Further to my recent post about the RAC’s call for larger lettering for older drivers, there is another story on a similar topic on the BBC website (I think it is just a different take on the same report).
This time, the claim is that older drivers are safer than young ones. The BBC article opens:
Elderly motorists should not be forced to retake the driving test as they are often safer than young drivers, a report by the RAC Foundation has found.
This has to rate as one of the most superficial and misleading statements of all time.
The RAC Foundation’s Stephen Glaister said:
Despite the myths, older drivers are no less safe than other age groups.
But then the article continues:
The foundation added that re-testing could break equality legislation.
This is the crux of it: political correctness and equality. Again.
I’m going to see if I can find it, but that report is actually quite a lot older than you’d think. I saw it sometime last year – or rather, the research paper with the raw data – and it is absolutely clear than reaction times get longer as people get older. So clear, indeed, that it is a simple fact.
Not every old person is going to be as bad as the worst one on the road, or as good as the best one in the age group. But the average (and the fact that the average is a fact) surely demands that lives are more important than ridiculous ideas of equality.
If someone can’t drive safely then they are not equal. If they can drive safely (enough) then they are. It’s as simple as that.
Equality is about allowing people to drive if they meet the base criteria. Not – as some seem to believe – that you should be allowed to drive no matter what.
If you look at this link, for example (it’s American), the abstract says:
Older drivers have higher rates of crashes per mile driven compared with most other drivers, and these crashes result in greater morbidity and mortality. Various aspects of cognition, particularly visual attention, have been linked with crash risk among older individuals. The current study was designed to specify those cognitive variables associated with specific on-road driving behaviors in a sample of older, nonclinic-referred individuals.
Not quite what the RAC is saying, is it? Quite the opposite, in fact – and it’s only from 2002.
The British Medical Journal has another article (also 2002), and in its abstract it says:
Driver crash involvement rates per capita decreased with age, but fatal involvement rates per capita increased starting at age 70. The same pattern existed for involvement rates per licensed driver. For both all crashes and fatal crashes, involvement rates per mile driven increased appreciably at age 70.
What this is saying is that as people get older they get better and have fewer accidents, but at a certain point (age 70 is identified) fatal accidents increase. Looking at all accidents, at age 70 they also increased appreciably. So older drivers do have more fatal and non-fatal accidents.