There are more and more senior citizen drivers out on the roads these days. The problems with elderly drivers continue to escalate as more and more accidents involving the elderly are being reported. With little legislation restricting dangerous elderly drivers, it is clear that changes need to be made in order to keep dangerous drivers off the roads of America (Bednarski 1).
There are also many elderly people who are still given there license. For example.
An elderly Michigan resident started out her drivers test by backing up into a building, then crashing through a window, and then finally sending three people to the hospital.
There have been many studies conducted covering this topic. Many of these studies concluded that people over the age of 85 have a much greater chance of causing a multiple car accident. The driving ability of many elderly drivers tends not to differ from the skills of drunk drivers (Barrios 1). This is a problem and something needs to be done.
Most of the accidents that the elderly cause are due to making wrong turns, turning from the wrong lanes, rolling through stop signs, driving on the wrong side of the road, just plain out running red lights. A 92 year old woman took a wrong turn on her way to return a pair of shoes and ended up on the tarmac of Huston Gulf Airport where she crashed into a Piper airplane taxiing toward the runway (Songer 1). There was one family who knew what they were doing when at the tender age of 80; the family felt that along with their grandmother's eyesight and hearing, her driver's license must go with it (Bednarski 2). .
There are also many other accidents caused by "old people" that the younger generation would consider impossible to do on accident. Take a look at this; an elderly man died after he crashed a pickup truck into his neighbors" bedroom, knocking the couple out their bed (Associated Press 2). Or this one; an 87 year old Miami, Oklahoma woman caused two accidents while driving the wrong way for at least seven miles on I-44 (Bhagvandoss 2).
