These machines are testing human drivers’ skills with no mercy
You may think you're a speed demon now, but your ability to drive as skillfully goes down sharply as you age.
On Thursday, huge automated dispensers started popping up in Singapore handing out kits to help people test their reaction time, vision and hearing ability.
The traffic police's "Road Master Kit" is pretty low-tech, but it does what it says on the label. Inside, you'll get a poster of a street scene to test your eyesight, a simple list of questions to assess hearing loss, and a ruler so you can do a drop test for reflexes.
To get a kit, seniors can scan their concession cards, which are commonly used on buses and trains, and the dispenser pops one out.
The traffic police designed the kit together with local healthcare providers such as the Singapore National Eye Centre, which provided consultation on the visual test.
The hearing test consists of a list of questions that seniors can do at home, and it is based upon the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly test.
For the reaction time drop test, a ruler is held up by someone else and dropped without warning. The idea is to see how far the ruler's fallen before you react and catch it.
It's not that easy, by the way. We tried it on someone in her 20s, who failed to catch the ruler entirely.
Police statistics in the city showed that 122 elderly pedestrians, aged 60 and above, were involved in traffic accidents from January to June in 2016.
I am an intern with Mashable Asia, focusing on viral news, lifestyle news and feature news in the region.
