NPR's Program, Safe Driving For Seniors: Officials Get Creative
NPR Radio's All Things Considered broadcast an overview of what is being done nowadays to help seniors adapt to coping with aging in relation to their driving skills. Since the transcript is not available presently, we're excerpting a part of the program:
"Are you sitting too far forward when you drive, to make up for getting a little shorter?" or "Are you not using a seat belt, because it's tough to reach back that far?"
And, she says, older drivers often need help positioning their rearview mirrors.
"The way mirrors are recommended to be positioned now are dramatically different than the way all of us learned to drive because the roads are so much more complicated," Rogers says. "There's much more traffic than [when] we were young drivers. We really want to have mirrors that are pulled out."
Tattling On Bad Drivers
While these are programs to help older drivers continue driving, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' grand driver program is about getting older drivers — and other impaired drivers — to stop driving.
Sandra Lambert, who is in charge of drivers' licenses in Tallahassee, Fla., says that people will call her and give confidential tips about who should be scrutinized. The tips might come from a doctor, a neighbor or an adult child — but most often, it's the police.
"Law enforcement officers typically get called to the scene of a crash, even if it's a minor crash, and they observe something with that driver," Lambert says. "There's a section that they can refer that driver for us to take another look."
Another look could mean a new written test, or a new road test. And it means the driver could lose his or her license.
But Lambert says it's not always an either/or, drive-or-don't drive question.
"We want to preserve a senior's dignity and their independence — but we want to have highway safety," she says. "So if we can evaluate a senior — or anyone that's a high-risk driver — and determine that they can go to the doctor, church, because it's a safe driving distance, we can limit their driving. It keeps them from getting into high-risk situations."
NPR has done a series, ">On the Road to Safety, consisting of programs relating to the nation's roads and its drivers.
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