The other day I was gliding along on my bike down near the huddle of restaurants and bars that pass for a village here on Manasota Key.
The bike/walk path that skirts the road, the only road on this five-mile long sandbar, is about 10 feet wide. I always make it a point to hug the outer-most part of this bike lane since one never knows what might happen. On the day in question, something almost did happen. Out of the blue, no warning, nothing, a car almost clipped my handle bar. It seemed the slow-moving vehicle (maybe 35 MPH) was mere inches away but it was probably a foot or more. After it passed me the car kept veering further and further into the bike lane until it finally eased back onto the road proper. After giving the driver, not the bird, but the "WITNOG" (What In The Name Of God!) raised arms signal, I watched as he pulled slowly into a condo parking lot a couple hundred yards up ahead. Sure enough, some octogenarian was behind the wheel of this big, beautiful Cadillac. Since the old fellow just crept through the parking lot and seemed confused, he clearly was totally oblivious to the fact that he had almost hit me. On the bright side, I suppose, I am lucky it was an old person. Had it been one of these numerous beach youth who visit the island, he undoubtedly would have been going much faster and I probably would not now be typing this blog.
The addled state of the above driver reminded me of that horrible incident back in 2003 in which some 90-year-old man turned down a street in Santa Monica, California, that was reserved for a Saturday farmers' market. Instead of hitting the brakes and backing quietly off the street, the geezer hit the accelerator. It would seem to a normal person that at some point in that sixty-mile-an-hour drag race through the crowd that this man might have come to the conclusion that whatever he was doing wasn't working and perhaps, just maybe, amid all the screams and shouts, he should change foot pedals. But no, he continued on with his foot flat to the floor. Ten dead bodies later, the car came to a stop.
Mark Miller was buying flowers when he saw the two-ton bomb barreling toward him. "It looked like a tornado coming up the street," said Miller, then 42. "Everything was flying up in the air like special effects in a movie." Miller tried to get out of the way but couldn't. When it hit him, it fractured both his legs and broke 12 teeth. Still, he was lucky—the runaway car that plowed into a crowd of shoppers that awful day in 2003 not only killed 10 people but it injured sixty. "You can say you're sorry after something like this, but 10 people died," says Miller, a film director who spent more than a month in a wheelchair. "How can any one person be that kind of sorry?"
Anyone who has ever been behind an old person turning a corner onto another street knows what I am saying. They are cautious and indecisive almost to the point of paralysis. Many a time I have had to slam on the breaks when following an old person turning a corner because it takes them about three times as long to turn as a normal driver. It's as if they almost forget why they are turning. I have heard it said that many elder drivers are not totally aware of their surroundings. Yes, they realize they are in a car and driving but no, they are not aware that others are following closely when they turn corners or that speeding cars are bearing down on them when they turn left into oncoming traffic.
How many of us have heard of some old person driving the wrong way on a freeway? I remember the video I once saw of some old lady driving mile after mile on a really busy freeway, despite the best efforts of cops and others to wave her to the side. When a cop did finally manage to pin her in, the stunned woman thought she was being pulled over for speeding. She refused to believe that all those hundreds of other cars were going the right way and she was going the wrong.
Mostly, I love old people. Hell, I am one. But just as we would take dangerous toys away from children, so too should we pull the driver's license from those who live in a fog.
More Florida Seniors in the News: A lady, 70-something, stepped from one of those wild rides over at Disney World the other day, then promptly dropped dead from a heart attack. The deceased had a history of heart problems! What in God's name was she thinking? Another woman, 80-something, same place, for some reason known only to herself, tried to get off one of those very slow-moving tour rides at Epcot Center before the ride was over. She fell and broke her hip. And what in God's name was she thinking?
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Pocket Pistol from the Past
