This might not be as absurd as it initially sounds.

Being that I am starting to get up into the high numbers age-wise, I am well aware of how "value engineering" to maximize profits has led to a situation where products, from cheese graters to cars, are remarkably flimsy. Chairs and ladders are now sold in "weight classes" in which those products will only hold up to the weight you pay for. Quite a contrast to ladders when I was a kid, where you didn't need to worry about whether a ladder would hold you or not unless you were so heavy you worried about plunging through the floor of your home and into the basement!

Likewise, this office chair I am sitting in now, made here in the USA and only a year old, is already falling apart, now that the Pretty Printed Piece of Paper that came with it as a substitute for reliability has expired.

We know that the pedal assembly in question was made in Indiana.

So, what may well be happening here is that these older drivers are not necessarily infirm; they simply grew up in a time when manufactured goods were far more rugged than they are now. When you stomped on a car pedal (especially during an emergency), it did not deform. Now, modern "value engineered" products are quite flimsy, to save cost and maximize profits.

These elderly drivers are not bad drivers; they simply drive the way they learned in a time when cars were built tough and rugged and did not deform when you sneeze on them.