We may soon have 70 million boomers too old to drive, too car-dependent to stop.
As the baby boomer bubble pushes into its eighties, we are driving into a demographic wall.
https://lloydalter.substack.com/p/we-may-soon-have-70-million-boomersOpen linkView original on feddit.online
134 replies
This seems like stochastic terrorism combined with impunity.
It is kind of fascinating how the generational war is so lopsided. The peaceful solution, since they refuse change, is to flee and to abandon.
Interesting, I am one of those boomers. my insurance runs out Monday and I am selling my vehicle. This is by choice as I am going blind. I absolutely refuse to be one of those old farts that kills people by driving because they want a pack of smokes or some candy.
My scooter arrives in 2 weeks. I already have my pirate flag, and lots of cool stickers ready for it.
Hell yeah. Maybe even put a figurehead on the basket and go full pirate ship.
Those scooters look fkn fun
Hopefully! As a joke I was going to put my dash cam on it. I want to see confused people looking. Also wrote the scooter salesman on Friday asking if there was a snow plow option. Can’t wait for his reply.
Here is the scooter I am getting.
https://www.pridemobility.com/pride-mobility-scooters/victory-10-4-wheel/
You can get this baby on 3 wheels haha
Hehe, I am too rotund for 3 wheels, need 4 I am 5’10 and 270lbs. I would’ve gone for the all-terrain speedy one, but they’re almost triple the price.
The world they created for themselves. Stupid shits.
I know exactly one boomer that supports public transit over cars.
No... the boomers were born and it was already that way. Could you please re-evaluate your knee-jerk hatred and maybe get some historical understanding? When was the car invented? When were highways built? How old were the boomers then?
JFC
We bulldozed the cities to make way for cars. Boomers built car centric cities and voted for car centric infrastructure despite all evidence showing this was a really bad idea. Instead of improving public transport, they elected to add more lanes and remove aidewalks to the tune of millions or billions. Every time. Again and again. Through the entire US and honestly, world
Yeah those Boomers really were the ones voting for redlining, the Eisenhower Interstate system, and bulldozing minority neighborhoods for freeways. Sure were a lot of Boomers running things in the 50s and 60s when these were at their height...
To add, the shift to car centric began with jay walking laws in the 1920's. A quarter century before the first boomers were born.
Car centrism didn't happen instantaneously after WWII. it was strongest in the 70s and 80s. It's still strong now we just build it better.
If we had robust public transport for everyone, this wouldnt be as big an issue.
Dont forget that it is not generation vs generation, its the 1% vs the working class.
I love it in when so called leftists ignore the huge petite bourgeoisie class that has voted for more and freer capitalism for decades. Sure, just ignore class traitors. I'm sure it will work out.
And a friendly reminder that boomers own far more than billionaires and as such are very much invested in the system. Your poverty allows them retirement.
You're not wrong but let's start addressing wealth concentration with the trillionaire, and billionaires first. A lot of boomers may be millionaires but the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is a billion dollars.
also, let's not forget that propaganda is most effective if you have a little bit of wealth and are afraid of losing it
Fact check: 1,000,000,000 - 1 ,000,000 = 999,000,000. But if you apply normal rounding rules… 😉
I'm sure millenials own more than billionaires, and gen X, and gen Z once they all reach adulthood.
Perfect age for running a fucking country. Hire them to the US gov immediately. They'll fit right in.
Yeah, just give them the nuclear codes and they can go straight to fucking shit up.
There's already an octogenarian with the nuke codes as it is...
I was just Watching Dead to me, which is a show about good people doing horrible things, and two of the three seasons settle on accidentally killing someone with a car.
That is to say the question "how do we have a character remain sympathetic after they've killed someone?" is "easy! we'll put them behind the wheel!"
Just as the question,"How do we make this bank-robbing villain sympathetic?" is answered by "make them have to pay for their child's treatable illness."
We could build a better society just around making writers' jobs more difficult.
I laughed aloud at "We could build a better society just around making writers' jobs more difficult."
We could even name the bills after the villains they were designed to prevent. The Thanos Act would guarantee free birth control to everyone.
That one's going on the wall
yes, my 84 yr old mother, had a stroke in her eye and lost most of her sight in that eye, still drives no matter me telling her often not to. How she keeps her license seems to revolve around Doctor shipping, as the oldies all know the doctor to go to to get their license renewed.
She'd never take public transport if it was at her door, so you'd need something better than just good public transport, like banning everyone over 75.
My old man was legally blind and he spewed some serious invective when I took his keys away.
Having only one working eye doesn't make driving impossible in itself. Yet, this requires training for the proper perception of distances in depth and a sufficiently working remaining eye.
What training do you think this requires? A functional eye is enough.
or make meth to pay for cancer treatment
The Heisenberg Cancer Treatment Act.
"may"?
There is always the possibility of the end of humanity.
Or for that matter another pandemic that mainly affects the elderly.
Good, insurance premiums are about to go up, like all of them, health, auto, death by boomer insurance...
Japanese dashcam videos are a preview of what horrors to come.
Japan has passenger trains.
It will be much worse.
I don't think it's the train drivers but the passengers, especially come rush hour where the squeeze can be awful at the big Tokyo stations.
And yeah, level crossings can also be dangerous for drivers with poor perception and timing, they'll just try to drive through thinking they can beat the train.
I meant: Japanese people can just take the train when they're too old to drive themselves, the coverage for passenger services isn't bad.
In the USA even if you don't want to drive anymore, if no one can drive you you have no other way to get around in most places… so many more people drive and will keep driving.
true, in car heavy cities, even with alot of bike/bike lanes. older people drive cars still ive seen 70-80 year olds still driving.
Given the rate of how many railway lines in Japan are being closed year after year due to falling ridership and increasing operational costs, buses and busways are supplanting the railways, and even then their timetables are also limited. Which leaves either an informal taxi service or caregivers having to do the driving for them, if they cannot be convinced to move to a care facility.
As I said in another comment elsewhere, the increasing frequency of accidents involving elderly drivers in Japan have become a serious talking point among Japanese, the popular consensus being the idea of placing more restrictions to such drivers, such as more driving examinations and how long before those drivers are no longer licensed to drive.
I'm sure it's impossible to run more trains (/s)
Throwing down a terrible stereotype here, which in my 60+ years, has turned out to be more true than not, ..but older Japanese men and women are notoriously bad drivers.. esp. the old men in hats.
Holy hell, do not EVER wear a hat when you drive. It sucks the ability to control a car right out of you.. God's honest, I have seen that one play out over decades and it's frightening and it's real and I do not know why.
In what fucking world is it ok to avoid jail because you're fucking old. If she's too old to go to jail then we need an option to euthanize elderly criminals.
Would it make you feel better if it was actually because she was wealthy?
I mean i saw that bit too I'm just sick and fucking tired of everyone but regular motherfuckers not going to jail.
You're right but the headline punched my rage ticket.
My 95 year old mother in law picked me up at the airport and still goes golfing each week pushing her clubs around the golf course. I trust her than most kids on the road. However, She is much different than my 80 year old mother where the doctor took away her handicap pass because she kept hitting cars in the parking lot.
People don't want to accept it, but we really should be testing drivers more frequently. We don't, cuz car brain society, but we should.
Should tie it to retirement age. Once you no longer need to get to your job every day, get tested more often. Plus people often start losing mental clarity when they no longer have anything to keep them occupied and for many that's their jobs.
A sane person would think this could maybe help encourage people to push for bus routes
Nah, the narrative will then be "just wait it out, they'll be dead soon, crisis over" ignoring the generation getting old right behind them
But then all the n words and mayheehans will steal the transportation! —boomers
Who could have possibly seen this coming??
It is not just a boomer thing.
You're absolutely right. I have a whole long list of specific health issues that mean I absolutely should not be driving, but holy hell, the amount of people (of all ages) pressuring me to get a license like I'm just lazy or refusing to 'grow up and become an adult' is BONKERS!
These are people that see how extremely often and ridiculously I full-on run into or sideswipe things while walking. They see how often I pass out, or my vision goes black. They want me behind the wheel of a speeding two ton death machine!? Car culture is wild.
I do feel awful being a burden on those around me who can drive, though. We don't have any public transportation or a walkable city (not that I can walk far anyway, lol.) Trust me; if I could drive, I fucking would!
Also... Both my parents have seizures (that are NOT under control) and continue to drive, even though they definitely shouldn't. My father has had them while driving and woke up in a ditch multiple times. They're not boomers, either.
Do these people not realize that there are in fact standards that prevent people with certain health problems from driving?
Only if their doctors report it or it's painfully obvious at the DMV, from my understanding. We live in a very backwards Trump-ian red state where being able to drive - even if they obviously should not to any reasonable person - is seen as their 'God-given constitutional right!' like with guns. Especially since there's no public transportation here. They're more worried about the inconvenience to the person needing their license taken away ('how are they gonna get to their doctors or their pharmacy for the treatment they need for their conditions?') than they are about the innocent people they may take out when they start seizing or mix up the pedals on their drive to their doctors office. It's a whole weird solipsistic cultural thing that I find difficult to explain.
Like, me? I obviously should not be driving, like mentioned in my previous comment (for more reasons than I listed.) I recognize that and don't want to hurt others (which is considered weird here,) so I don't. But I guaran-fucking-tee you I could get my license easily if I tried and I couldn't see my doctors doing the work to get it taken away from me.
There's also plenty of people who have had their licenses taken away - whether for medical reasons or DUIs or too many traffic violations - but still drive... Also super common here.
Sorry this reply is so long 😅 it's something I feel strongly about + my brain is broken, like I mentioned, so I ramble, lol. 😅
Nah, I appreciate your comment. It's hard when the answer to "should this person be driving" is 'maybe,' when they're right on the edge like that. That's something I don't have experience with because I became unable to drive quickly enough that I couldn't even if I wanted to.
I definitely relate to your feeling of "why would I want to put other people in danger" though. I stopped driving long before I technically had to because I didn't want to be unsafe.
I met a ~26yo girl who told me I wasn't in the same stage of life as her because I didn't have a car....
By any other capitalistic metric, I was more "advanced" in life... But I didn't have a car 😱 (comparing money is dumb, just making a point)
I totally get you. I've experienced similar! It's super weird.
Unfortunately, in american culture, to a lot of people "having a car" means "being grown up" and "not having a car" means "not being grown up."
It's a childish mentality really, and indicates that that 26 year old hadn't done any "growing up" in approximately a decade.
It reminds me of horse-riding barbarians.
At around 84, my dad caused a small fender-bender, that's when my sister told him he had to stop driving. He couldn't turn his head to see behind him. That sucked for my sister, because it fell on her to get him out of the house for grocery shopping, etc. She was the only one who still lived in the same state. He ended up in an assisted living home for the last two years of his life with dementia.
Public transportation is great, but they don't go into the suburbs. I suppose Uber and Lyft are the solution there, but my dad had no idea how to do that, he didn't own a cell phone.
Capitalism has been fucking us hard for over 100 years, the offenses keep piling up, and only now are people starting to realize how bad it's gotten.
While true, the problem is the "American Dream" urbanism, or lack thereof. Socialism would never offer such an insane waste of resources like car dependent detached housing.
Public transportation can absolutely go into the suburbs. In fact, I think it should. Every time they have tried to extent a tram line or set up some light rails, people protested because "not in my backyard" and "everyone will just go to the city, this place will be deserted". Every time they actually went through, the suburb became more sought after and local commerce actually increased.
My dad (and his wife) are still about 10 years away from addressing the problem of needing people to drive them, but when the time comes I won't mind pitching in driving them places. We do that currently for my wife's grandparents, who, to their great credit, gave up driving because they knew they were getting too old; they even kept their car so that whoever was helping them drive places wouldn't take on the expense of using their own car.
Back to my dad and his wife, there are three of us children (six between them) within 45 minutes of them, and another two within 2 hours. Problem is they are talking about picking up and moving literally to the other coast 3,000 miles away. The sixth child (hers) lives on that coast, but still eight hours away from where they bought property.
We're currently in California, so they are tempted by the difference in property values, which I can see making sense on paper. Of course, it doesn't work in reverse, once you sell in California, you can't buy your way back in. You've spent that equity. And when you leave behind the entirety of your support system to save $300 per month, what's the plan?
No, not living in the suburbs is the solution here
Eh, probably, but it's a lot to ask of someone in their declining years to move away from everything and everyone they know, especially if dementia is a factor. It'd be different if families stayed close, but so many older adults don't have anyone nearby. They should be moving in with their kids. But their kids are overburdened, over scheduled and underpaid. And not all of them voted to keep it that way...but...
Anyway it's different from person to person, but it rarely seems to be simple.
This fucking terrifies me. My mom is 79, living in the most rural place ever, wtf is she gonna do when she has to give up her license? P.s. if anyone else has been in this situation what did you do?
If you live somewhere that you have to drive to take care of yourself and you can no longer drive, you can no longer take care of yourself.
You move to where you can either take care of your self or be taken care of.
This is correct, but moving costs money. Which my mom doesn't have any of, and I have little to spare. It's going to be a big issue when she's not able to take care of herself
You two should be discussing this now.
She will need to sell her house and car and a chunk of her belongings and move in with you or on the same street or apartments or whatever. She needs to decide what to sell and what to give to whom, now while she still has her faculties and mobility.
When you get old, you're doing good until you aren't and then you never are again. You two should have a plan that you can just execute.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately our relationship isn't great and we are pretty estranged. My husband and I live in a 2 bedroom condo with one bathroom, small even for just us two and our cats. So she can't move in with us. My sister is no contact with her. So yeah. The situation is messy.
Oh, well in that case let her figure it out. My parents kicked me out at 18, and at this point I wouldn't talk to them if they attempted to reach out. I worry that they might, confronting death or needing physical daily assistance. I hope for their sake that they have whatever they need to do, planned out already.
You're not responsible for your mother.
There aren't a lot of options here.
Either a church/neighbors take turns taking care of her
Her family takes care of her
Or she moves somewhere where she can walk/cab/state assisted transport to where she needs to go.
The US has shit for elderly safety nets.
I would assume if she's that close to the wire she doesn't own her own house she could sell and is already taking advantage of whatever welfare is available to make sure she doesn't end up in a ditch.
My grandma moved closer to people that could help her and where she was more mobile without a car.
My girlfriends grandma is 90 and she rides her e-bike almost daily. But we have some bike lanes and a grocery store is nearby.
Maybe locally organised carpools?
My dad stopped driving at 80 but he remained living on the farm.
If he needed to go somewhere, there was always a neighbor happy to help out.
Dad went to the car dealership and spent $10k on a reasonably good 2nd hand car that he never drove - it would only get used if he needed someone to drive him somewhere.
Using his own car that he pays all the running costs and maintenance on made it much more comfortable for him to ask a neighbor/friend/family for help.
There's a few options: you drive for her, she moves into a senior community, she moves in with you -- which is how it used to be -- or none and a fender bender (or worse).
has she gotten into accidents? i know people almost 70, already a couple accidents this year alone, mostly at nighttime. i notice they also drive ALOT slower on the freeway too,
This describes my hometown to a tee. Thirty years ago.
Oh they're going to have so much fun with these new 2027+ vehicles.
They'll either move into homes or be cared for by family, same as it has been for decades.
Sure they'll kill some people before their kids take their keys...
Not my boomer parents they can rot far has I am cocern.
Mine may be. Adopted a kid outside of my race and he made himself scarse. going on a decade now.
Yes and most of them live near me.
And they’re ruining cars. High, upright seating position because they can’t get out of the car, big chonky tires on an SUV chassis because they hit potholes and curbs, measly little engines because they’re not going to use them anyway, driver assistance because their meds make them impaired.
Cars will be cool again when old people don’t have to drive.
So, never?
Yes, I’m afraid the golden age of cars is past. Now they are appliances with quirky features.
And it just makes me want to burn it all down.
I'm genuinely curious what types of cars fit your description. I drive a 10 year old hatchback and don't have any interest in a big car so I have no idea what current state is like. My best comparison is an even older Suburban that seemed floaty but pretty agile when you gassed it.
VW in the US is a great example of this. They no longer sell the Golf, but they do sell a compact SUV that is basically just a Golf they made worse with higher ride height and bigger tires.
They still sell the Golf GTI (and the Golf R), which are just Golfs with better trim.
Yes and they lose money on them. Only 10,000 were sold last year. The basic Golf and its wagon variant are gone in favor of SUVs that are basically the same car but taller, heavier, and worse.
Subaru did a similar thing. You can get an STI but it’s the only non-crossover they sell anymore. No more Legacy sedans or Outback station wagons.
Hell, Volvo is killing their last remaining wagon this year and going all SUV.
I’m not going to argue your overall point, only that VW almost certainly does not lose money on each performance Golf variant. Maybe in opportunity cost, but not in real dollars.
Yeah that was an exaggeration. But they certainly make more money on Tiguans and Atlases.
Most hatchbacks are crossover SUVs now. Take a tiny hatchback, make it uglier and taller. Handling gets worse and the ground clearance doesn't increase, AWD isn't available in most cases so now they're shit on the road AND off it
This is separate from big SUVs which have cargo and towing capacity and can often go off road.
Same ever since automobiles appeared. They'll just be more old fuckers on the road nowadays. Insurers are salivating over all of the future claims they can deny.
Why are you lot allowing your insurers to deny claims? Round here if you cause an accident, your insurance has no choice but to compensate the victim's damages.
I was picking up a some medication at the drugstore when an old frail man came in and stepped into the line. Quickly a middle-aged woman who works there says "Welcome back Fred! Haven't seen you in a couple of weeks! Are you okay?" The guy says back "yeah, I'm, I'm okay..... But my truck isn't, I totalled my truck!". The layday goes " oh no! That's terrible! So how did you get here? " the guy says " my chofer brought me in to get my medications".... Lady " your chofer? ". The guy points a little past my direction and from that end here comes the skinniest, frailest old lady you can imagine " yeah, I brought him in, but I'm. Not his chofer! Not by a long shot. Is this your girlfriend? "..... Blah blah blah... Holy shit, they let people like that drive by themselves! Great for them, but you and I drive on the same road! Our kids wait for the bus on the same road. Maybe the country just needs to pass the " free driver law". You hit 60 and you get a driver code. You go to a site or call a number, enter the code and wait for your driver. Free government paid service. A normally aged person between 15 and 60 years of age then takes you and a few other friends around the places you need to go to.
The last thing we need is government-paid private drivers so the people that most need public transport (that also for some reason have the most political power) will never vote to get public transport.
The word you're looking for is "chauffeur."
Thanks Josh. Apparently you are Josh according to the keyboard predictions.
there are not many countries where "too old to drive" actually exists. They will just keep driving and killing themselves and others.
Self-driving cars would seem to be a perfect solution for this.
Elon save my grandpa!
I'm in my late 40s. I'm hoping think I can get another 2-3 years out of my 100k mile car and then my next car will hopefully be another 10+ year car and hopefully by then self-driving will be mature.
It's called a bike, a train, a bus... Or walking.
I don't know if there will be room for my 65 year old ass on bike paths dominated by wheely-ing tweens. When I lived near a reasonable amount of public transportation, I could take a 2.5 hour train to the beach or drive for 40 minutes. Whenever my car was in the shop and I had to take the bus to work I'd have to be at the bus stop at 4am to arrive at work by 6:30am vs leaving at 6a when I drove. Now that I live in a suburb of a suburb, there is no public transportation path that starts early enough to get me to or from work on time. I have an e-bike and put thousands of miles on a Segway MiniPro but neither can handle my 80 mile round trip commute. My car just passed 9 years old and 100k miles, ~30 miles per day. I paid $25k for the car itself including tax and interest, another $10k for insurance for 9 years, $35k for gasoline, $5k for repairs and maintenance, so as soon as robotaxis can beat ~$0.75/mile I'll go that route.
Those are fantastic options where they are available.
If you live where it's icy roads in winter and no municipal busses, well, that's seeing one as rightly fucked, isn't it?
Case in point, the nearest affordable grocery store (like an Aldi) is 5 miles from me and on a two lane divided road that has no sidewalks. Oyyy...
I can only hope to come back home for a walk during 4 months of the year. The rest of the time it's way too cold or wet here north of Seattle. It's not city and not suburb exactly. It's slightly suburby.
thats not likely for elderly people who have mobility issue.
I see very old people on my bus all the time. They love it because they have a captive audience to talk to
So anyway a big guy comes to me crying. He says. He says to me. Crying. To me. He says. He says. To me. Crying. Big. Big guy. Hooch. He was. He says.... Ooops! That's my stop! See you next week!
My dad
To an extent that's already the case...
The Price Of Freedom is about to go up steeply
Uh-huh, like it hasn't already under Dumpster Fire? Groceries are up, gas is up, healthcare is up, etc.
🎶 Take two down, they blindly crash around, sixty-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eight Boomers to go! 🎵
70 million boomers maybe, but a lot of boomers drive just fine. My mom is a safe driver. My dad is too old (83) to be a boomer and he should not be driving.
Ättestupa time?
I think incompetent drivers just driving off the cliff themselves is the more likely scenario.
I only knew the concept but not the word so thanks
You get what you voted for.
I was not alive to vote for or against the Interstate Highway Act
It was 1946 that trolleys were phased out, this was transit that didn't get stuck in traffic, and had bullet cars capable of 60mph. My local system had connections going from NYC all the way to Canada.
With the exception of 532 very special people, the people alive at the time didn't get to vote on it either.
I am aware government is universally terrible
Just fuckin kill em ffs.
RFK is trying.
U okay?
Why this is just catastrophizing.
70s is the mortality age. Boomers hit that line for a few years and then it's no longer an issue
Good thing Gen X and Millennials will never grow old!