I wish we would re-test drivers every few years after retirement. I see 70-80 year old drivers on the road every day driving in an unsafe manner. I dread the time when I have to take my parent’s licenses away.

The statistics on that are pretty interesting: https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/aaa_fig...

There is an uptick in crashes as you get older than 69. But, they aren't the most crash prone age group, or even close.

Narrowed to fatality crashes, they do stand out. I'm guessing, though, because they are less likely to survive because of age.

Full article: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...

That is interesting. At the same time I wonder about the data source. I’d imagine these are pulled from insurance/police data.

Anecdotally, I’ve been hit by senior citizens 3 times. All were very minor fender benders in parking lots or at traffic lights. In each case, I didn’t have the nerve to put them through insurance. We settled it personally and never reported to anyone.

Is it possible there are a lot of people like me that take pity on these older drivers and don’t report accidents?

Another common theme I see around me is when you’re in a corridor where most drivers are speeding by 5-10mph and there’s the one person in the left lane going 10mph under the limit. They’re usually a senior citizen. That creates bottlenecks and potentially dangerous situations behind the slow driver. They could be a contributing factor to accidents and wouldn’t be included in these statistics.

I suppose you could argue that those speeding are causing the accident because they’ve broken the law. It’s a fair argument.

I was wondering if (instead of level 5 self driving) there could be a simple inter car protocol to communicate presence/distance/range so that car could warn or even slow down (smoothly) when signal is caught.

That sounds workable, and could be implemented in parallel - with two caveats: what of unconnected vehicles (not using this transponder), and what of malicious data (e.g. faking road jams for fun and profit)

I think that France has been discussing or even passing a law going away from lifetime driving license to periodic checks. It's indeed a good idea. I know it's an effort on the people but we all know it's a lot better this way. Who knows, some people might even learn about their limits and find ways to relearn/improve instead of being blind.