an advocacy standpoint, it is much easier for seniors to stop driving if they have other options ... which means public transportation.

[mimitabby]

Yes, in washington too; teenagers have restricted licenses. It's great.
lets them drive, but without 10 kids in the car.. by the time they
have matured, they have some experience driving and then are permitted to drive at night and with multiple passengers.

[Tuckervill]

In Arkansas, kids can get their learner's permit when they are 14.

Some people are shocked by that and some people in Arkansas want to change it. But I think it's wonderful just like I did when I was 14 and got my permit (I started driving on the back roads when I was 13, in my own car, a red '67 Beetle that I had to park on a hill and pop the clutch to get going--we also turned in pop bottles to get 50 cents worth of gas. Man, those were the days.)

Back to my point...my two adult sons, aged two years apart, got their learner's permits at the same time. One was 14, one was 16. The 16 year old had his permit for 60 days, then he got his license and could drive everywhere (I trusted him and didn't worry about him). But the 14 year old had TWO WHOLE YEARS of practice with a licensed adult before he could drive. That's why I tihnk driver's permits at 14 are still a wonderful idea.

(Both of them are safe drivers and neither have ever had an accident, although they both had their share of speeding tickets. Now they both drive slow because they are cheapskates and don't want to waste gas or pay the "stupid tax".)

And if my kids had grown up in the same kind of tiny town like I did, with no local law enforcement to speak of, I probably would have let them drive as early as I did (I first drove the Beetle with my Dad when I was 10). I can imagine lots of rural farm kids learn to drive all kinds of farm vehicles, including the pick-up truck, early ages. It's not that kids can't be safe driving--it's that most kids are learning to drive in very, very heavy traffic, with thousands of possibilities for bad happenings.

Life gets so much easier when you have a kid in the house who can drive!!!

Karen

[Imperfectstorm]

Most accidents are caused by the 18-33 yr old group, I learned that in a community policing class.

If you want justice, hire an attorney. Don't lump everyone into one narrow category.

[Deborajen]

Ageism? Sorry, I don't sympathize. With age comes experience and maturity to handle big stuff like driving. Eventually, these abilities deteriorate, too. And under age 18 (that's the age in my state, anyway) parents end up being held responsible for the under-age-18 kids' actions. If that means I'm a "bigot" for using "ageism" as an excuse for not wanting my son, or other people his age, to drive because their age is 17, so be it!

It's perfectly reasonable to have age-specific guidelines in this instance. And by the way, even attorneys can't get justice if the person being sued is legally too young to be held responsible. Better to have some common sense and statistically valid rules in the first place.

Deb

[donnambr]

A great way to avoid all accusations of ageism is to re-administer both written and road tests to all licensed drivers every 5 years without exception. Plenty of people who are not teenagers or senior citizens shouldn't be driving a car, and I have been one of them.

I'm 33 and the last time I had a driving test was when I was 15 to get my learner's permit. Michigan did not require me to take a driving test for my license because I had passed my permit test. The last time I had a written test was 10 years ago when I moved to Oregon. They did not require me to take a driving test because my Michigan license was in good standing. That's crazy! Sure, I haven't gotten into any car accidents or been pulled over for speeding since I was 19, but how the heck do they know what kind of driver I am? They sure don't know last month was the first time I drove a car in 2 years, and they definitely do not know it was because an ear tumor and subsequent recovery from the surgery to remove it gave me too many balance and depth perception problems to feel comfortable driving a car. I wasn't even up to riding a bike until 5 months ago. Those were my choices. My doctor didn't even suggest it. I know had I been driving a car during one of those dizziness/tilting spells, I could have killed someone. What if I wasn't the kind of person who always considers the consequences of my actions and who accepts my physical limitations? What a menace I would have been!

And - if you fail the road test, you should have to go to traffic school or some kind of refresher course. Thus, we finally give the automobile the respect it deserves as a deadly weapon and acknowledge that drivers are operators of a deadly weapon.

[pooks]

We went through nightmares to stop my mil from driving. She had three wrecks (fortunately, never hit anybody else -- just immovable objects) by stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake. The last time, she drove through the back of her house and did thousands of dollars worth of damage to her house AND her car.

State Farm refused to pull her insurance.

The State of Texas can't do anything unless a doctor says a person is medically incapable of driving. She was under a hematologist's care who said she couldn't write the letter because her anemia was under control and thus wasn't contributory to her driving. Her internist wouldn't write the letter. Fortunately, her cardiologist took it upon himself to write it -- after my mother-in-law giggled and told him she was still driving, and he couldn't do anything to stop her.

That didn't end the nightmare, though.

In Texas it is next to impossible to stop the elderly from driving unless they are reasonable enough to recognize when it's no longer safe. My mother only drives short distances even though she's never had a wreck. She is uncomfortable on the freeways and always gets somebody else to take her if she's going far.

There HAS to be a way to stop bad drivers of any age.

I think teenagers are allowed to drive too young. I think that should change. HOWEVER, the big difference between teenagers and the elderly is the asumption that teenagers will improve. The elderly almost without exception will not, and their driving abilities will diminish. This is a fact of life and there needs to be a legal way to deal with it.

After my mil drove through the back of her house (making excuses as to why it wasn't her fault, of course) and my husband took her keys away, it turned out she'd hidden extra keys all around her house in anticipation of such a day. She kept driving. People kept telling us all the things we should say to her, but the problem was, we'd said all those things.

When my husband said, "What if there had been a child in front of your car? What if you killed somebody?" she responded, "So be it."

How do you deal with that?