Another 105-year-old driver has passed his latest driving test. The oldest licensed driver in New Zealand, 105-year-old Bob Edwards recently said that he didn’t feel old and that he had no plans to give up driving his four-wheel-drive red Mitsubishi.
How old is 105? It’s so old that Edwards said that his first car had a lever because it predated the universal use of a steering wheel. “It was something new. Cars were just coming in,” he said of that first automobile, a De Dion Bouton from France that he learned to drive in England.
But…but…I can hear you scratching your head out there. Wasn’t the 105-year-old driver an American woman?
Can there really be two 105-year-old drivers still on the road?
Relax. You’re not crazy. Yes, indeed, a 105-year-old woman in California named Edythe Kirchmaier passed her latest driving test in January.
Because of her age, she is required to pass a road test, which she reportedly did with flying colors. Her first car in 1927 was a Model A Ford Coupe, but she was driving a 1997 Dodge Caravan as of January. Fun fact: Kirchmaier may also be the oldest known Facebook user.
As for her ’97 Dodge Caravan, don’t get me started. No offense to the fine folks at Dodge, but most of you who have driven one of those 1990s era turkeys knows that Kirchmaier is definitely the favorite to outlive that vehicle.
With an aging population worldwide, some public health officials would like doctors to be more proactive about talking to older people about when it’s time to quit driving . The problem is, once you take someone’s car keys, you have also taken their freedom, so it isn’t an easy discussion.
But older drivers aren’t necessarily bad drivers.
Kirchmaier has never had an auto accident, and Edwards has had only one accident in 88 years of driving. That’s more than most of us can say.
Heck. Maybe we’d do better with more 105-year-old drivers on the road.
[Dodge Caravan photo by IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons]
