Many of you may have heard about this story, where Karla Campos age 5 was getting off of her bus coming home from elementary school when a driver lost control of her vehicle allegedly hit her gas pedal instead of her brakes hit Karla as she exited the bus killing her. The 82 year old driver was charged with vehicular homocide, failure to maintain lane and unlawful passing of a school bus.
The question that comes to mind is should we as a society or in this example a state require drivers over a certain age to complete driving test to prove and ensure that they are road ready and safe for the road for other drivers and pedestrians.
I know this is a very touchy subject for some, but our society can not continue to lose individuals due to the fact that we turn our back on the fact that as we age we lose motor skills and the ability to drive, our sight deteriorates, our hear gets worse and our ability to move our foot from the gas pedal to the brake or vice versa is substantially compromised as we age and therefore at some point we become more of a danger on the road than should be allowed.
So what is the answer? The reality is maybe we should test our elderly drivers, we test our young or new drivers and they must pass both a written as well as driving test to prove they can manuver vehicles in a safe manner. There should be no reason we would not require the same from our elderly drivers. I realize this is not a popular decision to be made but if Karla was your child, I think it is a small price to pay for our children's future.
Ty Wilson
December 29, 2009
Sad local story about Karla Campos who was killed by an elderly driver.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)