Can older folks have a good life with less driving?
Men gather in Ferrara, Italy. Photo: Steve Price
By Steve Price
Americans are living longer than ever, and they are driving older than ever. According to Federal Highway Administration data, in 2003, 15% of drivers were 65 or older, and they are now 23% of drivers. Last November, Donna Revecho was killed walking in a crosswalk on San Pablo Avenue at Waldo Avenue, by a 90-year-old driver. (The driver, Enoch Lauddarku was charged with vehicular manslaughter in February.) Not all older drivers are dangerous. Seniors 70 to 79 are fairly safe drivers although it depends on the individual, but crash rates rise a lot after 80. But how do you determine when someone is too old to drive? I remember the day my sister and I took away my 93-year-old mother’s car keys. I never saw her sob with grief so violently. For much of America, removal of car keys is a sentence to imprisonment at home marking the end of experiential life.
In much of the United States, cities are so spread out that it mandates driving a lot. The longer you are in your car, the more likely you will experience a crash. Canadian cities don’t sprawl out into the countryside nearly as much as American cities do. Canada is also more proactive in making streets and roads safe. As a consequence, Canadian car crash rates are less than half than in the United States. In El Cerrito, Richmond Annex, and Albany the things you need and desire for daily living are nearby. If you are willing to patronize local retail and services, drive shorter distances in smaller vehicles at slower speeds, and/or travel by bicycle or other forms of micromobility, you will be safer and less of a threat to people outside of your vehicle.
A willingness to live locally and drive less depends a lot on whether local life is desirable: can you get to grocery stores in a few short minutes, make and meet friends nearby, have nearby cultural experiences, walk under street trees leafing out in the spring? Preparing for the latter years of life requires that we learn the tricks of local mobility early on and not jump into a car every time we leave home. Local life should be something to enjoy and savor after your working and child-rearing life is over and you have the time to notice what is locally outside of a car. Reducing driving makes yourself and your neighbors safer while enriching you with neighborhood life.