Opinion: Seniors driver testing is justified

I got a letter in the mail the other day.

That, in itself, isn’t too surprising; we get letters in the mail all the time. They’re usually bills or other business stuff these days; the Royal Mail isn’t the way we stay in touch with friends or family anymore. Too slow. Not spontaneous enough! If it isn’t instant now, it’s too slow.

But this letter was personal, although in a sort of business sense.

It was from the Solicitor General of B.C.

Now I don’t think I’m on the Christmas Card list of the Solicitor General, and it isn’t Christmas time anyway, so why would I be getting a letter? It was a little puzzling.

If you think back, however, to your early days, we often got stuff from Grandma at Christmas time and, yes, one other time of the year. You’re right, our birthdays! And that was it. I had just had a birthday a couple of weeks ago; I turned 79. But the Solicitor General isn’t my Grandma!

So why a letter when I’ve turned 79? There isn’t much music in turning 79. Seventy or eighty, maybe, but seventy-nine?

As it turned out, it was kind of a pre-nuptial notice of a relationship that will be starting on my next birthday, the one that will be eighty, if I’m still here.

The letter turned out to not be from the Solicitor General himself, or herself if the office is held by a lady, but rather from the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles, who was writing to let me know that after my next birthday, my eightieth, I will be into the pattern of medical testing to ensure that I am fit to have a driver’s licence. The tests are scheduled for our 80th and 85th birthdays and every two years thereafter.

Yikes, is that all there is? Is it over that fast? And, of course, those questions are not all that important in regard to driver’s licences, but rather life itself. But staying with driver’s licences for a second, it does seem rather soon since I still have the truck that I took my first driver’s test on when I was sixteen, and it still has the same tires on it and the same air in the tires.

I’ll forgive you if you don’t believe that story, but it’s as true as I’m writing this piece. I remember when my Dad bought the tires. He had been fixing flats for months and then somehow found that he could afford four new tires for the back of the truck and, yes, they are still on it. But sixteen then and now nearly eighty! Yikes is right!

But reality is what it is, and medical testing is the right thing for people over eighty, you, when you get there, me and everyone else. Not that we like it, but it is the right thing.

Speaking of my Dad above, he died when he was 95, and he had been going through this testing business for a couple of years, having lost his licence when he was 93, I think it was. For the most part, he could still drive, but the testing he went through to prove it didn’t agree.

I took him to Cranbrook, then to Kelowna. Road tests, reaction tests in front of a TV type screen. He couldn’t pass, and when he died, he was still waiting for the results from his last test. The letter came a couple of weeks after he died, saying he again failed the tests. We were glad, it wouldn’t have made his last week any better.

So now it’s my turn, and while I don’t like it any better than my Dad did, I hope I am a little more understanding of its purpose and necessity.

That understanding could not have been more tragically enhanced than it was on Sunday, August 10, just two weeks ago, in a car accident over in the Blind Bay-Salmon Arm area, when a 92-year-old father and his 62-year-old daughter were going to church. I assume they were on the Trans-Canada Highway.

As the obituary reads on the Hindman Bowers website, ‘Stephan had a medical incident and drove into oncoming traffic.’ He and his daughter were both killed. The obituary doesn’t say what happened to the people in the other car, but it does say ‘our thoughts and prayers go out to the driver of the other vehicle,’ likely indicating that he, too, was injured.

Now medical testing is never going to prevent accidents involving seniors, just as regular driver’s licences don’t prevent accidents among young people. But it’s hard to argue against testing in an age group who are more likely to have medical causes of accidents.

So it’s not my intention, a year from now, to enjoy the testing process, but it is my intention to be understanding of its purpose. Testing for seniors is the right thing to do.

In an unrelated additional comment, I think we can all appreciate the government’s commitment to four-laning our highways, since there would be some possibility that the Blind Bay accident would not have been as severe had it occurred on a divided highway.

Duane Crandall is a retired newspaper publisher, having owned and operated The Golden Star from 1982 – 1987 and the Golden News from 1992 – 2003. He served as MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke from 1986 to 1991.