Elderly Drivers, Ageism, and Social Epidemics

An author I admire greatly, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote in his classic business book, The Tipping Point, about the phenomenon of social epidemics. Much like a flu epidemic, a social epidemic can spread throughout society at an alarming rate. Gladwell uses examples of commerce, such as the popularity of a certain type of shoes, as well as more disturbing trends such as school shootings or teen suicides.

With that as a backdrop, it seems to me that one of these social epidemics seems to be in full swing here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That is, the seemingly alarming rates at which elderly drivers are driving full speed into all varieties of storefronts and unsuspecting groups of pedestrians.

This has brought about a predictable and even understandable cacophony of cries for rigorous road testing of everyone who is old. Interestingly, “old” in this case is defined as something more than twenty years older than whoever is making the testing demand. I can’t wait to see how those who are calling for this mandatory testing at 80 feel about that rule when they turn 80.

The only group of people that it is still socially acceptable to berate in our society (besides white heterosexual males, of course) is the elderly. Imagine if there were an unfortunate stretch of six such car crashes in which African Americans were all at the wheel. Would politicians be calling for special driving tests for black people? Not if they wanted to keep their jobs, they wouldn’t.

Many will argue that that is a false comparison because there is nothing about someone’s race that would impair driving, and everyone fails as they get older. I disagree. Lumping all older people into one bucket that is defined by cruel negative stereotypes is no better than making negative stereotypes based on race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Clearly, we all start to break down at some point because of aging, but the timing of that breakdown is impossible to predict. Loss of hearing, sight, judgment, motor skills, and other faculties starts to happen as early as forty in some, but others have the good fortune to die before it ever happens to them.

Lots of things can impair driving. Text messaging, cell phone use, drinking, prescription medication, eating, road rage, screaming kids in the back seat, fog, snow, rain, darkness, lack of experience, speeding, exhaustion, mechanical failure, stupidity, and all sorts of other things contribute to car crashes every day. The fact that a small group of frail, blind, deaf, and demented older people (with the help of their complicit families and physicians) choose to get behind the wheel and crash into things does not justify testing everyone who gets to age “X”.

How many times do we hear about the drunk driver who kills someone is a serial offender who is driving on a suspended license? A lot. The reality is, there are a lot of selfish jerks out there, including older jerks. They are not jerks because they are old. They were jerks when they were young, too, and now they happen to be older jerks. They drive when they know they shouldn't for the same reason a drunk driver gets behind the wheel. They do it because they are selfish jerks. If you could administer a test to determine if someone were a selfish jerk, that would be a test I could get behind. Guess what? If you suspend the driver’s license of an older selfish jerk, I’m guessing that jerk will figure out a way to get behind the wheel of a car again, anyway, just like the serial drunk driver does.

Even if there were mandatory testing, many of the older people who recently made the newspaper because of their car accidents would pass anyway. Of all the people who I fear on the road, when I see the white hairdo that barely goes over the steering wheel cruising along 10 miles an hour slower than the posted speed limit, I’m much more at ease than I am watching the angry guy in the BMW weaving in and out of traffic at 100 miles an hour while he’s on his cell phone. That doesn’t mean that the first lady should be on the road. She shouldn’t. But, testing probably won’t weed her out anyway.

With luck, we’re all going to get old. The ageist sanctimony that we all approvingly nod our heads about now will someday be aimed squarely at us. Of course, for most of us, we’ll still be thinking it’s meant for those few that are still older than we are.

You've dropped the turkey if you find yourself sitting in your beauty parlor or barbershop and you're still sitting in your car's front seat.

Know when to say when, and hold onto that turkey.