rant/
Which, if I may rant for a bit, is kind of scary. A lot of customers where I work are retired and well into their 80s. They have a hard time walking to the counter. They can barely pick up 10 pound things, forget about 20s. One uses a flashlight and puts his extremely thick glasses about 2 inches away from the LCD signing pad - otherwise he can't see what's happening. I read a lot of packages to these customers because they cannot read some of the larger fonts on a package.
Yet, somehow, the government expects these people to be able to, say, brake quickly if a kid runs out in front of them. Or an out of control dump truck comes at them.
I was waiting at a DMV office once, forget what I was doing, maybe getting a new-to-me car registered. A slow car with two elderly ladies pulled into the parking lot, kind of went at a weird angle. Kind of wandered across the main "drive" area until the front wheels went up onto the sidewalk next to the DMV (curb is literally about 5 feet away from wall). I thought for sure the car was going to go right into the wall. The driver turned the wheel, but not quick enough, and hit a sign about "driver's test here" or something. Sign was in concrete block, almost toppled over. Driver slowly backed up, slowly thump-thumped off the sidewalk, parked kind of crooked in a spot.
Guy next to me in line and I look at each other. I say "I hope they aren't here to renew their licenses." Guy laughs.
When DMV opens up, we go in. The old ladies get in line to renew their license.
So, during the day, when I see someone driving slowly, I don't tailgate or get on the horn. I wait, because this may be a panic-inducing speed for the typical resident around here (if they were younger, like under 60, their typical speed is 1.5x the speed limit with a minimum speed of 40 mph). I don't want to scare them any more than they already are.
At night, when someone is creeping along with their high beams on, I flash my high beams once. If they don't respond, I try and work my way past without seeing too many blue spots. The driver may be, once again, as scared as they'll ever be, and they don't need me to help them along.
And although I tend to trust drivers on the road when I ride, I still keep an eye out for cars. Imagine a stereotypical cyclist's (at least according to the masses) reaction to a stop sign or red light. Ignore them, right? Ditto with the drivers around here. It's quite incredible how fast drivers will go right through a stop sign or a no-turn-on-red - on a bike it'd be a semi-race situation, going through intersections or around turns at 30-40 mph.
This is a rant because I have no idea how to fix the problem. Old people need independence, and no one cares about them enough that they can have others drive them around. They also have a lot of voting influence so no one's going to make it required to have a re-test when renewing a license, even though there are editorials about it regularly (one writer suggested
bonus points for exceeding a posted speed limit).
/rant
cdr