As much as we all wish it didn’t happen, you can probably wrap your mind around an older driver momentarily mixing up the brake and the accelerator. It’s happened plenty of times before, and since we live in the U.S., it will probably continue to happen. But you’d also think that if it did happen, they’d take their foot off the accelerator at some point before they hit 95 mph. And yet, Local 3 News reports that last Wednesday, an 83-year-old driver in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, hit 95 mph before causing a seven-car crash that sent four people to the hospital.
Maybe her floor mat got stuck. Maybe it didn’t. But the official line from local authorities is still that she hit the gas in her Ford Explorer when she intended to hit the brakes. Local authorities aren’t, however, writing this off as a simple mistake and have instead issued an arrest warrant for her. While they have yet to release her name, she has reportedly been charged with serious injury by vehicle, reckless driving, speeding 95 mph in a 35 mph zone, and following too closely.
As for the four people she sent to the hospital, two have reportedly been released, while the other two continue to need treatment. According to Georgia State Patrol, there are currently no updates on their progress. Considering the elderly driver plowed into several stopped cars at an incredibly high speed, we’re just grateful that no one was killed. Once again, always wear your seatbelts, folks.
What do we do with elderly drivers?
Since nobody died in the crash, you might expect the community to move on quickly, but some are actually calling for more frequent testing for older drivers. “Elderly people should be retested. I’m going to be old one day, and I agree,” Crystal McCommon, the mother of a 20-year-old whose car was hit by the elderly driver, told Local 3 News. “He was like, ‘I don’t know what happened. I was sitting at a red light, and the next thing I know, I’m flying across Battlefield Parkway.'”
Like a lot of you probably are, McCommon also said she couldn’t understand how the elderly driver got up to such a high speed, saying, “My mind is blown that she was going that fast. As a mom, it’s terrifying.” She also added, “Everybody speeds on that road. I’m not going to say they don’t. I don’t know how she managed to get to 95 in the span of coming around the curves and the hill, but she did evidently.”
Preston Pomeroy, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student, was also hit by an elderly driver about a year ago and agreed with McCommon’s call to retest older drivers more frequently, telling Local 3, “Just to make sure everyone’s okay, and that’s all you really want, especially on the road, because that’s where a lot of danger is. You just want safety for everyone driving, whether it’s young people who are brand new drivers or people who are a little older.”
Unfortunately for all of us, the vast majority of the U.S. isn’t set up to accommodate people who can no longer drive. Outside of a handful of cities and a few, often expensive neighborhoods, America is for cars, and if you can’t drive for any reason, there aren’t many alternatives to sitting at home all day. It’s a lonely, miserable existence, so it’s no wonder older drivers hold onto their keys far longer than they should.
