This trope crops up regularly and it’s bullshit.
Hundreds of thousands of 85-year-olds should have to resit their driving test, a road safety charity has claimed.
IAM Roadsmart policy and research director Neil Greig said a ‘demographic time bomb’ was ticking and it was important to have an ‘urgent’ discussion on how to maintain safe mobility for those in old age.
It comes after the death of a woman, killed by a 95-year-old driver who had run through a red light in 2021, revived calls for reform to DVLA rules.
The present system, in place since 1976, puts the onus on the driver to reapply for their licence at 70 and every three years after.
But campaigners have called for tighter regulation and widespread ‘mature driver assessments’.
One swallow does not a summer make. Anyone who uses the roads regularly – as I do – will be able to see that it is not the greybeards who are the problem. I see appalling standards of driving from all age groups. If you want to argue for regular reassessment of driving ability, by all means, but it is needed across the board, not just for a single demographic.
The rate of collision for drivers aged 86 and over was 45 per cent higher than for the next most dangerous group, drivers aged 17 to 24, according to latest figures published by the Department for Transport.
Hmmm. When people use percentages to justify their argument, I smell bullshit. The accident statistics for older road users is still significantly lower than the younger demographic – when you look at causes, it is more likely to be younger drivers who travel too quickly for the conditions, fail to check properly or are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Sure, we lose our faculties as we grow older, but that is compensated by experience. I am all for regular health checks and as said above, I have no problem with the concept of reassessment as a principle, but this singling out of older drivers isn’t justified.
I was a member of the IAM for a while. This kind of cretinous idiocy is why I allowed my membership to lapse.
For a certain type of person the call that “something must be done!” seems to blunt all proportionality.
And laws introduced to answer the call “something must be done!” are rarely effective (or enforced) but give the State Bureaucracy another club to beat us with.
There’s something to be said for driving [sic] up standards. However, this isn’t it. CBT needs a revisit as it is not fit for purpose in its current format, for example. As an instructor, I find delivering them stressful and I’m not alone, but we follow the format laid down by the DVSA and adopted by the industry. Is it reasonable to expect a raw novice to learn to ride a motorcycle and be fit to be out on the public highway in a matter of a few hours? My experience suggests not and more and more are having to take several attempts to get to a point where we can issue a certificate.
General driving standards across the board are poor. Drivers tailgating, driving too fast for the prevailing conditions, not looking properly before emerging (a friend was T boned yesterday by one) and failing to read the road ahead and plan the drive. More often than not, the driver is a middle aged man. Anecdotal, I agree, but I’m out on the road often enough to be able to make such an assessment – see also, aggressive behaviour. Again, middle aged beta males.
It looks like the same sort of careful start year and end year that the Climate Scientists use. Pick suitable years, he vague about your parameters and Robert is your mother’s brother. You can prove anything.
Age 17 I can understand, but who drives unaccompanied in few months after 17th birthday? So why 24? Why 86?
Fewer collisions (undefined) in 7 years after age 17 than in 14? years after age 86.
Just be grateful that you don’t work in BD3…
Parts of Bristol are getting that way.
Whilst I have no issues with the idea of regular retests of drivers I suspect the idea will fall down a) in terms of the bureaucracy involved and b) many of those who are failed will keep driving anyway – after getting very upset at the examinier who dares do so.
Anecdata alert: A neighbour (who is now in his 80s) finally surrendered his licence a few years ago after taking his car for it’s annual MOT and realising he couldn’t cope. We shall gloss over the fact that his macular degeneration meant he should have already given up even though all he otherwise did was drive around the block each morning to pick up his paper. That he was relying on instinct to ensure he got did so without incident was the frightening part.
There is another problem here. The DVSA have a massive waiting list for tests as it is, so expecting them to pick up this extra workload is a non starter.
I think they need to become more alert to bad driving from the old, but the NHS/DVLA generally takes care of that.
No, they don’t. The system relies entirely on self reporting.
I bet that’s old. Now that Alzheimer’s has stopped being a thing there’s far less of a problem with elderly drivers.
Yup, it hasn’t changed in decades. Ideally some form of medical would make sense, but again, that should be across the board. We had a guy turn up for CBT recently who could not read a numberplate at 20 metres. He got in his car and drove off. Holding a driving licence places an obligation to ensure that the holder is medically fit and has regular eyesight checks, but clearly people don’t.
Driving standards in this country are pretty high on the whole.
Compared to standards in some other countries I’ve driven in anyway. In my wife’s home country, the roads are more like a particularly chaotic episode of Wacky Races.
For example, I pulled into a central refuge to turn left from a main road across the oncoming traffic, angled at 45° to wait for either a gap or the lights to change. Turning from a main 4 lane highway onto a smaller 2 lane side road. I was first there. Man pulls up on left quarter, also waiting – fair enough there are two lanes. Then someone pulls past us both to pull up on my right… Er, now there are three aiming for two lanes.
Then a fourth pulls up next to the guy on my left…
Followed by a fifth at the right of us all.
So now there’s five of us, aiming at two lanes.
And just to top it off, one of the lanes then gets blocked by a marshutka, which is basically a public minibus that stops wherever you need it to on route.
Better be quick off the mark…
Chaos.
Accidents a plenty.
Rules are strictly optional.
Driving tests? Ha! Drive around the block ok? You pass. If you don’t, bribe the examiner.
Oh and roadworks don’t have to put fences up, they’ll just dig a channel across a lane a foot deep and you’re expected to be smart enough not to drive into it.
Kinda fun though, just keep your wits about you.
I see this with people who come here from those countries and want a CBT. Their chaotic system doesn’t mesh with our ordered one. Frankly, following them is terrifying. I invariably cut the ride short and refuse to issue a certificate. As for the bribes, it hasn’t happened to me yet, but a couple of my colleagues have had people try to bribe them.
I live in New Zealand where the driving rules are pretty relaxed.For example insurance is not compulsory, but driving under the influence can be harshly dealt with.At the age of 80 I had to get a medical exam to show that I was fit to drive,eyes being tested and general mobility ok sort of thing.The medical certificate lasts two years and I am due again for the second renewal at 86 at the end of the year.
One thing I have noticed is that with age my overall speed has dropped,although I don’t hang about on the open road and I am spotting potential problems much earlier than I used to and taking appropriate action much earlier. There is nothing like experience and I have over 60 years of it.
I’ve long thought that there should be some kind of ongoing assessment of driving ability. My thought was some kind of assessment every ten, or maybe fifteen years. My thought was that you would have three possible outcomes. (A) you are still a competent driver, no further action required. (B) some work needed, you need to take a refresher course. (C) You are not a safe driver, you need to retake your test. This set up would probably result in driving schools branching out into doing refresher courses for those whose assessment is coming up. I can’t see how this could fail to raise driving standards and reduce accidents. Of course any government that proposed this would be very unpopular and wouldn’t be able to get themselves elected, but why is that a problem? Nowadays governments just do as they please anyway.