Life expectancy of Japanese people is 78.64 for males and 85.59 for females and this has been renewed every year for the last five years, as you know, Japanese life expectancy is the longest in the world. It also means there are more and more aged drivers on the road every year and according to police reports, the numbers of accidents caused by drivers 65 years old and over is 2.66 times more than it was 10 years ago. The white book on the elderly population said that in 2010 around 14,000,000 are expected to be “senior drivers”.First reason for accidents by elderly is that they lose ability because of old age, which means that they cannot control their driving to avoid accidents because of their age. We can understand that but I think the bigger problem is in the “old people’s mind”. According to the police survey 5 years ago, drivers aged between 20 and 73 showed that people who said they were “confident in their driving skills” was mostly “people 65 years and older” and most of them said “most accidents are from the drivers’ terrible driving skills”. My own father, 70 years old still drives and when I asked him to reduce his driving, he confidently says “I have been driving for 40 years, son. No worries! I have plenty of experience. No youth can beat me yet!”. I am sure that he has no accident history so far but he is one of the “stubborn” senior drivers who will not listen to other people. Unfortunately, 70% of old people’s accidents actually happen “within 10 minutes from their homes”, I can say, as they age, they lose the ability of taking advice and the ability to control their driving.
With the increased numbers of senior drivers’ accidents in the background, the Road Traffic Law was reviewed in June, 2002 and a “voluntary handing over of driver’s licence system” was introduced for people 65 years and over. When those people hand over their licences, they are issued with a “certificate of driving history” which they can use as an alternative identification to their drivers’ licences. This is to encourage the elderly to “say good-bye to their licences”. Here in Tokyo where I live, some private enterprises have agreed to promote the system and support it by giving them a 10% discount at family restaurants or free delivery services from department stores, etc. if they show the certificate. Thanks to this kind of movement, for the five years since they started the system, the numbers of people handing over their driver’s licences kept increasing but in January, 2003, when the Identity Verification Law was changed and they could not use their certificates as identification any longer because they will never get renewed, the numbers have dropped for the first time this year.
Also, in rural areas, the system is not that popular. After motorization, the infrastructure of public transport ebbed away, costly railway & bus services were abolished and we became an “automobile-dependent society”. With less babies and more youth moving to big cities, rural areas tend to have more old people but no young family to drive for them. When they cannot live without a car and in Japan it is becoming a society of just elderly, the local governments “cannot force them to hand over” their driver’s licences.
In Japan, we are definitely heading towards an aged society which no one can stop. Although we all want to be an active old grandparent, it is not always possible. Your lovable grandparents can accidently kill someone on the road. We have to make a society in which old people do not become victimized and protect them. I chose a rather serious issue this time but it is becoming a bigger issue every year. What kind of measures are being taken in your countries?
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