As the baby boomer bubble pushes into its eighties, we are driving into a demographic wall.

  • switcheroo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Perfect age for running a fucking country. Hire them to the US gov immediately. They’ll fit right in.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      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

  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • boonhet@lemmy.zip
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      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.

      • InputZero@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • scott_anon_21@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Fact check: 1,000,000,000 - 1 ,000,000 = 999,000,000. But if you apply normal rounding rules… 😉

        • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          also, let’s not forget that propaganda is most effective if you have a little bit of wealth and are afraid of losing it

  • iuseasahibtw@ani.social
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    2 days ago

    Good, insurance premiums are about to go up, like all of them, health, auto, death by boomer insurance…

  • mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 day ago

    there are not many countries where “too old to drive” actually exists. They will just keep driving and killing themselves and others.

  • LazyOldPervert@lemmus.org
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    2 days ago

    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.

      • LazyOldPervert@lemmus.org
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        2 days ago

        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.

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Or you can view it as living in a system which may, and often does, compel all of us to eventually visit potentially deadly violence on someone else.”

    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.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • skribe@piefed.social
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        3 days ago

        My old man was legally blind and he spewed some serious invective when I took his keys away.

  • BlakeFox808@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      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.

      • boonhet@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        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.

      • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • vorpuni@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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          2 days ago

          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.

          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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            2 days ago

            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.

          • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Japanese people can just take the train

            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.

    • foodandart@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Japanese dashcam videos are a preview of what horrors to come.

      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.

  • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • javasux@lemmy.world
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      Public transportation is great, but they don’t go into the suburbs. I suppose Uber and Lyft are the solution there,

      No, not living in the suburbs is the solution here

      • lovely_reader@lemmy.world
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        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.

    • cøre@leminal.space
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      2 days ago

      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

    • zip@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • chunes@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Do these people not realize that there are in fact standards that prevent people with certain health problems from driving?

      • motionofethre@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        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)

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          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.