Well you normally don't kill someone else if you fall off a roof.

Running a car at highway speeds into something or someone else has a much higher chance of injuring or killing multiple people besides the driver.

“Older drivers have 3 to 20 times higher risk of fatal crash than non-older drivers” [1].

We simply don’t have those data for roofers.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...

I think OP was saying that it's riskier for OTHERS in traffic - which should be the main thing with reissuing a drivers license.

Like motorcycles are orders of magnitude higher risk for (including fatal) accidents - but they aren't as dangerous for other traffic participants so they get licensed.

If motorcycles were killing orders of magnitude more pedestrians or other traffic participants than cars they would get banned immediately.

> OP was saying that it's riskier for OTHERS in traffic - which should be the main thing with reissuing a drivers license

My point is whether it’s others who are dying is irrelevant. We have evidence of increased mortality with age for driving. I’m not seeing similar evidence for roofing. If geriatric roofers were constantly falling to their deaths, we’d see a movement to regulate them, even if they’re falling on flowers and not people.

I think part of the reason that we don’t have those numbers is that there is in general not that many geriatric roofers, or geriatric craftsmen for that matter. Most physical crafts takes a toll on the body, and while it has gotten a lot better in recent decades with machines doing most of the heavy lifting, the people retiring now will still have decades of bad lifting and old injuries. I think only farmers have a higher incident rate than craftsmen.

Every single craftsman I know have abandoned their craft for something else because of body issues or injuries. Also, you’re nowhere as nimble at 50, 60 or 70 as you were when you were 20 or 30, so the risk of work related accidents increases, assuming you’re still doing the same tasks.

> part of the reason that we don’t have those numbers is that there is in general not that many geriatric roofers, or geriatric craftsmen for that matter

This is a good hypothesis. Whatever the reason, I see no evidence for old roofers causing death or injury to anyone, including themselves. There is zero hypocrisy in regulating old drivers while being laxer with old roofers.

Of course it’s relevant. If geriatric roofers want to risk their life that’s up to them. They don’t get to risk others lives though.

> If geriatric roofers want to risk their life that’s up to them. They don’t get to risk others lives though

Nice theory. Doesn’t work in practice. Most societies are not okay with people taking excessive risks, even if it only impacts them. It’s why we require seatbelts even for single-occupant vehicles.

That attitude is a very recent phenomenon and may not be as widely supported and obvious as you seem to believe.

I for one use seat belts, and I want them to be required to be manufactured in vehicles, but I believe it should be a personal choice whether or not you wear them.

Are you asserting that older roofers are in fact killing other people by falling on top of them?

If not, I think you may have missed the point that licensing is to protect others rather than the driver/roofer themselves.

So that's the plan ? Make sure enough people die before reaching retirement age ?

My point is, if you're unfit to drive a vehicle due to cognitive or physical decline, you're probably also unfit for most jobs involving those skills, and yet you have to soldier on for 4 more years.

What happens when they're putting a new roof on a building next to a crowded street, and the 73 year old carpenter drops a bunch of tiles to the ground 6 floors below ? or he falls and slips off, taking another colleague with him ? Or he simply operates heavy machinery somewhere and gets caught in it.

You can concoct these make believe hypotheticals, or you can look at countries where this is the reality (South Korea; high elderly poverty), and how there is no "elderly employee accident crisis". Whether it is right, moral, just etc. is the issue. I would just say to not wait until retirement to "live your life".

What does the unemployment statistics say about craftsmen in the age bracket 60-70 ? Or any other line of work ?

Many craftsmen in Denmark are working contracts where they get paid more the faster they finish the job, and nobody wants a 70 year old dragging down their hourly wage just because they can't keep up, so the 70 year old will just have to "keep up", either making mistakes along the way, or wearing out their already worn out bodies some more.

There are options for "early" retirement at 70, provided you've spent 46 years employed. That means you started working at 24 at the very latest, and was not unemployed for longer periods.

Saving up for your own retirement is also hard with low to medium income wages in a country where you pay 40-50% income tax, 25% sales tax and retirement funds are taxed at deposit (meaning capital gains will be lower).

    > South Korea; high elderly poverty

It is interesting that you selected South Korea as your example. There are as rich as Japan, but have much worse social benefits, including national pension. I don't understand why.

I think South Korea is just a horrible example for almost everything in general anyways. There are South Koreans still alive that remember when it was still 90% peasant farmers living a 15th century lifestyle, that basically did a single skip through industrialization, and it is now one of the most technologically advanced countries on Earth. And it is still plainly evident by all the fairly unique major social and cultural problems they face today.

There's a huge difference between endangering other people vs endangering only yourself.

The carpenter isn't endangering himself, he's being endangered by his employer (and the politicians who voted for that retirement age)

Yeah, it's not like operating heavy equipment at a construction site will ever endanger anyone.

Yes, doing so at a construction site it is considerably less dangerous to society in general than public roads. Not to mention the individual is more likely implied to be operating at some baseline of function (observed by foreman and others at the work site) which is not the case when a private individual is just driving on public roads.

You are straining credulity.

you've clearly never been fallen upon by a septuagenarian roofer

That makes perfect sense though?

That requirement was removed in 2017 by the right wing government at the time. It was a populist move to secure the elderly vote.