Here’s a surprising trivia fact I learned today:
My uncle Arthur still has a pilot’s license. Apparently this was considered somewhat disturbing by his GP in Juneau whom he saw this morning. Arthur’s justification is that a pilot’s license is meaningless if a doctor doesn’t sign off on the annual physical exam. Which is a valid point – no doctor would do that, given his incident from last summer. But it does seem odd. The State of Alaska never moved to suspend his driving privileges, either. So it’s just that the bureaucracy isn’t paying attention, I suppose. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Caveat: Fun Trivia Fact
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In Germany, driver’s licenses need not be renewed. Accordingly, my nearly 90-year old mother-in-law, who hasn’t piloted a motor vehicle in some 40, 50 or perhaps even 60+ years, still has the legal license to drive. In contrast, having unknowingly missed the window for converting my US license to a German license since I had no need to drive in Germany back then, I was prohibited from driving here for many years, despite being a very experienced driver from my years in the US.
In the meantime, an employer, who thought I needed to drive the company car, kindly paid for me to attend German driving school. So I’m now licensed to drive until I have the mental and physical dexterity of a toddler again and my final years thereafter. Let us hope that I or someone else keeps me off the roads when that time comes — unless I move to rural Alaska, where I’m unlikely to harm anyone but myself if I were to cause an accident.
Just a few hours later, looking at today’s newspaper … an 85-year old who, while attempting to park backwards, instead drove up five steps, through the glass doors of a department store and onto the escalator, nearly crashing down into the toy department.
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/hamburg-auto-kaufhaus-alstertal-einkaufszentrum-unfall-1.4427569