My husband and I (yes, I am married and that will be one of the few tidbits of personal information I will share in this blog) were out running errands this past Saturday. On the way home we passed an elderly gentleman driving towards us in the opposite direction wearing and eye patch under his glasses...an eye patch under his glass. Do you understand why there might be a problem here...? Ahhh yes, a little insignificant things called depth perception. Maybe I'm off base in thinking that depth perception is essential to operating a vehicle safely. Maybe you don't need to be able to judge distance accurately if you been operating a vehicle since they were invented. Does practice make perfect?
What I do know is that i was glad the old gentleman was going in the opposite direction than us. Who knows, the lack of depth perception could actually have been the least of his problems. He could suffer a brief lapse in memory and forget which pedal is the gas and which is the brake.
We need to start taking licenses away. We all know how the authorities profile... i mean.... verify people's citizenship when they get pulled over. They should start pulling old people over and administering random vision and hand/eye coordination tests. There could be random checkpoints, similar to sobriety check points. Although, the blockades would have to be put up around nine in the morning to catch the mall walkers and the folks on their way from Denny's.
Who is protecting us from the old drivers. As the baby boomer age and the growing population of aged drivers increases this is going to become more of a problem, possibly worse than people driving while eating or texting when driving.
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