The European Union wants elderly people (70+) to undergo medical tests from now on to prove that they are still capable of driving a car every five years. However, the proposal has been met with a lot of criticism.

  • smokeythebear@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That seems wildly regressive and disproportionately would harm working poor people, who generally would struggle to afford the time and expense involved.

    There’s no evidence that experience degrades driving skill, just aging

    • nekat_emanresu@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      There’s no evidence that experience degrades driving skill, just aging

      Have you never seen a taxi or professional on the road before? lol

      As for the working poor, you could easily say that using tax money and law changes that you could force them to get a paid day off once per 10 years for the test, and maybe free lessons and a payout for time spent. I’m sure that the gain in tax money from lower road usage and deaths would pay for this service and replacement transport like public buses.

      • smokeythebear@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve seen many driving professionals. The vast vast majority have substantially better driving behavior per km traveled. Again well supported by data.

        Similarly, the regressive nature of increasing barriers to driving is well understood. This can be easily shown by looking at the effects of drivers license prohibitions on undocumented immigrants. Again, there is data.

        Your point about offsetting costs is ignorant to history. A tried and true approach to “starve the beast” is breaking something now and promising to fix it later. The fixes never come, the costs

        It seems like you are someone easily swayed by anecdotes over actual evidence. That’s a really bad way to make policy decisions.

        • nekat_emanresu@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Your tone makes me want to not respond to anything, I’ve been through the wringer arguing with people like you so I’m not going to other than one thing.

          You don’t seem to know what starve the beast means. I’m talking about spending tax money to improve the driving department of a country, I’m not talking about intentionally making them under-perform so that people want it privatised…

        • Nobsi@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          You claim to have data, but all you are arguing on is anecdotes. Then you talk about people being swayed by anecdotes. Ironic.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Experience does not take new laws and infrastructure changes into account, I know plenty of 40-50 year olds who clearly are not up to date on regulations.