Driving Under the Influence

Every so often, the debate about allowing elderly people to have driver's licences makes the national news. On the one hand, some older folks need to have access to cars and drive just fine. On other hand, some folks the same age are high-risk drivers due to their senility. While I understand that we don't want to discriminate against the elderly, there has to be something that we can do to prevent some of the more high-risk cases from being legally permitted on the road. This week in Florida, a 93-year old man hit a pedestrian and then drove three miles with the body still on his windshield. He was caught because he passed through a toll with the body on his car, and this, obviously concerned the toll taker. He renewed his license two years ago at 92. While he may have passed the mandatory vision test, he clearly was not given a dementia test. This is a problem because the police say that he had no idea that he hit someone or that the person was still on his hood. While other cases have occured in the past where younger drivers have hit people and driven home with them in their cars, this time the case had nothing to do with alcohol abuse but rather sheer mental breakdown. It's illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol; perhaps it should also be illegal to drive under the influence of mental illness, such as dementia. Maybe such laws do exist. If that is the case, then there has to be a better way to ensure that people with mental illness aren't issued licenses. As the family of the killed pedestrian in Florida know, dementia and driving don't mix.