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Thinking I do with words - Thinking about cars for the elderly

Elsewhere in this paper the SIGN Senior’s Mobility Program just received a new vehicle from SGEU. It’s a new Ford Escape, painted bright blue, which is an excellent colour and not only because my car is painted roughly the same shade.
SIGN
SIGN's Senior Mobility program gets their new car from SGEU. It's perfect for driving around seniors.

Elsewhere in this paper the SIGN Senior’s Mobility Program just received a new vehicle from SGEU. It’s a new Ford Escape, painted bright blue, which is an excellent colour and not only because my car is painted roughly the same shade. It’s great because of the purpose of the car, to shuttle seniors around the community.

The best choice for a car to drive around a senior is one painted a distinctive colour.

I say this because of my grandmother, who I had to give rides way back when I was a young man with a new license and an old Honda Civic. That was a small car painted silver, a very common colour. On any given day you would spot several silver cars on our small town’s main street.

My grandmother, who was over 95 at the time, had macular degeneration. While I’m no doctor and can’t really get into a medical explanation of what was going on, the end result was that she didn’t see very well.

While I don’t expect everyone to know exactly what each car looks like, people who do not have eye problems would not easily confuse a Honda Civic for a Ford Taurus. They would be especially unlikely to make the mistake if there was an increasingly terrified looking person in the passenger seat. Yet my grandmother was trying her best to get into the occupied passenger seat of a silver Ford Taurus when I picked her up from getting her prescriptions.

But that’s the problem with age, she was not able to easily see and recognize cars, and both cars were silver. Plenty of people using the seniors mobility program will likely have eye issues, that’s a hazard of age.

It’s an interesting exercise to contemplate how mobility issues or a different purpose is going to change what you consider important in a vehicle.

My mom has mobility issues, and due to the nature of them if she buys a car she needs something with very low door-sills, something I doubt most car shoppers even notice - probably why it’s so difficult to find a new car with low sills. When you start thinking like a senior, or start thinking like someone with a medical condition that restricts mobility, you suddenly realize that all of your priorities change completely.

It may even explain buyer trends at the moment.

Crossovers and SUVs are big business, they sell better than anything else on the market. They also happen to be the vehicles that seniors find easiest to enter and exit, because of their relatively high seating position. The boom in crossover sales and shrinking sedan market might be most easily explained by the market itself aging into taller vehicles. Baby boomers are all getting to the age where getting in and out of something low is a challenge.

Personally, I don’t really want a crossover or SUV, which explains why I don’t own one. They don’t quite fit my driving style or personal preference for seating position. But I wonder what my priorities might be as I get older, if my back gets worse or moving around gets more difficult. As much as I like my car, I can admit that it would have been a terrible choice for a senior’s mobility program. I can imagine many old people talking about how it’s very low and they can’t get in and out without help – and, in fact, I don’t have to imagine that, since my own mother definitely has told me that.

The Senior’s Mobility Program, as a result, has a car that fits some very specific needs that they have to pay attention to, that I wouldn’t worry about when selecting my own car.