Late yesterday morning, Reese Witherspoon was hit by a car. She was apparently out for a jog, when an eighty-four year-old woman failed to slow down at an intersection, striking Reese with her car. The elderly woman was cited by police for failure to yield to pedestrians and received a fine. According to a source at NBC LA:
“Witherspoon suffered minor injuries and was transported by ambulance to a local hospital for medical treatment.” He [also] added that the actress was at home tonight recovering.
This just reinforces my stance that most people – especially the elderly – need to be retested for their driver’s license yearly after a certain age. I don’t know what age. I’m not a legislator, it’s not up to me. But as everyone knows, as you get older, you lose a certain percentage of your reflexes and depth perception is the first to go when your vision starts to deteriorate. I don’t care how good a driver your eighty-nine year-old Uncle Carmen is, not everyone is as sprightly as you say he is, and they shouldn’t be behind the wheel. This story up above? Well. I rest my case.
Based on the picturea above, I wonder if Reese had her headphones on and music blasting.
I’ve seen plenty of oblivious joggers / bikers / drivers with headphones on not paying attention at all to their surroundings doing dumb things. People need to keep the headphones off when they’re on public streets if they want to stay safe and not cause mayhem.
I got hit by a car while I was on the sidewalk not doing anything risky and/or stupid (but that driver was young, and paying too much attention to her coffee than to her surroundings). Some people are just really freaking bad at driving, and I agree that there should be retesting, especially for the elderly. In my hometown, an old woman drove her car INTO a Precision Cuts, and killed a woman who was getting her hair washed :( To add to the sadness, this was like, the day before Thanks Giving. Also, I used to work for an insurance company and I would file claims of all kinds (mostly car accidents though), and the majority of accidents reported to me were caused my old people. Old people driving on the wrong side of the road, old people running stop signs, old people driving waaaaaaaay too slow, old people driving waaaaaaaay too fast, old people running stop lights, and old people doing crazy scary things like running there cars through buildings… Retest, retest retest!!! yeah, I’m all for it.
Totally agree. And if you are still a good driver at 68, being re-tested shouldn’t make a difference to you!