Re: When are you too old to drive?

Brian Nystrom wrote:
> 
> Judging by the list of newsgroups this crap was spammed to and the fake
> return address, it appears that the real point of this post is to piss
> off as many people as possible. This is TROLL, nothing more.
> 
> As a cyclist, this is aggravating as it's hard enough to get drivers to
> share the road without some moron like this guy encouraging them to
> "knock us off".


As a rule, old people are no worse than any other group of drivers when it
comes to lack of respect for cyclists, though I have to admit that the one
time I was hit by a car while biking it was an old lady. It doesn't help
to
stay to one side and give them lots of room, because some will still crowd
you. Better to move out into the road more and they are more likely to be
more aware of your presence. It also leaves room for you to move over if
you have too. 


Old drivers are bad. I worked for a brief period as a driver examiner at a
time when anyone 80 or over and those 70 or over who had had an accident
had to take an annual road test. We used to reserve Wednesday morning for
senior tests and I quickly learned to dread Wednesday mornings. Sixty
years
of driving does not guarantee 60 years of improvement. It is more often 60
years worth of learning bad habits.  It's a good think most of them don't
drive much because their accident per mile driven rate is far worse than
younger drivers. It is even worse than new drivers.