By Lauren Fix, The Car Coach
Unless you’re never near a road, then this affects you!
More people are driving now than ever in history, even with the rising cost of vehicles and gas prices.
There are more crashes, more fatalities, more dangerous maneuvers, more road rage, more of all the bad things that come with scale.
So what do we do about it?
I propose we retest drivers every number of years.
Hear me out!
While we can get some statistics about the number of at-fault and no-fault collisions, and the number of fatalities, we don’t have real stats on the number of dangerous situations drivers find themselves in on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s dig a little deeper first.
No one demographic is the main culprit. According to research from the Boston Globe: people over the age of 65 are actually the safest drivers. But even so, for every senior who drives slow and causes traffic to back up, there is a young male or female who is driving too fast trying to impress his friends, and for every one of those young drivers, a teenager plays on their cellphone, or plays with the radio and does not pay attention to the road.
So here’s my proposal to solve the problems once and for all: every five years, we all go and get retested for our license to make sure we are still capable of driving.
That should begin the elimination process of unqualified drivers who don’t take the privilege of having a license seriously. And yes, I said privilege because you aren’t born with the right to drive a car. You have to earn it.
This would also lower:
- Insurance rates
- Accidents and fatalities
- DWIs and DUIs.
And might just make the road safer for all drivers, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bicyclists too.
This is ultimately about making the road safer for everyone.
The odds you’d get hurt by an elderly person driving without the proper physical abilities because he/she had not been tested recently, compared to a younger person for some other reason, is relatively low.
You’d be better off worrying about the younger drivers. They have poorer estimates of their true physical and mental abilities, take more risks and end up hurting themselves and others from behind the wheel more often than the elderly.
But if you are moving into the senior age group, and a lot of people are, or have parents or older relatives you may have to take care of, your or their independence could rest on this. The extension of the policy idea to all drivers means it could affect you as a driver, and your safety whether or not you drive.
This is not my definitive answer, but rather a proposal to start a conversation for anyone who’d like to join in. Second, I’m proposing a policy that increases the safety of our roads and drivers first, rather than one that’s fair as the first priority.
Here’s the Bottom Line
To lower traffic deaths, lower insurance rates, and make the roads safer for cars, pedestrians, and bikers, we need to do something. Retesting and better driver education will make the roads safer for everyone.
There is so much more to discuss on this, put your comments below and let’s start the conversation.
Lauren is the CEO of Automotive Aspects and the Editor-in-Chief of Car Coach Reports, a global automotive news outlet. She is an automotive contributor to national and local television news shows, including Fox News, Fox Business, CNN International, The Weather Channel, Inside Edition, Local Now News, Community Digital News, and more. Lauren also co-hosts a regular show on ABC.com with Paul Brian called “His Turn – Her Turn” and hosts regular radio segments on USA Radio – DayBreak.
Lauren is honored to be inducted into the Women’s Transportation Hall of Fame and a Board Member of the Buffalo Motorcar Museum and Juror / President for the North American Car, Utility & Truck of the Year Awards.
Check her out on Twitter and Instagram @LaurenFix.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
