As the baby boomer bubble pushes into its eighties, we are driving into a demographic wall.
Or you can view it as living in a system which may, and often does, compel all of us to eventually visit potentially deadly violence on someone else.”
I was just Watching Dead to me, which is a show about good people doing horrible things, and two of the three seasons settle on accidentally killing someone with a car.
That is to say the question “how do we have a character remain sympathetic after they’ve killed someone?” is “easy! we’ll put them behind the wheel!”
Just as the question,“How do we make this bank-robbing villain sympathetic?” is answered by “make them have to pay for their child’s treatable illness.”
We could build a better society just around making writers’ jobs more difficult.
I laughed aloud at “We could build a better society just around making writers’ jobs more difficult.”
We could even name the bills after the villains they were designed to prevent. The Thanos Act would guarantee free birth control to everyone.
That one’s going on the wall
yes, my 84 yr old mother, had a stroke in her eye and lost most of her sight in that eye, still drives no matter me telling her often not to. How she keeps her license seems to revolve around Doctor shipping, as the oldies all know the doctor to go to to get their license renewed.
She’d never take public transport if it was at her door, so you’d need something better than just good public transport, like banning everyone over 75.
Having only one working eye doesn’t make driving impossible in itself. Yet, this requires training for the proper perception of distances in depth and a sufficiently working remaining eye.
What training do you think this requires? A functional eye is enough.
My old man was legally blind and he spewed some serious invective when I took his keys away.
or make meth to pay for cancer treatment
It is not just a boomer thing.
You’re absolutely right. I have a whole long list of specific health issues that mean I absolutely should not be driving, but holy hell, the amount of people (of all ages) pressuring me to get a license like I’m just lazy or refusing to ‘grow up and become an adult’ is BONKERS!
These are people that see how extremely often and ridiculously I full-on run into or sideswipe things while walking. They see how often I pass out, or my vision goes black. They want me behind the wheel of a speeding two ton death machine!? Car culture is wild.
I do feel awful being a burden on those around me who can drive, though. We don’t have any public transportation or a walkable city (not that I can walk far anyway, lol.) Trust me; if I could drive, I fucking would!
Also… Both my parents have seizures (that are NOT under control) and continue to drive, even though they definitely shouldn’t. My father has had them while driving and woke up in a ditch multiple times. They’re not boomers, either.
Do these people not realize that there are in fact standards that prevent people with certain health problems from driving?
Only if their doctors report it or it’s painfully obvious at the DMV, from my understanding. We live in a very backwards Trump-ian red state where being able to drive - even if they obviously should not to any reasonable person - is seen as their ‘God-given constitutional right!’ like with guns. Especially since there’s no public transportation here. They’re more worried about the inconvenience to the person needing their license taken away (‘how are they gonna get to their doctors or their pharmacy for the treatment they need for their conditions?’) than they are about the innocent people they may take out when they start seizing or mix up the pedals on their drive to their doctors office. It’s a whole weird solipsistic cultural thing that I find difficult to explain.
Like, me? I obviously should not be driving, like mentioned in my previous comment (for more reasons than I listed.) I recognize that and don’t want to hurt others (which is considered weird here,) so I don’t. But I guaran-fucking-tee you I could get my license easily if I tried and I couldn’t see my doctors doing the work to get it taken away from me.
There’s also plenty of people who have had their licenses taken away - whether for medical reasons or DUIs or too many traffic violations - but still drive… Also super common here.
Sorry this reply is so long 😅 it’s something I feel strongly about + my brain is broken, like I mentioned, so I ramble, lol. 😅
Nah, I appreciate your comment. It’s hard when the answer to “should this person be driving” is ‘maybe,’ when they’re right on the edge like that. That’s something I don’t have experience with because I became unable to drive quickly enough that I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
I definitely relate to your feeling of “why would I want to put other people in danger” though. I stopped driving long before I technically had to because I didn’t want to be unsafe.
I met a ~26yo girl who told me I wasn’t in the same stage of life as her because I didn’t have a car…
By any other capitalistic metric, I was more “advanced” in life… But I didn’t have a car 😱 (comparing money is dumb, just making a point)
Unfortunately, in american culture, to a lot of people “having a car” means “being grown up” and “not having a car” means “not being grown up.”
It’s a childish mentality really, and indicates that that 26 year old hadn’t done any “growing up” in approximately a decade.
My dad
🎶 Take two down, they blindly crash around, sixty-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eight Boomers to go! 🎵
A sane person would think this could maybe help encourage people to push for bus routes
Nah, the narrative will then be “just wait it out, they’ll be dead soon, crisis over” ignoring the generation getting old right behind them
But then all the n words and mayheehans will steal the transportation! —boomers
To an extent that’s already the case…
The Price Of Freedom is about to go up steeply
Let them die.
Why this is just catastrophizing.
70s is the mortality age. Boomers hit that line for a few years and then it’s no longer an issue
This fucking terrifies me. My mom is 79, living in the most rural place ever, wtf is she gonna do when she has to give up her license? P.s. if anyone else has been in this situation what did you do?
My girlfriends grandma is 90 and she rides her e-bike almost daily. But we have some bike lanes and a grocery store is nearby.
Maybe locally organised carpools?
If you live somewhere that you have to drive to take care of yourself and you can no longer drive, you can no longer take care of yourself.
You move to where you can either take care of your self or be taken care of.
This is correct, but moving costs money. Which my mom doesn’t have any of, and I have little to spare. It’s going to be a big issue when she’s not able to take care of herself
You two should be discussing this now.
She will need to sell her house and car and a chunk of her belongings and move in with you or on the same street or apartments or whatever. She needs to decide what to sell and what to give to whom, now while she still has her faculties and mobility.
When you get old, you’re doing good until you aren’t and then you never are again. You two should have a plan that you can just execute.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately our relationship isn’t great and we are pretty estranged. My husband and I live in a 2 bedroom condo with one bathroom, small even for just us two and our cats. So she can’t move in with us. My sister is no contact with her. So yeah. The situation is messy.
You’re not responsible for your mother.
Oh, well in that case let her figure it out. My parents kicked me out at 18, and at this point I wouldn’t talk to them if they attempted to reach out. I worry that they might, confronting death or needing physical daily assistance. I hope for their sake that they have whatever they need to do, planned out already.
usually those places have higher COL, she migt not be able to afford to move there, unless the adult children is willing to house her, if they have a good relationship.
My dad stopped driving at 80 but he remained living on the farm.
If he needed to go somewhere, there was always a neighbor happy to help out.Dad went to the car dealership and spent $10k on a reasonably good 2nd hand car that he never drove - it would only get used if he needed someone to drive him somewhere.
Using his own car that he pays all the running costs and maintenance on made it much more comfortable for him to ask a neighbor/friend/family for help.
My grandma moved closer to people that could help her and where she was more mobile without a car.
There’s a few options: you drive for her, she moves into a senior community, she moves in with you – which is how it used to be – or none and a fender bender (or worse).
Same ever since automobiles appeared. They’ll just be more old fuckers on the road nowadays. Insurers are salivating over all of the future claims they can deny.
Why are you lot allowing your insurers to deny claims? Round here if you cause an accident, your insurance has no choice but to compensate the victim’s damages.
Japanese dashcam videos are a preview of what horrors to come.
Japanese dashcam videos are a preview of what horrors to come.
Throwing down a terrible stereotype here, which in my 60+ years, has turned out to be more true than not, …but older Japanese men and women are notoriously bad drivers… esp. the old men in hats.
Holy hell, do not EVER wear a hat when you drive. It sucks the ability to control a car right out of you… God’s honest, I have seen that one play out over decades and it’s frightening and it’s real and I do not know why.
Japan has passenger trains.
It will be much worse.
I don’t think it’s the train drivers but the passengers, especially come rush hour where the squeeze can be awful at the big Tokyo stations.
And yeah, level crossings can also be dangerous for drivers with poor perception and timing, they’ll just try to drive through thinking they can beat the train.
I meant: Japanese people can just take the train when they’re too old to drive themselves, the coverage for passenger services isn’t bad.
In the USA even if you don’t want to drive anymore, if no one can drive you you have no other way to get around in most places… so many more people drive and will keep driving.
true, in car heavy cities, even with alot of bike/bike lanes. older people drive cars still ive seen 70-80 year olds still driving.
Japanese people can just take the train
Given the rate of how many railway lines in Japan are being closed year after year due to falling ridership and increasing operational costs, buses and busways are supplanting the railways, and even then their timetables are also limited. Which leaves either an informal taxi service or caregivers having to do the driving for them, if they cannot be convinced to move to a care facility.
As I said in another comment elsewhere, the increasing frequency of accidents involving elderly drivers in Japan have become a serious talking point among Japanese, the popular consensus being the idea of placing more restrictions to such drivers, such as more driving examinations and how long before those drivers are no longer licensed to drive.
They’ll either move into homes or be cared for by family, same as it has been for decades.
Sure they’ll kill some people before their kids take their keys…
Not my boomer parents they can rot far has I am cocern.
Mine may be. Adopted a kid outside of my race and he made himself scarse. going on a decade now.
Who could have possibly seen this coming??
At around 84, my dad caused a small fender-bender, that’s when my sister told him he had to stop driving. He couldn’t turn his head to see behind him. That sucked for my sister, because it fell on her to get him out of the house for grocery shopping, etc. She was the only one who still lived in the same state. He ended up in an assisted living home for the last two years of his life with dementia.
Public transportation is great, but they don’t go into the suburbs. I suppose Uber and Lyft are the solution there, but my dad had no idea how to do that, he didn’t own a cell phone.
Capitalism has been fucking us hard for over 100 years, the offenses keep piling up, and only now are people starting to realize how bad it’s gotten.
My dad (and his wife) are still about 10 years away from addressing the problem of needing people to drive them, but when the time comes I won’t mind pitching in driving them places. We do that currently for my wife’s grandparents, who, to their great credit, gave up driving because they knew they were getting too old; they even kept their car so that whoever was helping them drive places wouldn’t take on the expense of using their own car.
Back to my dad and his wife, there are three of us children (six between them) within 45 minutes of them, and another two within 2 hours. Problem is they are talking about picking up and moving literally to the other coast 3,000 miles away. The sixth child (hers) lives on that coast, but still eight hours away from where they bought property.
We’re currently in California, so they are tempted by the difference in property values, which I can see making sense on paper. Of course, it doesn’t work in reverse, once you sell in California, you can’t buy your way back in. You’ve spent that equity. And when you leave behind the entirety of your support system to save $300 per month, what’s the plan?
Public transportation is great, but they don’t go into the suburbs. I suppose Uber and Lyft are the solution there,
No, not living in the suburbs is the solution here
Eh, probably, but it’s a lot to ask of someone in their declining years to move away from everything and everyone they know, especially if dementia is a factor. It’d be different if families stayed close, but so many older adults don’t have anyone nearby. They should be moving in with their kids. But their kids are overburdened, over scheduled and underpaid. And not all of them voted to keep it that way…but…
Anyway it’s different from person to person, but it rarely seems to be simple.
Public transportation can absolutely go into the suburbs. In fact, I think it should. Every time they have tried to extent a tram line or set up some light rails, people protested because “not in my backyard” and “everyone will just go to the city, this place will be deserted”. Every time they actually went through, the suburb became more sought after and local commerce actually increased.
I’m in my late 40s. I’m hoping think I can get another 2-3 years out of my 100k mile car and then my next car will hopefully be another 10+ year car and hopefully by then self-driving will be mature.
It’s called a bike, a train, a bus… Or walking.
Those are fantastic options where they are available.
If you live where it’s icy roads in winter and no municipal busses, well, that’s seeing one as rightly fucked, isn’t it?
Case in point, the nearest affordable grocery store (like an Aldi) is 5 miles from me and on a two lane divided road that has no sidewalks. Oyyy…
I can only hope to come back home for a walk during 4 months of the year. The rest of the time it’s way too cold or wet here north of Seattle. It’s not city and not suburb exactly. It’s slightly suburby.
I don’t know if there will be room for my 65 year old ass on bike paths dominated by wheely-ing tweens. When I lived near a reasonable amount of public transportation, I could take a 2.5 hour train to the beach or drive for 40 minutes. Whenever my car was in the shop and I had to take the bus to work I’d have to be at the bus stop at 4am to arrive at work by 6:30am vs leaving at 6a when I drove. Now that I live in a suburb of a suburb, there is no public transportation path that starts early enough to get me to or from work on time. I have an e-bike and put thousands of miles on a Segway MiniPro but neither can handle my 80 mile round trip commute. My car just passed 9 years old and 100k miles, ~30 miles per day. I paid $25k for the car itself including tax and interest, another $10k for insurance for 9 years, $35k for gasoline, $5k for repairs and maintenance, so as soon as robotaxis can beat ~$0.75/mile I’ll go that route.
thats not likely for elderly people who have mobility issue.
I see very old people on my bus all the time. They love it because they have a captive audience to talk to
So anyway a big guy comes to me crying. He says. He says to me. Crying. To me. He says. He says. To me. Crying. Big. Big guy. Hooch. He was. He says… Ooops! That’s my stop! See you next week!
