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Senior Driving It can be argued that elderly drivers are the most dangerous drivers on our roads. In some ways they are. Per miles driven, seniors have one of the highest rates of accidents, injury, and death of any age group, stated by the National Highway Safety Administration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1994 one out of every eight Americans were sixty-five or older. It is seen that by 2050, people at the age sixty-five and over will be one out of every five. It will be expected that the people sixty-five and over who are still driving will follow the same trend. Right now in many states, licensing requirements allow drivers to never walk into another training and testing facility after just getting their license as a teenager. Because of this, I am a strong believer that drivers around the age of sixty and older should have to take mandatory driving tests to renew their drivers license because of possible medical conditions, tolls of aging and our ever changing society, to ensure their safety and the safety of every body around them. Present medical conditions of seniors raise many concerns about their ability to drive safely. When we think of medical conditions, we think of sight problems such as cataracts and glaucoma, hearing impairments, disease and the side effects of their medication. A recent study that was posted in the May journal of the American Geriatrics Society studied 125 drivers at the age of seventy-two and older. They found that near visual sharpness, neck rotation and visual attention were the likeliest conditions that would cause a crash. The researchers say that tests for these disabilities can be give in a doctor’s office in less than five minutes.
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