The majority of older adults with cognitive impairment are still driving, despite concerns raised by caregivers and others, a Michigan Medicine study in a South Texas community finds.
The tests they make these old people take are a joke. They’re nowhere near as complex or demanding as a regular driving exam, which is supposed to confirm you’re a good enough driver to be on the road.
As an alternative, public transport exists. It’s been heavily reduced in remote areas, but it didn’t disappear completely.
Aside from ebikes for the more healthy elderly, there are also slower vehicles that don’t require a license old people can use. These things are limited in speed (±25-45km/h) but they’ll get you to the nearest train station and back.
I do feel bad for the old people stuck with little available transport, but I’ve also had more than enough near crashes with old people that look like they don’t even know where they are that I can’t really get mad about this.
We need to invest more into public transport and, in a few decades, driverless cars, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with the current price of healthcare and the absolutely devastating impact of boomers growing old will have on our social system. I doubt we’ll get this fixed anytime soon, if it even happens in our own lifetimes. Things will get much worse for the elderly before they’ll get better, we need to get our elderly to become less dependent or our entire social security system will simply collapse under the weight of elderly care.
For context: to maintain our current (severely lacking) level of care, one in four people in the Netherlands will have to work in healthcare in 2040, an increase from our current 1 in 7. This is despite increase in spend in healthcare that happened despite the conservative governments we’ve had for the past two decades. After nearly 80 years of ignoring the population boom problem, we’re starting to see the impact it’s going to have on our society, and it’s not pretty.
The tests they make these old people take are a joke. They’re nowhere near as complex or demanding as a regular driving exam, which is supposed to confirm you’re a good enough driver to be on the road.
As an alternative, public transport exists. It’s been heavily reduced in remote areas, but it didn’t disappear completely.
Aside from ebikes for the more healthy elderly, there are also slower vehicles that don’t require a license old people can use. These things are limited in speed (±25-45km/h) but they’ll get you to the nearest train station and back.
I do feel bad for the old people stuck with little available transport, but I’ve also had more than enough near crashes with old people that look like they don’t even know where they are that I can’t really get mad about this.
We need to invest more into public transport and, in a few decades, driverless cars, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with the current price of healthcare and the absolutely devastating impact of boomers growing old will have on our social system. I doubt we’ll get this fixed anytime soon, if it even happens in our own lifetimes. Things will get much worse for the elderly before they’ll get better, we need to get our elderly to become less dependent or our entire social security system will simply collapse under the weight of elderly care.
For context: to maintain our current (severely lacking) level of care, one in four people in the Netherlands will have to work in healthcare in 2040, an increase from our current 1 in 7. This is despite increase in spend in healthcare that happened despite the conservative governments we’ve had for the past two decades. After nearly 80 years of ignoring the population boom problem, we’re starting to see the impact it’s going to have on our society, and it’s not pretty.