You mean a representative example of an exception? Your example also points out how the judge justified their deviation from the standard.

Yup. And we do have some degree of safeguards here-- admittedly, less in California than many other states. They are: physician required reporting of disqualifying conditions, ability for other people to report concerns about capability to drive, and the requirement to show up and undergo vision testing and not flag other concerns in the process.

There's a tradeoff between reducing the very low rate of unsafe driving by the elderly and the burden added to the very old. People over 65+ are still possibly safer, overall, than teenagers.

As the saying goes: If you want to kill someone and get the lightest possible consequences, kill them with your car.

Now we’re talking. So much misinformation in this thread. There’s a reason that the saying, “if you want to kill someone, do it with a car” exists. Fortunately, it seems like judges are finally starting to wake up to the idea that it’s unreasonable for drivers to claim ignorance about the increased risks (and thus intent) of making poor/illegal decisions when being the wheel.

The original statement was about vehicular manslaughter. You are citing stats that cover a much broader range of things.

You're likely falling for a red herring.

Criminality is basically just a checkbox for this stuff. Most of the time people wouldn't be going to jail for these sorts of crimes, it'd just be big fines and penalties. There's almost always administrative/civil infractions of the same or similar name that has the same or greater punishment but are far more efficient for the state to prosecute because the accused has fewer rights.

It makes for good appeal to emotion headlines to say these people aren't getting charged with crimes, but that's only half the story. They're likely lawyering up and pleading to a civil infraction that has approx the same penalties.

And this is true not just for this issue but for many subject areas of administrative law. Taxes, SEC, environmental, etc, etc, all operate mostly like this.

It's easy for a writer to pander to certain demographics and get people whipped into a frenzy by writing an easy article about prosecuting rates using public data. Actually contacting these agencies and figuring out what they actually did is hard and in the modern media economy doesn't offer much upside for the work.

> She gets her license back. That's wild.

In 3 years, at age 83, if she wanted to... she could try and take the driving test again and become licensed. This is just not going to happen :P In the end, the court can only prohibit her from driving while she is on probation.

Would it be great if this time she could be banned forever? Sure. But there's reasons why we don't just let judges make up arbitrary penalties and permanent restrictions on their own.

> Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that,

Humans don't misestimate their remaining ability with fatal consequences?

> the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.

Yes, by confusing gas and brake. She clearly has significantly reduced capacity.

> You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.

I do not think that the behavior of 80 year old people will be meaningfully changed by the degree of punishment applied here. This is a person that has lost a significant degree of capacity; unfortunately, humans losing capacity tend not to realize it or correctly estimate how much they have lost.

> Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area.

I don't defend that woman at all and as someone who walked by that intersection on the day of the incident, 70 mph seems physically impossible there for a reasonable driver.

But it was not a totally residential area, it was a major transit hub of that part of town, where light rail and bus lines meet, a verrry short block away from lots of retail and restaurants.. That actually is an argument to go slower than in a purely residential area, because it's actually a congested area.

> She gets her license back. That's wild.

Definitely not given back. If I didn't misread it, she needs to take a new driver's test at 83, which she already declined applying for (though it'll be her right; we'd have to see if she stays by the decision or if the examiner deems her a safe driver)

> You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creating an incentive structure that should reduce the frequency of future criminality.

Wtf? Try applying logic somewhere in the process. People don't enjoy killing others by accident, paying 64k, 200h community service, three years of trying to use American public transport before you can start the process of getting a license back, going through a whole court system, and, y'know, guilt that I'd imagine would cripple me for years

Edit: I'm very surprised, reading your other comments, they're overall legit sensible. Really struggling to comprehend how, here, you get from "someone did something by accident" to "you need life punishments or they'll have an incentive to mow the next person down". There's zero incentive for citizens to kill people in any society that I'm aware of, again even ignoring the internal problems it causes

There's a test every 5 years after iirc 65yo where they check things like response time, if you have enough strength for handling the wheel completely unimpeded, and if you aren't suffering from dementia. At least that's what I've heard from my grandparents about the tests they had to do. If that doesn't cover the age risk, imo that test would be the thing to fix. Not sure how strict those are in the USA

Since the article doesn't speak of her well-being, I don't think we can judge here whether this woman should have taken herself out of society already (from what I hear, the USA isn't exactly public transport or walking friendly, assuming she can still walk distances in the first place, idk what old people are supposed to do there)

The other three factors you mentioned were not at play here according to the linked article. But I agree in general of course, and in those cases I don't disagree with extra punishment (and/or, the better preventor: increasing the odds of being caught)

Those are, by definition, things that prevent you from rationally estimating capabilities and risk.

Sounds like the insight is that people have varying degrees of forethought. Crime isn't mono-causal and therefore solutions shouldn't be expected to be monolithic.

To put it another way: crimes of pure impulse, with zero forethought, are a subset of all crimes.

It's both cheaper and less effective. (And Mary Lau didn't even lose her license.)