Headline that annoyed senior citizens who are safe drivers

A road sign displaying the appropriate speed limit. The Michuki Rules have not been enforced — save to the extent that they provide a good excuse for policemen to extract stiffer bribes on those roadblocks that have multiplied on the highways. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Older drivers, studies have found, are statistically safer than their younger counterparts as they are less likely to take risks.
  • Age does not equal accidents. The headline used by the Nation is not supported by research on the effect of age on driving.

There is nothing magical about 72. It is simply the number following 71 and preceding 73.

The Daily Nation front page banner headline on October 10, Crash driver was 72 years, did not, as it apparently tried to do, explain the cause of the accident in which more than 50 people died at Fort Ternan, a small town 50 kilometres east of Kisumu.

Neither did the headline say anything meaningful about the accident.

Probably written by a younger journalist, the headline was an expression of ageism — prejudice on the ground of one’s age — not an explanation or depiction of the crash.

It was stereotyping, pure and simple. The headline writer was trying to tell readers that, because the driver was 72, he was incapable of driving safely.

The headline perpetuates the belief that older persons are impaired when it comes to driving, that if you are 72 you are not a safe driver, that if you are 72 you are more dangerous than a driver who is 22, 32, 42, 52, 62 and in-between.

SAFETY

Nothing could be further from the truth, everything else being constant.

Older drivers, studies have found, are statistically safer than their younger counterparts as they are less likely to take risks.

The headline was incredibly ageist. It offended many senior citizens who are responsible and safe drivers. I will let John Thuo Maina speak for them.

“The headline about the driver of the bus that crashed in Fort Ternan was offensive and in bad light to the senior citizens,” says Mr Maina.

“Did the editor want to imply that the bus driver caused the accident because he was 72 years old?

“You guys have made it look like being old is an offence. Even being addressed as ‘Mzee’ these days seems derogatory. If youth think they can handle all the situations on their own, then they have lost it. Let us give respect to our aged and it will come back to us.”

He concludes: “We should also give the police investigators a chance to tell us what really caused the accident.”

LINK

The headline boldly assumes that old people are mentally and physically incapacitated, tired, senile, feeble, forgetful and bewildered by technology and modern way of life to be safe drivers.

The headline writer got it all wrong. He or she would have done better by penning a more meaningful headline, such as “Crash driver was sleepy”, “Crash driver was fatigued”, “Crash driver was drunk”, “Crash driver suffered a heart attack”, “Crash driver was suicidal” and so on — if, indeed, that was the case.

Age does not equal accidents. The headline used by the Nation is not supported by research on the effect of age on driving.

Kenya has not done any such research that I know of. However, research elsewhere, principally in the UK, shows there is no evidence to suggest older drivers are more likely to cause a serious accident than younger ones.

Older persons, in general, are safer drivers; they are not thrilled by speed like younger drivers are. They are less dangerous on the road than younger drivers.

RECKLESS

According to research by Swansea University, male drivers aged 17-21 are three to four times more likely to be involved in an accident than elderly drivers.

Young drivers are the most dangerous, according to the researchers. They have debunked the notion that dangerous driving is linked to older age.

They have challenged the idea that older people are dangerous drivers. They have come up with data to show that drivers aged 70 are involved in three to four times fewer accidents than those aged 17-21.

Charles Musselwhite, associate professor of gerontology at Swansea University’s Centre for Innovative Ageing, found that dangerous driving is not generally an issue for older people.

The most accident-prone age group by a substantial margin is young men, not older men.

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