Retesting For Drivers

When I posted the questions last week (well, now basically 10 days ago...) asking for your opinion I promised my own response. So here's the next one.

Retesting for Drivers past a certain age.

Here's my take on this. Basically I think that anyone unsafe (of any age) needs to be removed from the road. When it comes to age, I do think that it plays a factor in ones ability to drive a car safely. We put graduated licenses and other safeguards in place to help inexperienced (younger) drivers, so I think it would be to our best benefit to put safeguards in place to help more mature drivers. If they really are as safe as they all think, then it's not a big deal, right? I tend to take residence in the camp that thinks that if you're super opposed to the idea of retesting, you're probably someone who would fail it and that's why you don't like it...

I think driving is a huge responsibility. I don't think we should have a system where you pass a test once and then you're good for all time. I like the graduated license system that we have in place (I know everywhere doesn't have it, but locally we do and more places are getting it).  But I think beyond that, this is how it should go:

Retesting for all drivers every 10 years.
Retesting every 5 years after age 60
Retesting every 2 years after age 70
Retesting every year after age 80
Then I think it wouldn't be so bad if they randomly sent out notices to be retested (no charge). Kind of like jury duty. But in this case, you must retest within 30 days or lose your license.

Annoying?

Yup.

Over kill?

Hmm, maybe.

Sure it's an inconvenience. But here's the thing. Look at the stats. How many crashes are there every year? They don't call them accidents, they call them collisions or crashes. Why? Because most of them are due to driver error meaning that if the driver hadn't made a mistake they wouldn't have happened. Which means they can be avoided. Now I know everyone makes mistakes, but there is a lot of "dumb" on the road masquerading as innocent mistakes. If you can't continually meet the standards set out by the powers that be, then you should have to be reeducated until you can or be removed from the roads.

There would be WAY less collisions and unnecessary deaths. And I think we can all agree on that being a good thing.

Now, don't even get me started on distracted drivers. That's a whole other rant, but if you're local, remember that as of September 1st there is a distracted driving law in place. SO TURN OFF YOUR PHONE! (and do your make up at home.)