• Flocklesscrow
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    5 hours ago

    Drunk driving is a legitimate concern. High driving, despite the vilifying by police, simply doesn’t have even a modest fraction of the stats to back it up. And anecdotally is not remotely the same as alcohol.

    Elderly driving is the conversation we don’t apparently want to have. Just because Gamgam can still get around on her own, in the house she’s lived in for 40 years, does NOT make her capable of driving a two ton piece of metal.

    Their reaction speed is like a drunk person. Their decision making skills, also akin to drunk people. Elderly drivers injure and/or kill pedestrians and drivers every year, and we’re supposed to be OK with it because they’re old? Fuck no. They should be tested every year if they still want to drive, and losing their license means losing their vehicle too.

    • AbsoluteChicagoDog
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      4 hours ago

      This is yet another reason we desperately need good public transit. We all get old. Why do we have to choose between endangering other people’s lives and participating in society?

      • Flocklesscrow
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        4 hours ago

        Because the auto industry paid lobbyists for decades to prevent the spread of local and national rail and tram lines?

        Sorry, that’s kind of an oblique answer, the direct answer is money. A few extraordinarily wealthy people made a few more people rich by sacrificing what is right and good for America, with what is convenient and enriching for them. And now all our urban areas are designed for cars instead of people, which makes them shitty and inhospitable.

        As a society, we would understand better, if more of us had the ability and desire to see how other industrialized nations live, but instead we just ramrod “American exceptionalism” until lil Johnny thinks his patch of Iowa, or Alabama, or Texas or wherever is equal to, or superior to anywhere else. All without ever having to leave the state, at all. I mean, what if they don’t have FOOD there?

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Everyone should be tested periodically for reaction time and situational awareness. Every two years if you want to keep your license.

      “Boo hoo! That means people won’t be able to drive if they don’t pass!”

      GOOD.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        It blows my mind how easy it is for drunk drivers to get back behind the wheel. Once someone has proven how overwhelmingly selfish and foolish they are, it’s unfair to everyone else to put us in that danger.

        So our solution is simply to weaken civil liberties for everyone with unreasonable searches.

    • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.ca
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      3 hours ago

      I’ve nearly been mowed down by elderly drivers on numerous occasions. It’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed.