Elderly drivers.

[milefile]

Various efforts have been made to require a road test for drivers above a certain old age. The AARP (American Association of Retired People) has made sure it hasn't happened, yet. Nice to know this old-fart lobbyist group is influencing the safety of roads that everybody uses. Screw everybody who isn't going to die soon.

Personally, I think many old drivers are fine. Many more are a menace and unsafe on the road. I think it's reasonable to test them to insure competency behind the wheel. The effects of aging are no secret, are medically documented, and are often overlooked until it's too late.

If you're old and can drive then you'd have nothing to worry about, just pass the test. If you fail the test you can't drive. You're unsafe and should be banned from the roadway.

If sixteen year olds have to prove their competency why shouldn't people over, say, eighty five?

Am I off base here?

 

[Duke]

Do you want to know the truth? I support mandatory road testing every time you renew or change your license. That would make it every 4 years here in Delaware. I wouldn't have a problem with that at all.

 

[milefile]

In Arizona, driver's licenses are valid for some ridiculous amount of time. I think my wife's is good for thirty years or something.

 

[Super-Supra]

I think allowing very old driver's should be against the rules. They can't see that well. They can't hear that well. I know a 60 year old who knocked a Mazda Trucks Mirror off, when she didn't shoulder check it there was a car there instead she just changed the lanes and ripped the person mirror off. Didn't drive after that, but she plans on driving once again, soon.

 

[Pupik]

All they do is an eye check if you go in person. Every 6 years for a renewal here in FL, and you can do it on the internet (which by-passes the eye test).

They should do road-tests each time, but waiting for 2-3 hours in any government building is long enough.

 

[rjensen11]

Originally posted by pupik
All they do is an eye check if you go in person. Every 6 years for a renewal here in FL, and you can do it on the internet (which by-passes the eye test).

They should do road-tests each time, but waiting for 2-3 hours in any government building is long enough.

... let alone the 5 hour wait I had to endure just to get my license! Imagine if I had to wait for people to get their licenses renewed as well!

 

[vat_man]

Originally posted by neon_duke
Do you want to know the truth? I support mandatory road testing every time you renew or change your license. That would make it every 4 years here in Delaware. I wouldn't have a problem with that at all.

Inclined to agree with you on this one.

The wider issue here is twofold:
- driving is seen as a right, not a privilege earned
- lack of other viable transport options

 

[1X83Z]

Originally posted by neon_duke
I support mandatory road testing every time you renew or change your license. That would make it every 4 years here in Delaware.

Four years?! Mad! So if I got a car right now and registered it in Delaware, I wouldn't be paying again until my birthday (or however they do it, maybe it's by purchase date) in 2007!?

I love it, Nevada is one year, so is California.

- lack of other viable transport options

My 83-year-old grandmother fell and broke her hip in December and is on the (very long) road to recovery. She claims she wants to drive again, but I really see no need for it - her family has been a lot of help over the last eight months, and even if she didn't have family her only essential would be groceries, and she could pay somebody to get those for her if necessity arose.

I personally don't believe drivers that are elderly have much of a necessity for driving.

 

[Duke]

Originally posted by M5Power
Four years?! Mad! So if I got a car right now and registered it in Delaware, I wouldn't be paying again until my birthday (or however they do it, maybe it's by purchase date) in 2007!?

I love it, Nevada is one year, so is California.

Driver's licenses are renewed every four years. Vehicle registration is different.

If you buy a new car, you have the option of registering it for 1, 2, or 3 years. Used cars can be registered for 1 or 2 years at a time. At registration renewal, the DMV personnel conduct a basic safety inspection (horn, lights, wipers, tires, seatbelts) and braking force (via an accelerometer to measure even braking at all four wheels - they don't look at the pads at all). Then you have an emissions check on cars built after 1975, and a fuel system leak check (it has to hold pressure for 3 minutes). If the registration is current, no reinspection is required at time of sale - the tags go with the car.

This is in contrast to my years in Maryland, where cars are inspected by licensed, private inspection stations. Those inspections are very strict, but then the car is never reinspected, until time of sale, when it must pass again before the new owner can register it. Since I've moved away, Maryland has instituted yearly emissions checks, but still no regular safety check.

 

[Danoff]

I'm for periodic driving tests after a person has reached a certain age. You should be a decent driver before you're allowed by the state to drive on publicly owned roads.

I would like to point at that 18 (and over) year olds don't have to take a test to get a license.

 

[westside]

I think driving tests for the elderly are a good idea. Drivers over 70 could be required to test every year or every other year or something like that. In Texas, I never had to take a driving test to get my license at 16--only a written test. Then you can renew your license here without a test every 4 years. So I could drive until 100 without every taking a driving test.

 

[Duke]

Even if they've never been licensed? That's insane. In Delaware you can transfer an existing out of state license without testing, but you can't just walk in at age 21 and get your first license without a road test.

 

[westside]

Well, if you walk in at 21 you may have to take a road test in Texas. But if you're fresh out of driver's ed at age 16, you only have to pass a written test, and then you can keep renewing your license your whole life without ever taking a road test.

 

[Danoff]

I can't find anything that indicates that you can get a license without doing anything at age 18. I guess that is incorrect.

 

[Pupik]

Automobile tag registration is yearly (you can also do it every 6 months, if you want to); the plates last 5 years and transfer with the registered driver, not the car.

There's no good reason to make people get new plates every 5 years, the darn things last for 10 or more. My guess is due to the plethora of vanity/specialized plates to choose from (about 50-60 varieties of Florida plates are available). Gotta keep those prisoners busy.

Auto inspections died off in January 2001; the experiment lasted 10 years, and was absurdly implemented. All it did was stop post-'75 cars from running without converters, and make people think twice about buying a tethered gas-cap. (Yours truly had forgotten it the day of his Honda's inspection in 1994.) Cars were only inspected in the 5 most populous counties, strangley enough; all the crap cars belching out all sorts of bad exhaust smells were never yanked from the poor folks of Alachua County, for example.

 

[1X83Z]

Originally posted by neon_duke
Driver's licenses are renewed every four years. Vehicle registration is different.

That's probably the shortest time in the entire country - milefile's statement about Arizona licenses is in keeping with everywhere I've ever lived.

 

[1X83Z]

Originally posted by pupik
Automobile tag registration is yearly (you can also do it every 6 months, if you want to); the plates last 5 years and transfer with the registered driver, not the car.

There's no good reason to make people get new plates every 5 years, the darn things last for 10 or more. My guess is due to the plethora of vanity/specialized plates to choose from (about 50-60 varieties of Florida plates are available). Gotta keep those prisoners busy.

Florida has what's termed a 'rolling' replating system because they're always taking old tags off the road. Texas, Wisconsin, and a few other states do the same thing, but Florida's is the most comprehensive. Everytime a plate is replaced in Florida, a new design comes out, so as to prevent against fraud (you can't cheat the state of Florida for more than five years!!).

They've even begun to replate on a few of the special plates, but nothing like the normal ones - a few styles (Challenger, Salutes Veterans, Choose Life) have been restyled.

 

[Duke]

Delaware tags themselves never expire. In fact, there's a thriving business in buying and selling low-digit registration numbers, whcih can be bought or sold with or without the related car. Complete tossers who drive Gelandenwagens they paid way too much for will pay another $5,000-$10,000 for a 3-digit license plate to put on it. You could probably buy a small house for what a 2-digit plate number is worth.

Insanity.

 

[1X83Z]

Originally posted by neon_duke
Delaware tags themselves never expire. In fact, there's a thriving business in buying and selling low-digit registration numbers, whcih can be bought or sold with or without the related car. Complete tossers who drive Gelandenwagens they paid way too much for will pay another $5,000-$10,000 for a 3-digit license plate to put on it. You could probably buy a small house for what a 2-digit plate number is worth.

Insanity.

I know - on a recent trip to Washington DC I spotted a two-digit number Delaware on the remake black base. It was a pleasure/commercial plate which isn't supposed to be on that base, but it still kicked ass. Strangely it was on an Isuzu Rodeo.

Britain has something of the same system - there are people who have kept rights in their family for literally one hundred years, and now their plates are worth well more than their cars.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Originally posted by M5Power
Britain has something of the same system - there are people who have kept rights in their family for literally one hundred years, and now their plates are worth well more than their cars.

This is true. You can put any plate on any car (with the payment of a re-registration fee in the region of £80), so long as that plate doesn't make the car look younger than it is. For example, you couldn't put R462YDX (a 1997 plate) on a 1980 car.

Some plates have gone up in value hugely, but it depends upon the context, and many road users who think that these things are important are the saddest creatures on earth, literally levering some meaning out of random digits.

The plate A 5 TON was recently sold for some obscene amount of money, and it only has any value at all because the owner drives an Aston Martin.

Anyway, back on topic...

I personally think that re-testing should be mandatory every 5 years for every person. This is because too many people get into bad habits too quickly.

I also think that there should be multiple levels of driving test, which grant additional priviledges. For example, in the UK, you can pass your driving test in a 1.0 litre Nissan Micra on a remote Scottish island, where there are no junctions, no traffic lights, no real traffic, and that qualifies you to drive a Lamborghini in London. This is ridiculous.

I would say that there should be a number of tests, such as:
- Engines > 2L
- Trailers
- Advanced Trailers (caravans)
- High-sided vehicles, inc SUVs
- Winter driving

These could integrate with Heavy Goods Vehicle testing, which is also class-based, and also PCV (People Carriage Vehicle) testing. And doesn't it strike anyone else as odd that you can drive a 7.5 tonne truck on a car license?

 

[milefile]

When I moved from Flagstaff to San Francisco I rented a U-Haul. I was pretty surprised that just any person with the money could rent a truck that size and drive it anywhere. When I got into downtown San Fracisco, with all the hills, I was scared ****less, to put it mildly, as was my passenger. Frankly, I had no business driving that thing there. I can't remember the size but here:

And I had my car on a trailer.

 

[1X83Z]

Originally posted by GilesGuthrie
This is true. You can put any plate on any car (with the payment of a re-registration fee in the region of £80), so long as that plate doesn't make the car look younger than it is. For example, you couldn't put R462YDX (a 1997 plate) on a 1980 car.

Some plates have gone up in value hugely, but it depends upon the context, and many road users who think that these things are important are the saddest creatures on earth, literally levering some meaning out of random digits.

The plate A 5 TON was recently sold for some obscene amount of money, and it only has any value at all because the owner drives an Aston Martin.

There have been other instances like that - the Nissan press office snapped up every plate they could with "M1 CRA" in it, including "M11 CRA" through "M19 CRA," for test drives of the new and old Micra.

"X 3" is available but for sale for well over £100,000 - I wonder if BMW will buy it for the new X3. Probably not

Anyway, back on topic...

I personally think that re-testing should be mandatory every 5 years for every person. This is because too many people get into bad habits too quickly.

I also think that there should be multiple levels of driving test, which grant additional priviledges. For example, in the UK, you can pass your driving test in a 1.0 litre Nissan Micra on a remote Scottish island, where there are no junctions, no traffic lights, no real traffic, and that qualifies you to drive a Lamborghini in London. This is ridiculous.

That's actually a good point; I'd hazard it's the same here in the US. I never even considered this to be a problem until you mentioned it, and I believe our only different types of licenses are for motorcycles, cars, and commercial vehicles. One could get their license in Mentone Texas, move to New York City, get it transferred (without a road test if it's still valid), and then scare everybody around.

But the problem with your idea is that you're suggesting several variations on road tests every five years. That's every driver in Britain taking a road test in the winter every five years. Unfeasable.