ASurroca, Flickr, Creative Commons
DCL
Until we can cure the diseases of aging and reverse the metabolic damage that accumulates throughout our lives (some people are working on this), people will keep getting frail as they age. This will be an especially big problem in many of the richer countries (Europe, Japan, U.S.) where a large fraction of the population is reaching the age at which many types of illnesses are starting to appear.
One problem with this is that over the past 100 years, we've designed most of our cities and suburbs around the automobile. This means that when someone gets sick or starts to have vision or coordination problems, they have to make a choice between giving up their car and losing their independence, or keeping driving, which can be unsafe for them and others. It's a terrible choice, especially for those who live alone and could end up being isolated.
"After teenagers, drivers over the age of 65 are the most dangerous age group behind the wheel. In fact, drivers between the ages of 75 and 84 cause fatalities at rate equal to that of teenagers. And drivers over the age of 85 cause four times as many deaths for a given distance driven than teenagers." (source)
That's why we need to do something about it!
crosswalk-500x.jpg
[small]Photo: Flickr, Creative Commons.[/small]
The true solution is to make our cities more walkable and to have better public transit with schedules and maps that are easy to understand (even for people with bad eye-sight), safe stations, more places to sit and rest.
Segregation by skin color is a bad idea, and so is de facto segregation by age. Everybody should be able to move around without having to put themselves and others in an unreasonable amount of danger. Forcing people who shouldn't be driving to drive because there's no other way to get around in our cities is doing just that.
For more on this, see: Older People Need Safer Streets for True Independence
