Stephen,
I see that you did not answer *our* questions either. Many of us obviously understood the trick that was up your sleeve (or at least up that of those you were relying on). As the article you attached says in
I suspect that Stephen had more tricks up his sleeve than this rather obvious one: that he is still adding up the scores, and that the real marks will be based on our responses to the research he cited. It looks to me as though Christopher has the "A" so far, right? And Jim as well?
I'm going to agree whole-heartedly with the two of them (though I'm not as certain as Christopher is that as a group, seniors' skills wouldn't improve with more practice enough to reduce rather than increase their accident numbers - I think he's probably right, but I don't think it's "patently silly" to think otherwise). Controlling for kilometers traveled makes the study's conclusion pretty silly, unless you have a really odd definition of "driving safely" (something like "a safe driver is one who wouldn't be running into you if he drove more often").
I think that Rick's answer has some merit as well (it's a more complete version of how I responded), though I definitely do not think that coming to a complete stop at a green light would reduce your risk of being in an accident (I think it might increase the risk to others more than one's own, though, which would give the effect he needs for his argument). Stuart's response is like this one, but better yet, as it has data. The article Stephen cited doesn't seem to address this complaint, which I think is a second serious problem with the conclusion they draw.
While I think she's right, if I were giving out the scores, I don't think I could give Annette many points, because she supports her argument with anecdotes and personal experience, and claims to "know" on that basis. The hard evidence she includes helps quite a bit, of course, but that "I _know_ because I've seen it" argument sets off too many alarms. I once saw an old woman drive down the street smashing along an entire row of parked cars. But since we're talking about elderly drivers' safety, I'm likely to talk about that event, and not mention the time (much more recently) that I saw a young driver run a stop sign at full speed and smash into the side of a van. Maybe I'll save that anecdote for when we're complaining about how young people drive. <grin>
Paul Smith Alverno College Milwaukee
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