Ridiculous tests certainly don’t measure someone’s driving ability

Seniors don’t drive drunk, don’t speed and they don’t cause most accidents

Apple. Roof. Snow. Pepper. Car. Bird. Soup. Leaf. Skirt. Pink.

If you want to know what constitutes the cognitive test doctors give to Alberta seniors over the age of 75, just ask 81-year-old Lois Mooney and you’ll get a spittin’ earful. For a driving test, it’s ridiculous, she’ll tell you, and one that’s discriminatory to make her take just because she’s had a birthday. Check my eyes, knees, response time; put me in a car and let me take you for a spin, that’s all fair ball, this sweetlooking grandmother will tell you — but don’t for one second think that because I pause to spout back 10 words that start with the letter “k”, that I can’t handle an interchange, or drive to Arizona (which she’s done a dozen times, and may well do again, thank you very much).

The thing is, she’s right. There’s no evidence that counting back from 100 by sevens has anything to do with how well you merge in traffic, and frankly, if it does, then everyone should have to do that, and write 4,876.73 out in longhand, like you were writing a cheque, because that’s part of the test, too. That includes people who don’t speak English as a first language, people whose ears stop working when they hear numbers (like an unnamed columnist), people who haven’t written a cheque since 1995, and menopausal women, who might not remember what they had for breakfast. This test could catch everyone except the people who actually cause the accidents, who happen to be those with surging testosterone (the vast majority of accidents are caused by young men). Actuarial tables tell the story; based on who costs what in terms of claims, seniors get huge discounts on their car insurance because statistics show they wear seatbelts, they don’t drive at night or in bad weather, they stay off of autobahns like Stoney Trail (the new drag race strip for pickups), they don’t drive drunk, they self-regulate, and they go the speed limit, how quaint. In fact, the only kind of car accidents seniors are more likely than anyone to be involved in, is when they’re hit by one crossing a street. Despite how you might feel in the Co-op parking lot after flyer drop, those are the facts.

In Australia, researchers recently completed an extensive study comparing crash rates in its various states. They found the State of Victoria, with no age testing, had fewer accidents by seniors than in all but two other states, where the rates were comparable.

They also found that when seniors surrendered their driver’s licences, they were less likely to be engaged in social activities or exercise. This is bad, not just for the future of bridge and bowling, but for health-care expenditures.

In any other realm, discriminating based on age would be against the law, notes the executive director of Australia’s Council on Ageing; 70 is, after all, the new 50.

Australia has just scrapped age testing altogether because there is no proof it works. The computer-generated games that seniors can take instead of the cognitive test have been equally criticized as having no relationship to driving skills, with no empirical evidence to back the test, and at $200, they are expensive.

When Ric McIver was running to be PC leader, he said he’d get rid of the Driveable and SimardMD computer testing programs for seniors as an unsuitable medium for a demographic that may be unfamiliar with or intimidated by computers. (One pilot who took the test commented in a post that, even though he flies planes for a living, he still crashes in video games when he’s at the helm.)

Transportation Minister Wayne Drysdale says the province is keeping age-related testing, which just doesn’t seem reasonable. It seems political, appeasing the masses who want slow moving anything to disappear.

OK, quick, without looking back, repeat the random words in the first sentence of this column. Time’s up.