Testing is necessary
I am a senior and a trauma therapist who deals first hand with the results of seniors who wreak havoc, destruction, trauma, injury and death on too many innocent people due to the fact that they are at that stage of aging that they simply cannot operate a car adequately or safely. In the very edition Kieran’s article appeared is a story of a young man struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of his father killed by an 82-year-old driver. This makes for a tragic and very expensive test indeed to determine this senior was incapable of operating an automobile. I have both witnessed and heard numerous accounts of this kind of thing happening while in my profession working with people that are injured and traumatized for life, many that will now be dependent on our social system at great expense, to have much compassion for seniors that are cognitively impaired losing their license. Nor do I buy Mr. Kieran’s car culture sentimentality that our industry driven idea of independence is determined by cars. If losing the “privilege” of operating a car does this then we are actually dependant on the car.
It is fairly common knowledge that with the progression of age is a regression in faculties with many seniors on a mix of powerful pharmaceutical drugs that would leave even a young person impaired. This certainly calls for some kind of testing to protect not only the public, but also the seniors. The method of testing may need improving, that is more fair, but testing we do need to deal with the reality of these avoidable tragic incidents, not more sentimental nonsense.
Dennis Murphy,
Victoria