All posts by Grace Joubarne

Senior Driver OK to Drive Says Doctor–MOT Officials Refuse to Listen, Deprive Man of Liberties

Scam taking Driver's Licenses away from senior drivers!This is an excellent article on how senior drivers are unjustly targeted and harmed.  It’s found in the Ottawa Citizen, in their Public Citizen Section.

DOCS SAY MAN OK TO DRIVE — OFFICIALS WON’T LISTEN

Hugh Adami is a journalist who listens to people who have something to cripe about.  So if you have been discriminated against because you are a senior driver, and subjected to humiliating and discredited dementia testing and/or ‘special’ drivers tests, then contact Hugh with your story at: thepubliccitizen@ottawacitizen.com.

Stewart Boston’s driving record is impeccable: Not one accident in 57 years … so obviously he is a safe driver, even if he chooses not to drive drunk and even if he ensures he doesn’t drive 50 km over the speed as is the norm these days.  It seems that those who break the law are better treated than those who are statistically the safest drivers of any group…seniors.

Given what his eye doctors say, Boston legitimately feels it is unnecessary and discriminatory for him to be subjected to ‘special’ testing that other drivers (including the ones in the most dangerous of driving groups, 18-50) are not subjected to.

Senior Drivers, are you fed up with this Provincial Government eroding your personal liberties, harassing you with all sorts of ‘regulations’ that do nothing but force you into a sedentary lifestyle and restricted mobility for no good reason?  

Fed up with ‘friends and family’ reporting you to your doctor, who then secretly ‘tests’ you? Worse, also often sending the information to the Minister of Transportation?

Senior Drivers Unite!!!  Join us in fighting back against this dictatorial government:

  • Contribute to our fund by accessing the donate button the right side bar.
  • Write to your MPP…better still, visit him/her and bring lots of senior friends.
  • Sign Randy Hillier’s Petition
  • BE SURE TO TAKE A WITHDRAWAL OF CONSENT WITH YOU TO EVERY DOCTOR OR SPECIALIST VISIT.  You have the right to refuse to be treated like this.  See an example of a Withdrawal of Consent in the side-bar under the Donate button.  Customize it to your needs.

 

Another Way Ministry of Transportation ‘Special’ Driver’s License Tests Harming Seniors

When people hear of someone losing their driver’s license, they rarely think of the catastrophic effect this loss of mobility and independence would have on the victim’s health.

The health effects are the same whether the driver’s license was given up voluntarily or the result of age-discrimination by provincial governments.

Obviously the Minister of Transportation of Ontario  could not care less, since it seems the health effects of his policies have not taken this into consideration.  No doubt the mental health (illness) industry is excited at the prospect of having more victims to drug with psychiatric medication for ‘mental illnesses’ caused by MOT’s unjustified ‘special’ senior testing.

In a great Detroit News article by Tom Greenwood, he explains the facts around how driving is a KEY component of good health…not just in seniors, but in all drivers.

Says Greenwood:  “The bottom line shows that older adults who stopped driving are twice as likely to suffer from depression and are nearly five times as likely to enter a long-term care facility compared with seniors who remain behind the wheel.”  

How does ensuring that Serco (who now ‘own’ our driver’s licenses) can make huge profits targeting safe and innocent senior drivers with discredited ‘memory’ and driving tests that no others are subjected to, possibly benefit society?  It doesn’t…it benefits big multi-nationals like Serco and drug companies.

For those of us who have aging parents who we might feel should be off the road at our discretion, consider that we might be sentencing them to early disability and death….for no legitimate reason except that the MOT is working for Serco;’s benefit, and not the people of Ontario.  

Ditto for Alberta and BC, where the MOT actions are truly tragic… Elder Driver Advocates of Alberta have been fighting this for several years.

Please sign MPP Randy Hillier’s Petition if you are an Ontario resident:  Petition

Please contribute to the Legal Defense Fund at www.StopElderDriverAbuse.ca

 

Senior Drivers and DriveABLE: The 5-steps To Riches

Want to get rich quick? For those Canadians wishing to get wealthy, follow this template below.  It works especially well for couples:

Step One:               Find a vulnerable segment of the population who are not likely to stand up for themselves, and who have learned to live with the negative perceptions the public has of them.     

                                Best segment these days:  Senior drivers, where the myth is, “at their age, they are all unsafe drivers and most have dementia”. 

Ignore the statistics to the contrary…the seniors affected and the government will ignore them too.   Look, this is a great group to target…they just go along with whatever the government says…with this group, you can count on very little backlash.

Step Two:               One partner formulates a faulty dementia test (with 50% failure rate) designed to fail, while the other partner establishes a Driving School, to test those that fail the faulty dementia test. Ignore the mounds of research showing the test is faulty and the fact that it will likely be discredited by legitimate researchers…Step Four will teach you how to work around that little detail.

                                    It is important to make the dementia test as humiliating as possible; this puts senior drivers in their place right off the bat and they are likely to just go along with it all thereafter.

Step Three:             Convince the Provincial Government to accept your flawed programs and to appoint you as a consultant to the Department of Transportation, where you get to determine what punitive tests Senior Drivers must take from your partner’s driving school–after they fail your dementia test of course.  

This must all roll out at the senior driver’s expense of course, or the taxpayers if you can also make that work. 

Your partner’s driving assessment business decides how many fail that driving test too.  You keep this routine up as long as the senior will keep paying for new testing.      

The beauty of all this is that rarely will anyone ask how one minute they can be found so demented, but if they take the test enough times, they can be found sane! 

I guess you might say that if senior drivers would put up with this routine (aka extortion scheme) they must be somewhat demented; after all, no sane people would put up with this in a free society that claims to have human rights laws.

Anyway, don’t worry about it if there is a little flack coming from this group…most are asleep anyway. 

Step Four:               Convince medical doctors to give the faulty and discredited dementia test to senior drivers, secretly if they have to.  It might take some real effort to convince some of the more ethical medical doctors to get them to violate the Health Care Consent legislation in their province, but if you are well connected enough, you can do it.

Step Five:               Now this step helps you really capitalize on all your hard work! 

Once senior drivers lose their driver’s licenses, they need help to adapt and learn to cope with sudden immobility, don’t they?  Here’s where you and your partner come rushing in to ‘help’. 

Offer a course, paid by the Provincial Health Department, to teach the seniors who lost  their driver’s licenses how to cope with immobility!  Ignore the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about in the course…’fake it until you make it’, as they say.

This makes failing as many as possible even more lucrative, doesn’t it?  Surely even newbies to the business of scamming seniors can see how all this pulls together nicely. 

Oh no!  There is already such a business, and it is doing REALLY well, just as I predicted.

Although not Medical Doctors, Bonnie Dobbs, the author of the Simard, MD dementia test, (tweaked and given different names in other provinces) with 50% failure rate by her own admission, and her husband Allen Dobbs, opened DriveABLE driver testing school and together have done just as I suggested above.  What a business model!   Just as I predicted, the model works beautifully….they are getting really rich and there is an endless supply of willing victims.

And Bonnie Dobbs is even creating a course to help all the poor souls victimized by her scheme, while the Ministries of Transportation in the affected provinces simply turn a blind eye to the discrimination.  In fact, when some seniors who fight back, pretty much alone, demand answers from the provincial ministers of transportation, they get brushed off pretty fast. 

Unelected bureaucrats behind this scheme in Ontario told at least one senior who showed him how his statistical claims were a bunch of fabrications and misrepresentations–and who provided him with the true statistics—to buzz off, he was tired of her nagging him and that he considered the file closed!

And now the Truth::

  • Senior drivers are the safest on the roads; ( see the link on the website with the statistics)
  • Seniors have less mental impairment than any other age group. Seniors 65 years and above, have 14.9 % of all mental impairment, while those under the age of 65 years have 85.1% of all mental impairment in Canada. See The Canadian Alzheimer’s Society Statistics, and the Kim Institute on Mental Illness.
  • There is no test in existence that can detect dementia with accuracy, and there is only one way to determine a person’s ability to drive, and that is by road testing.
  • Some 8,000 senior drivers, just because of their age, were reportedly victimized in Alberta alone and have lost their driver’s licenses.


But don’t let the truth stand between you and your opportunity to get rich!

Please sign MPP Randy Hillier’s Petition by clicking here.

Please share this widely and make sure you ask friends and family to SUBSCRIBE and to CONTRIBUTE TO THE LEGAL FUND being built to challenge this age discrimination in Court at www.StopElderDriverAbuse.ca

Misconceptions about Senior Drivers and Unjustified Driver Testing

The attached essay, written by Alistair Hensler of Ottawa and published on August 28, 2014 in the community newspaper, the ‘Nepean-Barrhaven News” will awaken you to how indoctrinated we all are to accepting myths about others, especially about senior drivers and the misguided insistence on senior driver testing of memory.

No cheating now…read to the end to see just how wrong you likely were when you drew conclusions at the first paragraph.

It would seem that more people are becoming wise to the ageism discrimination practiced by Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia and which cannot be backed by evidence… especially since the government has used these misconceptions to facilitate a simultaneous tax grab and business enrichment scheme.

As Hitler once said, if you are going to lie, make it a big one, repeat it often and eventually it will be accepted as truth.  And sure enough, this philosophy is at work in this senior driver testing scheme.

If the Province wishes to apply driver testing , then it should be applied to all age groups, or at least to the age group that is contributing the most to traffic collisions and injuries — the 18 to 54 year olds.

THE AGE GROUP THAT IS THE SAFEST IS THE SENIOR DRIVING GROUP, so they should be the last to be forced into unreliable driver tests and humiliating memory testing, when the problem drivers are not.

There should be no acceptance of any situation where an entire group is targeted by a business to enrich itself or where the owners of that business venture sits on the very committees at Ministry of Transportation that set Policy.  These behaviors result in catastrophic harm to the most safe of driving groups anywhere.

The Dobbs businesses (SIMARD memory test and DriveABLE) have no support from the scientific community whatever.  Bonnie Dobbs has been observed claiming, despite the countless studies showing the exact opposite, that 70-year olds are the most dangerous people on the road and that most people are demented by 65 years.

This nutty Professor Dobbs actually thinks we all buy into her self-serving indoctrination of discrimination against the safe drivers anywhere.

Sign the Petition at:   http://www.randyhilliermpp.com/petition_seniors_testing

 

SENIOR DRIVERS: STEPS TO AVOID LOSING YOUR DRIVERS LICENSE UNJUSTLY

Ontario senior drivers must learn how to protect their drivers licenses.  Many have reported that when they visited their Doctor’s office  or were admitted to hospital for something entirely unrelated to mental health, they were administered some form of mental, cognitive or dementia test without their knowledge, without full disclosure by the health professional as to the purpose of the tests and therefore without having given informed consent as required by the Health Care Consent Act of Ontario, 1996.Battle_for_Your_Mind

Worse still, their drivers licenses were revoked by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation after unknowingly being given such a test.  In many cases, it costs the senior thousands of dollars before they could get their drivers license back.

8,000 Alberta seniors have been reported to have lost their drivers license to this discriminatory and discredited testing, causing much mental, emotional and financial hardship.

 Tricking of Senior Drivers by Some Doctors!

In one instance, the Senior reported actually being tricked into taking the test when his doctor said “ We are conducting some clinical experiments and need a few people to take part – would you take part?”.  The senior driver, who believed he was just helping his Doctor with a clinical study, had his license revoked by the MOT because he apparently failed some sort of ‘memory’ test!

That senior stated that at the top of one of the papers used by the Doctor it read, “Montreal”, which could mean they used an equally faulty dementia test called, ” The Montreal Cognitive Assessment”.  Two parts of that faulty test is now being used in the Ontario Seniors Test, “The Drawing of the Clock,” and “The finding of the letter “H” amongst the numbers”.

Under the Ontario Health Care Consent Act, 1996, all patients have the right to be FULLY informed of ANY treatment OR test to be administered by any and all health care providers before they give their consent.  The health care provider MUST fully disclose what they are planning to do and wait for you to consent.  They must have your informed consent BEFORE administering anything to you and you have the right to refuse such treatment.

HOW TO REFUSE CONSENT FOR ALL MEMORY, COGNITIVE AND DEMENTIA TESTING of Senior Drivers

It is strongly recommended that senior drivers who go to see their doctors or who are admitted to hospital for any medical checkup or treatment,  present a signed and dated written letter to the health care provider that states clearly the following:

By way of this letter, in keeping with my rights under the Health Care Consent Act of Ontario, 1996, I am formally Refusing Consent to mental, memory, cognitive or dementia testing during my treatment and visit with you, and particularly if it in any way is connected, directly or indirectly, to driver licensing or driver testing.  This refusal to consent to any mental, memory, cognitive or dementia testing by you, your organization, your staff or contractors is effective immediately until further written notice.

_______________________________     Date:  _________________
Signed

This procedure should be followed each time you visit a health care Practitioner because they could ‘lose’ or ‘forget’ that your refusal is in place.

Should your health care provider violate your Refusal of Consent, he or she will be acting unlawfully and can be held liable for damages because this Act was put in place specifically to prevent abuse of patients.  Advise us immediately of any such breach by your health care provider by contacting us at admin@stopelderdriverabuse.ca .

In addition, should you be ordered to take a medical test, a memory test or any other test that is not a test that is given to all other drivers of all ages, whether by the Ministry of Transportation, the testing company DriveABLE or any other assessment centre, you can exercise your right to refuse and instead immediately get in touch with us at admin@stopelderdriverabuse.ca .

You may also choose to offer to take the driving test from any  testing company other than DriveABLE, however the point in all this is that any special medical, memory, or special driver testing of seniors is discrimination and must be stopped.

It has been reported that DriveABLE has shown hostility toward Seniors during their testing and that these tests, despite their various names, have a direct link to the Simard dementia test, through Bonnie Dobbs, the wife and part owner of DriveABLE.

Research has shown that Bonnie Dobbs sits on the Ontario Ministry of Transportation Committees that determine what punitive tests should be applied to seniors.  This is as gross a conflict of interest as anyone can imagine.

In fact, Bonnie Dobbs has expressed that by age 65 years, most people are becoming demented and by 70 are the most dangerous people on the road.   She has ignored all the research contradicting her statements, but it seems the MOT is choosing opinion and profiteering over science and fact …and Constitutional rights.

Give this advice maximum circulation by sending it to all of your contacts, with the request that they do the same.  If all senior drivers do this, it will reduce their chances of losing their licenses unfairly and will send a message to doctors that they are expected to abide by the law.

We have heard that senior drivers in Alberta and BC are ‘doctor shopping’ to ensure they find a doctor who is as disgusted and repulsed by this testing as senior drivers are.   Bonnie Dobbs has been reported to be trying to find a way to force the medical community to administer her ‘memory’ tests even though her ‘testing’ has been entirely discredited by top, ethical, researchers and doctors.

Yours Sincerely,

Ed. Rockburne,RCMP,Retired, email:erockburne@cogeco.ca, www.stopelderdriverabuse.ca, April 13,2015.

PLEASE BE SURE to contribute to the legal defense fund at www.StopElderDriverAbuse.ca what you can share and let us know of anyone who has been targeted by this discrimination and fraudulent scheme in the last 2 years who might be interested in being a test case in Small Claims court where we have been advised the best remedy in this situation would be found.

Please enjoy the numerous other blog posts at our website Stop Elder Driver Abuse

Ageism Used to Facilitate Tax Grab and Business Profiteering: Senior Drivers Abused

Attached article that ran in the Calgary Herald that is right on the money about the financial, mental and emotional abuse of senior drivers happening in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Health Canada has shown that when senior drivers lose their driver’s license, depression, anxiety, mental illness and addictions increase dramatically, as does the negative impacts on finances and reduced social activities.  This suggests that the provincial governments of Ontario, BC and Alberta who are facilitating the simultaneous tax grab and enrichment of a private corporation called DriveAble is unlawful and a disgrace.

Elder Advocates of Alberta have been fighting this disgraceful behavior on the part of the provincial government.  

ANY TESTING THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DRIVING ABILITY IS A SURE SCHEME TO DEPRIVE THE TESTEE FROM THEIR DRIVER’S LICENSES, THEIR LIVELIHOODS, THEIR SOCIAL STRUCTURE, THEIR LIFESTYLE…AND LET’S NOT FORGET FROM THEIR MONEY!

Another Calgary Herald article called “Seniors Tests Have Nothing to do With Driving Ability” calls it as it is.  And the Calgary Herald polls show that almost 70% of those who voted felt these tests were plain and simply discrimination on the basis of age….completely against the law.

Sign the Petition now:  http://www.randyhilliermpp.com/petition_seniors_testing

Classic Bait and Switch Right in the Doctor’s Office: Story of Drivers License Scam

Stop Elder Driver Abuse (SEDA) has been receiving true stories of seniors being scammed by their doctor and the MOT.  We will publish any story of drivers license testing as long as the victim lets us publish their name (no personal information required).  Please feel free to forward widely as there is strength in numbers and light always conquers evil.

Here is Moe’s story:

Hi SEDA,

I am a retired member of the RCMP.  Here is what I experienced.

I went to my Dr. in Dec. 2013 to fill out the form I had received from the BC government. Unknown to me, with no previous information of any kind, my doctor calls up another form on his computer, different than the paper form sent in the mail. Not his fault, he was just following what he was instructed to do when a patient came in with the paper form.

When he got to the memory portion, he said he had to tell me of 10 different items, and I had to repeat them back to him. There was no way I could remember them all, not even 3 or 4, because at the time on that day I was under stress from other incidents at home. And it was the day before we were due to drive to Arizona, a trip of 1600 miles for which we were trying to get ready for.

So, after a couple of tries, I told my doctor to cancel it, forget it, I would get the test done in AZ. Which I did later at a doctor and he followed the steps in the paper form (wish I had kept a copy of this damm thing) and there was no testing to remember 10 items. The only small discrepancy was my blood pressure was a bit high, but it passed and he signed the form.

I mailed the form to the proper department in Victoria, and never heard any more about it. But I was really ticked off about the sneaky procedure this department was doing. They send this paper form with no advance warning, or information, that you may be tested differently than what was indicated on this paper form. No information to prepare for.

Later I read an article on my computer, I think it was either on Castonet.net here in Kelowna, or on Firefox. Not sure. This was about an RCMP member who was explaining about this test to seniors for “cognizant” memory. Never heard of this.

He went on to explain that the senior was asked to remember 10 different items and repeat as many as possible. Then the test went on to something else, and then came back to the 10 items again, and the senior had to repeat as many as he/she could remember.

And, this RCMP member seemed to endorse this testing procedure. Sounded like he was in favour of it.

I wish I had heard about your crusade before, so I could have kept a copy of the government form and the comments of this other member.

I have read the Stop Elder Driver Abuse (SEDA) and sent them a donation. I agree with what you are doing and will support any way I can. I have sent emails to all RCMP members that I know who are seniors, and asked them to forward the information to all of their senior friends. You may want to send information to Frank”s Fact’s & Funnies. You probably have already, and to FSRA.

I will write a letter to our premier, she represents our riding here in West Kelowna.

Keep up the good work, am sure you are appreciated by many.

Maurice(Moe) Cardinal

Folks, we can stop this madness…all we need do is work together.  Here’s what to do:

  • Forward this and every post you get to as many people as possible, of any age to spread awareness and because they will be the next victims.
  • Encourage everyone you know to subscribe at www.StopElderDriverAbuse.ca 
  • Contribute to the legal defense fund so that we can fight test cases in smalls claims court asap.
  • If you have a story, let us have it.  If you’ve been victimized in the last 2 years, contact us immediately at admin@stopelderdriverabuse.ca
  • and for heaven’s sake give your doctor a signed and dated note, the instant you walk into their offices, that says “I do not consent to being given any memory, dementia, cognition or other tests that may affect my driver’s license now or in the future”.  You have a right under the Health Care Consent Act to refuse all tests and treatments.  The doctor has an obligation to disclose everything about the tests and the reasons for them, however, most seem to be acting like agents of the Ministry of Transportation and putting their patient’s rights last for the almighty dollar they get for giving this unreliable and discriminatory test.Give the doctor a new note every time, with a new date so that they cannot later claim ‘they lost it’.
  • sign MPP Randy Hillier’s petition by clicking here.

Federal Study of Safety of Senior Drivers Ignored by Provincial Governments: scheming persists

The Candrive video on Randomized Trials makes it very clear that senior drivers are the safest on the road, despite the constant release of misinformation by those such as the governments of BC, Alberta and Ontario who are facilitating a simultaneous tax grab and unjustified testing by a business to enrich themselves.

Strangely, now that legitimate statistics and studies categorically show that senior drivers are the safest drivers on the roads, there are no meaningful investigations done into those who pose the greatest hazards on our roads, and that is the majority of drivers of the other age groups, 18-54 years.

Talk about deliberate and wilful ignorance and undemocratic behavior by our governments…harassing the safest driving group on the roads, there reluctance may also be because, it is known that a large number of Canadians of all ages, are on prescription drugs, which are causing cognitive impairment, which would be a poor reflection on our pharmaceutical industry, if exposed.

Sign the Petition at: http://www.randyhilliermpp.com/petition_seniors_testing

Ed. Rockburne, RCMP , Retired.

Last Deceitful Statistic About Senior Drivers Dispelled: abuse by MOT continues

THE ONTARIO MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION’S DECEITFUL STATISTIC ABOUT SENIOR DRIVERS HAS BEEN DISPELLED, yet the Ministry continues to insist that it’s new memory and driving testing of senior drivers is ethical, moral and justified.  It is none of these and worse, it is a gross violation of the constitutional rights of senior drivers not to be targeted for tax grabs and enrichment of private businesses.

On August 6th., 2014, I sent the following information to a long list of people (see bottom of this post for the list) to dispel the deliberate misinformation provided by Bonnie and Allen Dobbs who started this whole scheme in Alberta and who are now pushing it right across Canada.

“The statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association of Canada dated 2011 states that”  747,000 Canadians are Living With Cognitive Impairment, Including Dementia.

Of these, ONLY 14.9 Percent are Over 65 Years of Age.  These same statistics are closely mirrored by the Alzheimer Association International, Headquartered in London England.

This means, 85.1 percent of Canadians under the age of 65 years of age, are living with a Cognitive Impairment , including Dementia.

First the MOT said they brought in this discriminatory testing against the senior drivers because they had a higher risk of accidents than any other age group.  Every major statistical record, in Canada , the United States , Australia, and the Provinces own statistics have shown, year after year, the elderly are the safest on the road.

Then the MOT said ”they brought in the discriminatory testing based on the high percentage of the senior drivers that have  dementia”, which now we know is also false.  Only 14.9 percent of those over 65 years have the cognitive impairment, while a whopping 85.1 percent of those under 65, suffer cognitive impairment.

This is an outrage, and should inspire all those with the slightest bit of moral integrity, to take action, if we are to consider ourselves a democracy.

Where are all those agencies, both Government, and non Governmental, that point fingers at other countries, who deny rights to their Citizens while ignoring robbery of the  rights of the seniors in Canada?

This is a serious situation, and is only the tip of the iceberg.  If you think that taking your licence away unjustifiably is traumatic, consider the message you have just sent to your Governments:    Seniors will not fight for their Rights, so future funding will be diverted to other groups, while your benefits, like nursing homes, where they are so under-funded and understaffed that patients  are routinely sedated rather than listen to their complaints… and the criminally Insane are lodged, unmonitored, in the same rooms as the elderly.  Startling statistics about the Crisis in Care were revealed by CTV’s W5 in Feb 2013.   According to CTV’s W5 investigations, W5 segment on September 27, 2013 , sixty elderly are murdered in nursing homes in Canada annually, by the Criminally Insane.

And what about future funding of your share of medical treatments?

Think about this real hard and share all this widely, because the time to act is now, not when you have lost your licence and are in a nursing home being treated as a non-person.”

Yours very concerned of the future of the Elderly in Canada,

Ed. Rockburne, RCMP,  Retired, erockburne@cogeco.ca.”

Sign the Petition at:  http://www.randyhilliermpp.com/petition_seniors_testing

Sent to:

Carp, The Association of Retired People
RCMP Veterans National Association
Randy Hillier, MPP, PC, Lanark County
Scott Reid, Federal Member of Parliament
Alberta Elder Advocates
And Contacts in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Senior social Issues Caused by Provincial Government Unjustified Testing of Senior Drivers

The horrific health and financial damage caused senior drivers when they are unjustifiably subjected to special driving tests is captured in this newspaper article out of BC. These tests have been scientifically proven to be not only unreliable, but designed to fail.

The Simard MD dementia test (also known by other names such as Dem Tech) was concocted by Bonny Dobbs,  wife of one of the owners of the driver testing company, DriveABLE, which profits from every senior forced into an unjustified driving test by her dementia testing.  By her own words her test is at best 50% accurate, yet she has managed to make it a mandatory experience for all the elderly drivers when their driver’s licenses require renewal.

With such a high failure rate, many elderly drivers  predictably fail her dementia/memory test and are sent to her husband’s company, DriveABLE  for further testing, with the fee of $250.00 or more borne by the senior. Those senior driver’s who fail the DriveABLE test then lose the right to drive again unless they continue to pay for testing until they pass!

Thus it is pretty clear that the ‘testing’ has less to do with dementia and memory and more to do with being strong enough to financially and emotionally withstand a marathon of testing until, just as suddenly, one is deemed ‘normal’ again.  In other words the Dobbs couple decides for everyone who is normal, who is demented and how many times one must take the test to convince them.

It almost seems as though the Dobbs own our driver’s licenses and we are at their mercy.

Naturally this is a classic conflict of interest situation, especially since Bonnie Dobbs also acts as an Advisor, to the Governments of B.C., Alberta, and Ontario.

The collateral damage that the DriveABLE and ‘memory test’ scheme is causing senior drivers and their families defies full reporting as it affects absolutely every area of their lives just at a time when they should be enjoying life.

According to senior driver reports, the provincial governments of Alberta, BC and Ontario are now co-opting Family Doctors and having them, often secretly, ‘test’ their patients with a ‘memory test’ concocted by Bonnie Dobbs and deemed completely useless by experts in ageing and the Canadian Medical Association, who have gone on the record to confirm that there is no known test that is reliable for diagnosing dementia.  How does one tyrant’s opinion get so much traction in our governments then?

There can be NO mistake that this new ‘memory testing leading to new DriveABLE testing’ is a tax grab and business scheme of unimaginable proportions. Those senior drivers who cannot afford to keep paying hundreds of dollars to be retested by the DriveAble company end up walking home from the testing site…their lives changed forever. Those who can keep paying, often to amounts as high as $700 each (the fee in Ontario for DriveABLE tests), do so until finally they are ‘passed’ as normal.

There is NO scientifically accepted test for dementia, cognitive disability or any other ‘memory assessment’. Yet, on the say-so of Bonnie Dobbs suddenly everyone over 65 years is presumed to be demented ! She claims that those who reach 70 years old are the most dangerous drivers on the road. Yet, all statistics and studies show the exact opposite. Senior drivers become better drivers as they age and are presently the safest driver group on the roads.

It seems the only way you will ensure you are safe from this tyranny is to never tell the doctor anything that could affect your ability to drive: keep your problems as a secret.  We have heard stories from people who discovered they were secretly tested after telling their doctors they felt stressed and tired (by death in the family or illnesses of loved ones, etc).

Since the Health Care Consent Act is supposed to guarantee that everything done to you is first disclosed and that your INFORMED consent is obtained before proceeding, it would seem that family doctors are seriously in violation of their own laws and ethics.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD ALL ENSURE, GOING INTO THE DOCTORS OFFICE, THAT WE ADVISE OUR DOCTORS, NURSES AND OTHER HEALTH PRACTITIONERS THAT WE DO NOT CONSENT TO ANY MEMORY TESTING!

http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/opinion/letters/200337321.html

Sign the Petition at:   http://www.randyhilliermpp.com/petition_seniors_testing