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Laws aren't different just because you're old.
The reason this man would have been sentenced in this way is that they were unable to prove he did much of anything to attempt to stop the car. All the "oh i tried to stop it" and blah blah in the world doesn't matter when you can always ditch your car into another car, or into a building, to avoid careening down a crowded open street at 60mph. And if the answer to that statement is "it all happened too fast and he's old", then it's still gross negligence.
This WAS gross negligence, no matter how you slice it, and it WAS vehicular manslaughter. Maximum sentence is, in my opinion, the only course of action regardless of age or medical condition.
I'd also remind people that if you're infirmed in jail (need consistent medical care), you don't lay in a cot like everyone else, you're either kept in a separate area under medical care, or you're put in a secure wing of a regular hospital- so it's not like the fact that he's old and infirmed is a problem for being imprisoned. People die in prisons (not due to execution, inmate murder, or suicide) all the time, either from disease or simple old age. He doesn't get a free pass.
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