Safe Speed Forums

ITV's Tonight Programme reported on drivers over 70 years old. There is talk that they should take a Driving Test when they reach 70. Currently they just have send a form back every 3 years to Swansea saying they are fit to drive.Some of the stories on the Show were dreadful Involving elderly drivers. Presently there are about 2Million drivers over 70 on the roads Some old folk I see can't find first gear. Please would someone remind me to when I get to

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RoADA Member -GOLD 2008
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

It definitely is a problem, and it isn't the first time that it has been raised on TV either. I definitely remember seing a clip from a petrol station CCTV where an OAP came out of the shop, got into their car and moved strieght off without looking and sent the pedestrian that was standing about 10' in front of their car over the bonnet.

But to be fair, their are plenty of people over 70 that are very good drivers, and plenty that are below that age that due to a wide variety of reasons are no longer safe. It would appear that rather than getting a bit of paper sent back just by over 70s, that all drivers ought to be reviewed at a regular period (5 years?)....

It sounds great - everybody has a repeat test that will also mean that driver education can be formally structured and the proper messages put across, those that fail are off the road until they pass.

It won't work of course because:

UK Government cannot organise anything without spending 20x as much as it should cost, and the supporting IT would be 10 years late and insist on sending reminders to newborn babies. The associated costs would mean that each test would be £500.

The education aspects would be totally corrupted to suit the needs to those that have associated themselves with faulty arguments. Speed Kills would end up being the only message.

If you failed you would just carry on driving anyway - a signifiant proportion of the most dangerous drivers on our roads are already banned or never got a licence, so why would this be any different.

Of course the other answer is to have trained officers who when they observe problem driving can take appropriate action including compulsory retests. The only problem being that the necessary people are no longer involved in traffic, because they have been replaced by Scameras. Scameras by their very nature cannot identify any of the people in this group, and cannot identify drivers anyway...So yet another case where current road safety policy is going in totally the wrong direction!

I was talking with a friend this afternoon who suggested that in cases of seriously crap driving, a TrafPol should have the power to issue a notice to a driver to force him/her to take a test, such test to be booked online there and then from the CopCar's internal systems.. Along the lines of "OK Mr Smith, where do you want to take your test?" Tap tap tap.. "10:30 next Tuesday OK?.. Yes?". Stamps license. "OK Mr Smith, your license is now is only valid until 11:00 next Tuesday.. Have a nice day.. "

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

I would have to agree with the idea of retest every few years 7 to 10 sounds about right to me.

To make it fair as i know some good drivers are just crap at test any type of test what with nerves and the like set it so you have to pass a retest by a set date and allow two retest before that date and still keep your license until the dead line.

I think I would catch a lot of the truly awful drivers and get them off the road and much more importantly IMO keep the driving public thinking about how there driving.

Let’s face it most drivers fall into bad habits rather quickly after learning to pass a very simple test and only a tiny handful go on to advanced training but if you knew you could be asked to take a retest at any time as per POGO’s idea (very good one imho) and a test every few years it would prompt more drivers to think about there driving rather than just assume there good driver as they passed a test years ago.

But it is also true no matter what you do some people will continue to drive when banned/drunk/uninsured or without ever having licenses in the first place and the only way to deal with these is more traffic police and stiffer penalties.

BTW how watched theses fly on the wall policing programs like “Road Rage” just to see people driving like complete maniacs just to have some one say in a serious voice and he was banned for 3 months and a £100 pound fine. Am I the only one that thinks these penalties are way to light? And do we really have advertise the fact these penalties are a complete joke. I really do think that very dangerous driving (like running from the police) should be treated with the same gravity as attempted murder. How many people will run from police if they have the choice between possibly losing there license and a fine or 10 years in prison?

The penalties are a complete joke, but they are based on ability to pay (in order to maximise the takings), so a higher rate tax payer that drove at 35 in a 30 and went to Court will get fined £250 or more, while skiving layabout does 60 in a 30 and only gets fined £100.

I'm with you on the stiffer penalites. Driving without a licence should be 10 years, as should driving without insurance. There is absolutely no excuse for it, and if they are involved in an accident, then it should be considered as attempted murder. That might make the little theiving scumbags think a bit. Currently they get caught "joy riding" and very little is done to them. If instead they knew that the next time they would be looking at nicking a car they would be the wrong side of 30 years old, then they might think about it a bit more. Double the penalty for each repeat offence.

Much of the problem however is due to successive governments misguided attempts at pricing motorists off the road. It doesn't work, and will never work - in general people only drive because they have to, and the only consequence of raising motoring costs (apart from a large tax take, and the prize of being one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in) is that more and more people are driving outside of the law. At the same time because our costs are so high, we are loosing thousands of proper jobs each day (but replacing them with shelf stackers and beurocrats - so that is OK then), so we have more and more people with little money and nothing to do.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4537399.stm
I heard about this on the radio today.
Police are looking into the accident, to see whether she had been OK'd to drive.
So who checks up?
My experiences with DVLA would'nt fill me with confidence that they would spot drivers past their sell by date!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

there was a point raised about discrimination against the wrinkly, i mean elderly
i dont see how they can cry that when it would be discriminating against the natural deterioration of life. when you get old, you lose your peak fitness, sight, hearing and even bladder control so yes, i agree that they should be both medically checked and assessed for driving.
i dont agree with driving tests being carried out regularly but assessments should be mandatory.
to justify this, the driving test is just that. a test. a person becomes a good driver after they have been out on the roads and developed their own comfortable adaptation with regards to controls etc. the ten and two positions are for test purposes only. in real life, they delay reaction times and slow everything down. in an evasive scenario, you would have no chance

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Richie

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Cars need to go though an MOT test every year with the presumable objective of maintaing some sort of standard for acceptable minimum mechanical conditions of the car.

So why not drivers?

The vast majority of accidents are caused by 'driver error' and only a very small fraction by mechanical failure of some kind.

If an Insurance Compnay offered lower insurance premiums for those over 70 who had passed the test (within recent 5 year period) that might be a way for the Market to bring about change. I have read elsewhere of rental companies refusing hires to over 70's which is a blunt instrument whereas a person who had recently passed should be a much more acceptable risk.

Because asking every licensed driver to take a retest every X years would result in a system that would become clogged with excessive waiting times for the test itself in a very short space of time indeed.
Before you even knew what was happening, you wouldn't have any road users left on the road because they would all be waiting patiently in the queue for the retest.
In short, there is no way to make such a suggestion ever work in reality.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

I came to this thread because Cooperman just revealed that he will be drawing his pension by the end of this year - if HMG doesnt bring in working until 67 before then!!!

However, this weeks Westmorland Gazette featured a woman of 80 who had a little prang - and failed a police eyesight test!
She is getting new glasses aparently! £100 fine and three points.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

The latest IAM magazine reported that the EU had abandoned plans for compulsory retesting for older drivers.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I agree that re-testing every driver annually would be an immense task, but surely that sort of test frequency would not be necessary. Perhaps one could get a significant benefit by a fairly informal re-assessment every five or ten years. After all, that would be an immense change from the present system - which, for example, last tested me in September 1957.

Maybe this is a ridiculous idea, but could not organisations like the IAM and RoSPA with their observers and examiners take on some of the task?
Why not get police advanced drivers to do some of this in their spare time?

After all, the groups I have just referred to (and there may be others) are generally recognised as experts and enthusiasts so far as driving is concerned, so there could be considerable resources available to be harnessed.

Rather than saying it can't be done, let's keep the idea alive and find some way of making it work. It has to be more rewarding than the situation we have at the moment.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

I don't think regular retesting is a good idea - (we've discussed it before too). Basically I don't believe the payback would reward the investment.

I think the fundamental mistake is to believe that driver quality is tested or defined with a DoT style driving test. I believe if we all drove to driving test standard we'd be in HUGE trouble with road safety. We all do so much more than the test requires in terms of observation, anticipation and planning. We also talked about where do we learn to drive and the answer really is out there, on the road, driving solo. That's the place to land the information.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

This does raise an interesting question though .. with the ageing population that we have in the UK, will it inevitably lead to a rise in road deaths as more and more pensioners lacking observational skills and reaction times take to the roads?

Well, a lot of it's happened already.

The proportion of over-70s with driving licences has tripled since 1975.

Although there are exceptions, in general older drivers tend to restrict themselves to journeys that they feel comfortable with, so you won't find many of them out on the roads at 2 am or setting off from London to Plymouth after a busy day at the office.

Their accident rate per mile does go up, but the lower distances travelled largely compensate for that.

If you're depending on ultra-quick reaction times to avoid crashes you're driving far too close to the edge already.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I've mentioned this before, but I think compulsory regular eye tests for all drivers would be a reasonably effective and simple proxy for regular retesting, particularly when it comes to older drivers who may have declining abilities. This would get a few people off the road who really couldn't see, and perhaps lead others to reflect on whether they really wanted or needed to continue driving.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Already said I'd be in favour of assessment - preferably graded to motivate potential and desire to improve skills with some carrot like reduced insureance premium. I'd combine with full medical (including eye test) as well. But obviously have personal bias based on the past....

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How can it? They stick to the speed limits, don't they?

Seriously though, speaking of observational skills, what is important in terms of safe driving? If it's the ability to, say, recognise the fact that parked cars on a residential street can conceal a small child and things like that, I would venture to say that pensioners are - by virtue of experience - likely not to be lacking.
On the other hand, if it's the ability to read a numberplate from 22 metres, then they may be lacking - however there are many people who are more than able to read a numberplate at twice that distance, yet are apparently unable to see a great big lorry at half that distance.

And, as Peter pointed out, if you rely on lightning-fast reactions to keep you out of trouble then you've already lost the plot.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I think eyesight is a bit of a red herring, especially with the current eyesight test. I'd be very worried about drivers with tunnel vision, but of course the official standard fails to consider that possibility.

We drive to the conditions - to our knowledge of what we can see - and under many common circumstances none of us could get anywhere near passing the eyesight test while driving. Think of heavy rain and thick fog - we couldn't pass the eyesight test but we don't crash in such conditions (if we're skilled and sensible). We just adjust to the conditions...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety