The stories of the carnage caused by unfit older drivers are sobering. There was 86-year-old George Weller, who drove through the Santa Monica farmers market in 2003, killing 10 and injuring 63. Two years ago, an 81-year-old Florida woman failed to yield when merging onto the highway, smashing into a bus carrying senior citizens on an elder hostel trip, killing at least two and injuring dozens.
Despite these dreadful incidents, it’s wrong to assume that our streets are about to become the setting for the Cataract 500. Though the toll remains enormous, a fortunate trend over the past 40 years is that the roads are safer for everyone, with a national decline in traffic fatalities from a high of 54,600 in 1972 to about 33,800 in 2010. The reasons for the improvement are numerous, from a crackdown on drunken driving, to safer car design, to seatbelt laws, to the introduction of graduated licensing for teens. Older drivers, too, are less likely to be involved in traffic fatalities than in years past, with recent evidence showing a welcome and unexpected falloff.
Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says older drivers are often unfairly demonized.
See Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more.
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