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The G&M has a late-in-coming eye-opener of a story entitled Aging drivers with dementia on the rise. Second graf:
Canada's most populous province will be home to nearly 100,000 elderly drivers with dementia by 2028, up from 34,000 in 2000, said the study, published in this month's edition of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.Yeah, yeah 100,000 in 24 years, but there's 34,000 demented people behind the wheels of 3-ton weapons now.
Laws, rights, and regulations are the result not the driver of context and circumstance. And, and this instant, only someone immune to knowledge can not perceive some fairly significant contextual shifts around driving: cost of the risk (litigation, damage, killing, etc.), the aging population, the prevalence (real or merely "now-being-observed") of psychiatric inhibitions, distractions galore from advertising to mobile telephony, the polluting effects, and so forth. Yet, we stalwartly refuse to acknowledge the changing environment and change the nature of the activity in response.
For a long time I've been a proponent of regular testing for all drivers. Once a license is obtained, everyone should continue to be periodically tested (written and road) at their own cost. Perhaps the testing interval would follow a bell shape, being more frequent in earlier and later years than in the "responsible" middle. Not only could the system be cost-neutral because the user pays as part of the right to drive, but it could have beneficial downstream effects such as reduced insurance costs, lower policing requirements, enhanced public safety, etc.
Adding a screen for clinical dementia is merely another aspect of the same process. In that particular instance, however, I would be cautious about implementation for this reason: a driver's test puts the onus substantially on the driver to prove proficiency and capability; a declaration of a dementia condition -- particularly at those tough early stages -- comes from a clinician. Thus, there is the potential for more contention and legal rebuttal of the decision.
As the driving instructor at my high school repeated constantly: driving is a privilege not a right. Time to reassess the conditions under which those privileges are operative.
Posted by Grayson at July 21, 2004 07:40 AM