{"id":8299,"date":"2012-02-22T11:34:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T11:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8299"},"modified":"2012-02-22T11:34:02","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T11:34:02","slug":"computers-old-people-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8299","title":{"rendered":"Computers + Old People = Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Canadian story claims that computerised tests<\/font> are unfair to older drivers. In many ways, it echoes the mantra certain ADIs in this country like to chant ad nauseam<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It seems that Canada also has a permanent war on the go with the politically correct crowd:<\/p>\n

\n

The government needs to do a better job of explaining a computerized driving test for seniors suspected of cognitive impairment, Solicitor-General Shirley Bond said in an open letter Tuesday.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Am I the only one for whom the question \u201cif they\u2019ve got cognitive impairment, why the bloody hell are they on the roads in control of a 1 tonne+ killing machine\u201d occurs?<\/p>\n

\"OldThe Canadian exam is simply a touch-screen affair \u2013 as far as I can tell, a lot of questions and hazard scenarios are thrown up (if someone from Canada can clarify that it\u2019d be useful), and the candidate simply touches a \u201cbutton\u201d on the screen. It isn\u2019t a million miles away from the UK Theory Test. But \u2013 just like the UK \u2013 there are \u201cactivists\u201d, ready to oppose anything.<\/p>\n

It seems that there was a recent protest by people who reckon that it is an unfair way to \u201cassess a generation less familiar with technology\u201d.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sick of this childish argument. If some new technology comes along right now, and I\u2019m not familiar with it, then I go out and make myself familiar. I don\u2019t start a protest group or front a Mickey Mouse organisation to oppose the technology.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of something from years ago, and which I have mentioned before. I\u2019ve always been \u201cinto\u201d technology, and had a home computer \u2013 long before PCs \u2013 in the late 70s\/early 80s. At that time, you saved and loaded programs and data from a cassette tape drive, and many magazines included a free cassette of stuff on the front cover. When disk drives started to become popular \u2013 and you can imagine the clumsiness of cassettes compared to floppy disks \u2013 magazines started to change over. There was uproar from the Luddites<\/font><\/a> who wanted to remain with cassettes.<\/p>\n

All you have to do is look at what we take for granted now, and what those idiots were campaigning for, to see how totally wrong they were. The same applies to this case of using technology to replace pen and paper or other non-technology based methods of communication.<\/p>\n

Reading the article in The Vancouver Sun suggests a very similar undercurrent, as the government is looking at \u201can outreach plan\u201d to explain why you need to be medically fit<\/strong> to drive AND how to use the computerised system. There\u2019s obviously more to it than just not being able to use a computer.<\/p>\n

One 86-year old (who is \u201ccompetent with computers\u201d) says he was \u201ccompletely frazzled\u201d when he took the test. Look, I\u2019m sorry, but if he was competent with computers, the only reasons for being frazzled were due a) to taking a test that he desperately wanted NOT to fail, and\/or b) being 86 years old! Nothing short of an automatic drivers\u2019 licence would have prevented him from being frazzled. He even reveals his desperation not to lose his independence, in a country where you have to be medically assessed fit to continue to drive beyond age 80. You can see that a whole raft of issues are being condensed down, and blamed on the computer-based test.<\/p>\n

A local driving instructor adds fuel to the flames when he says he has received \u201cnumerous complaints from seniors\u201d. What on earth does that prove? Nothing.<\/p>\n

However, he does say that he thinks the concerns can be resolved. I think that\u2019s being a little na\u00cfve, when it is the loss of independence and being tested at 80 which is the real issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Canadian story claims that computerised tests are unfair to older drivers. In many ways, it echoes the mantra certain ADIs in this country like to chant ad nauseam. It seems that Canada also has a permanent war on the go with the politically correct crowd: The government needs to do a better job of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,81,87,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-driving-test-related","category-news","category-world-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}