Giving Senior Citizens a safe and dignified alternative to driving


I've lived in Arizona for a long time, and not far from Sun City, so I know that there are a LOT of people who really shouldn't be behind the wheel. Driving requires the kind of things that young able-bodied people take for granted, and when those abilities fade away, driving can be a very dangerous thing for both the driver and other people on the road.

But there really is a reason why so many elderly people continue to drive long after they themselves realize that they're just an accident waiting to happen - there really is no safe and dignified alternative. Well, not yet. And I'm hoping that the future that I will be living long enough to see will include a new type of technology, something so revolutionary that it's almost unthinkable to many people, self-driving cars.

Time-travel with me. I'm old enough to remember life before computers, long before it was just a given that you could make a phone call simply by carrying around something in your pocket. Why heck, I'm old enough to remember when people landed on the moon for the first time! My graphic design career began with drawing boards, T-squares, and glue, and it rose on computer software, like Photoshop. So, as you can tell, I'm optimistic about things yet to be. And yes of course I knew a lot of people who would never touch a computer, never own a cell phone, and are now using them without a second thought.

By the way, I have a perspective on what it feels like to lose basic abilities, because I'm a stroke survivor. I regained a lot of abilities, but nothing is easy anymore, and I gained a real empathy for people of advanced years. I didn't drive much, but I did drive, thinking that I had no alternative. Mostly I watched my independence and dignity wash away, and a few years ago I hung up my car keys for good.

I took a ride in a self-driving car not long ago (they're testing them out in Chandler, which is a few miles from where I live), and I immediately knew that I was seeing the future, the way I felt it when I saw my first Macintosh computer in 1984. And the more I think about it, the more impatient I become for this to arrive here with me and become commonplace.

If you see no point to it, I have to admit that I envy you. Yours is a world where you'll always be young and strong, and even if you didn't have a car you could walk to the bus stop, or arrange for an Uber without feeling the indignity, and danger, of it. You might ask a friend for a ride, and it would just be a temporary thing.

I've seen idyllic images of the future with bullet trains, or sidewalks with bicycle lanes. These are usually drawings of people sitting at cafe tables sipping lattes, or something. But there are a lot of people who don't fit into that world - they want to go places and do things with safety and dignity, and hopefully I'll be one of those people.

See you in the future!
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