Opinion
Our view: Testing older drivers the responsible thing to do
A string of accidents involving elderly drivers, including the one last week at the Wal-Mart in Danvers in which several people were injured when a 93-year-old man crashed his car through the front door, has renewed the push to require elderly drivers to be tested more frequently.
That, in turn, is raising familiar complaints that such a requirement would be discriminatory. True, but it would be the right kind of discrimination.
While the word now carries almost exclusively negative connotations, many kinds of discrimination are necessary and good: It is good to discriminate between good and evil, between something of value and something that is worthless, between food that is good for you and food that will harm you.
And it is good to discriminate in issuing driver's licenses when a group is at risk of putting themselves or others in harm's way.
Society has imposed discrimination on young drivers for generations. The age at which they are allowed to get a license keeps creeping up. They have to operate under "junior operator" rules at the start, and recent legislation adopted here in Massachusetts makes them subject to harsher penalties if they fail to obey the rules of the road.
This is all for good reason. As any insurance actuary will tell you, young drivers are some of the most dangerous out there. Not all of them, of course, but enough to matter.
The same, for different reasons, is true of elders as a group. The recent accidents were not isolated incidents. The evidence is right there in broad statistics: The number of accidents per mile driven spikes as people get older. And that fact merits some discrimination.
A bill now pending on Beacon Hill, which has the support of Gov. Patrick and the head of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, would require drivers to pass a road test when they turn 85 and every five years thereafter. (In New Hampshire, drivers are road-tested beginning at age 75.)
Some elders have attacked this and similar legislation as if the state were out to confiscate their licenses on a given birthday. They complain that lawmakers want to punish all of them for the infractions of a few.
That is demonstrably false. Anybody who is 85, 90, 100 or even older can keep driving — if he or she passes the test. And such a test is no more a punishment for an 85-year-old than it is for a 16-year-old. All it does is screen out impaired drivers.
Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, who chairs the legislative Transportation Committee, says he is trying to "balance the demands of the advocacy groups with the interests of public safety."
Fair enough. Elders deserve a respectful hearing. But they have received that. And their contention that driving is a right they have earned, is not what they taught their children a generation ago.
They taught them that driving is a privilege, not a right; and that public safety trumps individual desires. That remains as true today as it was then.
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Highway sound barriers deserve closer look
With Interstates 495 and 95 converging together in our region, there's plenty of unwanted highway noise to go around.
The noise serves as the background hum across a wide corridor of Greater Newburyport. Try walking through Newburyport's Maudslay State Park on a quiet fall day, or an Amesbury neighborhood near scenic Point Shore, or through Newburyport's West End, and listen. It is noise pollution that perhaps we've all gotten a little too used to. And it will only get worse as traffic numbers grow. -
Mass. education standards dropped for federal control
As we enter the back-to-school season, it is time to realize the public school in your town could dramatically change in four years due to a federal takeover. The case for national education standards might be rationalized by the need to remedy the inferior quality of some state standards and to equalize academic standards for all students. There is no doubt that the U.S. needs higher levels of achievement than its students currently demonstrate for it to remain competitive in a global economy. The common core curriculum academic standard is the federal math and English curriculum that many states are contemplating. Massachusetts recently adopted these along with 26 other states. Massachusetts will allow the federal government to dictate our education standards in order to receive the "carrot" held out: a $250 million grant Massachusetts had applied for through Obama's race to the top competition funded partially through the stimulus program.
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Is it too loud or is it just me?
To the editor:
It's probably that I'm just getting old, of which there is little doubt. A recent hearing test indicated a small bit of hearing loss, especially at high frequencies. And my wife suspects deafness. -
What is Sarah Palin's agenda?
To the editor:
Sarah Palin walked off her job as governor of Alaska halfway through her term to go on a tour to promote her book and make a lot of money. Since then she has spent most of her time on expensive speaking engagements raking in more money. She loves to speak to Tea Party crowds, appear on Fox News and slam President Obama almost on a daily basis. Her slander, lies and put-downs are getting so aggressive that she actually said that he is missing an important part of his anatomy and is incompetent. -
Leasing the way to go with solar panels
To the editor:
I just read that West Newbury is installing solar panels on Pipestave Hill for a "low bid" of $19,400. I hope the contract hasn't been signed yet. I recently installed the same 3-kilowatt system on my house in Newburyport. Instead of buying it for $19,400, I leased it for a total of $8,000 for 18 years from a company named Alteris Renewables here in Massachusetts. At the end of 18 years I can have it removed by them or buy it then for $2,000. Aside from the reduction in cost, there is another big incentive to lease. During the next 18 years, if anything goes wrong with the system (such as the PV inverter that converts DC to AC electricity), the owners have to repair it, not me. - September 1, 2010
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Highway sound barriers deserve closer look
