Slate has commissioned a series of articles on aging and the aged:
Last week, the Republican Party nominated John McCain as its candidate for president. As you may have heard, McCain is no spring chicken. Having just turned 72, he would be the oldest man ever elected president of the United States if he wins. McCain’s age has provided much fodder for the nation’s political cartoonists and late night television hosts, who have mercilessly portrayed the candidate as a doddering coot. Here at Slate, we take the subject of growing old more seriously. Heck, it’s going to happen to all of us someday—if we’re lucky.
My favorite: Will new technologies make old people safer on the road?
[R]oad safety researchers have found that today’s old drivers aren’t very risky. Statistics on current road deaths show that people over the age of 65 are only 16 percent more likely to cause accidents than are people aged 25 to 64. Drivers under 25, meanwhile, are the most dangerous people on the road—they’re 188 percent more likely to cause crashes than middle-aged adults.
Even so, carmakers—eyeing a huge market—are now installing a variety of technologies to make it safer for people to keep driving past retirement. Over the next two decades, America’s roads will turn gray: By 2025, more than one-quarter of the nation’s drivers will be 65 or older (elderly people currently comprise about 15 percent of drivers). These older drivers will be able to purchase cars that alert them to possible collisions, beep and yell when drifting from lane to lane, automatically adjust cruise control when they’re following too closely, and apply the brakes when they’re about to crash. But safety researchers are skeptical that smarter cars will make it safer to drive when you’re old. While today’s old drivers pose little risk, tomorrow’s old drivers—in other words, you—seem likely to cause a lot more trouble. The reason? Grandma doesn’t talk and text while driving. She doesn’t play with the GPS navigator, she doesn’t switch DVDs while changing lanes, and she doesn’t apply eyeliner when making a left turn. You do. And you’re not going to quit when you turn 65.
Some years ago I argued that automated driving is closer than you think. So this kind of talk speaks to me:
Eero Laansoo, a human-factors engineer at Ford, told me that he foresees cars becoming much more “aware” of obstacles on the road. “The cars will actually start to react to the situations around them,” he said. […]
Laansoo imagines that in the very distant future, cars will hook into road sensors and satellites and become so “aware” of their surroundings that they “will take away a lot of the demand from the driver, and there’s going to be an argument that it’s not going to be quite as important for an older driver to have perfect vision or mobility.”
And here I thought the future was already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.