Older Drivers

Around the country, states are taking actions that could help prevent accidents such as the fatal crash Saturday police said was caused by an 83-year-old motorist driving the wrong way on the Jones Falls Expressway: In Maryland, a new study might help identify older motorists with fading skills. Pennsylvania has begun entering the names of drivers over 50 in a lottery, and those selected are called in for retesting. Next month, state agencies in Wisconsin will gather to figure out how they might overlap to tackle the problem of aging and dangerous drivers.

An article in yesterday's sun incorrectly stated that drivers over the age of 50 pay a surcharge on insurance rates charges by GEICO General Insurnace Co.GEICO adjusts its rates using a range of factors including age and annual driving mileage. Although policyholders now face higher rates when they turn 65 and again at 75, typical policyholders receive rate reductions when they turn 50.A table accompanying the story was also incorrect. The figures it presented should have been stated in hundreds of dollars rather than in dollars and represneted the total cost of a policy and not the amount of a surcharge.

SHA can't tell older drivers aren't problemI cannot believe I recently read that the Maryland State Highway Administration is sponsoring a "task force" to study ways to regulate (read: harassing) drivers over the age of 55. The reason for this study is that they have statistics, which obviously are seriously flawed as are most government statistics, that show these drivers have a somewhat higher accident rate than other age groups, excluding drivers under 24.Can you believe this nonsense -- what a bunch of hogwash.

The eyes of the world may have been on the Summer Olympics in Barcelona yesterday, but the 26 competitors at Gunpowder Falls State Park were thinking snow.They were the finest State Highway Administration snow-removal specialists who assembled to compete for top honors in the 4th annual Snow Roadeo competition.Even the more experienced drivers going through the course, which was laid out with orange traffic cones on a parking lot, admitted it was challenging."The course was tight, tighter than usual," said George Weidner of the Hagerstown shop, an 18-year snow-removal veteran.

Many Americans are outliving their ability to drive, a new study has found, leaving them dependent on others to provide rides for several years. "Hundreds of thousands of older people quit driving each year and must turn to alternative transportation," said Dan Foley, a biostatistician at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda and lead author of the study. "I don't think sufficient attention has been paid to the transition from driver to non-driver in the aging population." Nearly 10 percent of the nation's drivers today are older than 65. The aging of the baby boomers and an increase in the number of female drivers is expected to yield a growing population of older Americans living longer than they hold a driver's license.

Josephine Montesion has been driving her 1995 Chevy Lumina for years. But it was just this week that the 83-year-old Ellicott City resident learned where the horn is and how to adjust the steering wheel. "I've never had to blow the horn," she said. Montesion and several other older drivers gained automobile insight by taking their vehicles to Centennial Park in Ellicott City for "Car Fit," a program sponsored by the county police Wednesday. Several police officers joined a group of occupational therapists and spent the day helping seniors learn tips on operating their vehicles - including things they might have forgotten or never known.

Of all the insults of growing older, losing one's driving privileges can be one of the most difficult to bear. A new driver's license is a symbolic rite of passage from youth into adulthood, but giving up the car keys as physical and mental faculties diminish is a passage of another sort. "Driving is the ultimate symbol of independence and self-reliance," said Gloria E. Gesas, a clinical social worker with Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. Older adults often feel that their life is essentially over without a car, she said.

The image of the elderly driver as a menace on the road ha been exaggerated by the way researchers look at traffic statistics, according to a study released last week by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.The analysis of traffic accidents shows that although the fatality rate for drivers begins to rise appreciably at age 70, the risk grows at a slower rate than previously thought, the study contends.Furthermore, it suggests that the effects of the aging process on driver safety have been overstated by the way previous traffic studies compared elderly with young and middle-aged people at a given period of time.

More than 18.5 million people age 70 or older are licensed to drive in this country. It's a fast-growing population, and that has raised legitimate safety concerns about the effects of aging on driver safety - although, it should also be noted, older drivers are still less likely to be involved in fatal accidents than drivers age 25 or younger. But what happens to an older person who stops driving? New research suggests the consequences can be serious. In a recently published study, researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found that seniors who no longer drive (or never did)

Using sophisticated new screening tests for older drivers, researchers in Maryland are learning it is possible to identify dangerous drivers more accurately, and even to predict who will develop problems in the future. The federally funded project, which is being watched nationally, is the most comprehensive study ever of older drivers. Its findings are considered doubly important because the first baby boomers will soon begin turning 65, eventually making up 25 percent of all motorists.