Driving you off the road

Particularly if you live in an urban area, the skills needed to drive today are far more demanding than they would have been 20 or 30 years ago. There are far more incidents of road rage, unpredictable and unsafe drivers, eating and using phones among other things while driving, higher speed limits, more congestion on the roads....... all of these factors combined require a higher degree of concentration and quick reactions.

Which makes me wonder - how are the oldest drivers on the road handling all of this? Elderly drivers get a bad rap as it is, but it must be far more difficult to react to the kinds of hazards that exist today compared to a few decades ago. I'm convinced that as time goes on, the statistics will show a higher rate of elderly drivers getting into accidents due to their inability to adjust to the increasingly demanding pace of modern driving. Drivers aged 70+ have the second highest rate of traffic fatalities of all age groups at around 25 deaths per 100k. Could we soon see the day when this group surpasses 30 deaths per 100k, the rate for the highest group - teenagers? I foresee governments legislating driver re-tests at certain milestone ages to re-evaluate their suitability to be behind the wheel. Which will suck for them not just because of the inconvenience of having to re-test, but because these re-evaluations will most certainly not be free.

So we may find ourselves in a situation where the elderly pull off of the roads, not only because they have lost the ability to drive safely, but because they can no longer afford the license fees. I've often thought ahead on how I'm going to react to the increasing stresses of driving as I get older. As it is - I'm getting less tolerant of the kinds of idiots I encounter on the roads and find myself experiencing mini fits of road rage in my 40's. I can only imagine how I'll feel in 10 or 20 years.