Motorist, 88, gets three-year driving ban for killing cyclist

EddyBerckx wrote:

Given the circumstances how is this not a life ban? It's not as if the usual "can't work without a car bullshit" was mentioned? 

"He fought a war for us" (perhaps?)

brooksby wrote:

EddyBerckx wrote:

Given the circumstances how is this not a life ban? It's not as if the usual "can't work without a car bullshit" was mentioned? 

"He fought a war for us" (perhaps?)

World War 2 ended when he was 12...

EddyBerckx wrote:

brooksby wrote:

EddyBerckx wrote:

Given the circumstances how is this not a life ban? It's not as if the usual "can't work without a car bullshit" was mentioned? 

"He fought a war for us" (perhaps?)

World War 2 ended when he was 12...

I know - it's just that that one seems to often come up as a "Get out of jail free" type sentence...  I saw a standup who was grumbling about men in their sixties complaining about how they'd fought a war for us, and the standup said they quite liked asking which war, exactly?

brooksby wrote:

"He fought a war for us" (perhaps?)

He's 88. WW2 ended 76 years ago, when he was 12/13.  So no, he did not fight in WW2.  Possibly Korea at most depending on when and where he did his National Service.

I disagree, with advancing years it's inevitable that we will all reach a point when we should stop driving and it should not be left to the individual. (I'm not against periodic retests for younger drivers either)

Again, once youngs uns are 100% accident free, then we can talk about generalising whole age groups.

don simon fbpe wrote:

Again, once youngs uns are 100% accident free, then we can talk about generalising whole age groups.

I really don't know where to start with this reply, everything in this sentence is just so wrong.

First off you are generalising about age groups yourself when you talk about young uns needing to be 100% accident free. Soooo it's pretty much a self-defeating statement before we even start. If you don't want people generalising about things, you should probably stop doing this yourself? Hypocrite much?

Next I really don't understand why we have to fix one problem before moving onto another, why not work on all the problems at once? Are you suggesting that we should fix the problem of dangerous drivers before we start on fixing the dangerous state of some roads? Or that we only police people aged 18-30 because they are the most dangerous and ignore everyone else? Makes zero sense at all.

I'm 50+ and would welcome regular (maybe every 5 years???) refresher training and assessments. It wouldn't need to be a full driving test, just enough to say is this individual fundamentally dangerous. There are so many terrible drivers both young and old, we should make and effort to get all of them off the road.

MTB Refugee wrote:

don simon fbpe wrote:

Again, once youngs uns are 100% accident free, then we can talk about generalising whole age groups.

I really don't know where to start with this reply, everything in this sentence is just so wrong.

First off you are generalising about age groups yourself when you talk about young uns needing to be 100% accident free. Soooo it's pretty much a self-defeating statement before we even start. If you don't want people generalising about things, you should probably stop doing this yourself? Hypocrite much?

Next I really don't understand why we have to fix one problem before moving onto another, why not work on all the problems at once? Are you suggesting that we should fix the problem of dangerous drivers before we start on fixing the dangerous state of some roads? Or that we only police people aged 18-30 because they are the most dangerous and ignore everyone else? Makes zero sense at all.

I'm 50+ and would welcome regular (maybe every 5 years???) refresher training and assessments. It wouldn't need to be a full driving test, just enough to say is this individual fundamentally dangerous. There are so many terrible drivers both young and old, we should make and effort to get all of them off the road.

I'd start by looking at the post that this was responding too, I'd then have a quick think to see whether it should be taken so literally.

You're new here, so forgiven. Sorry for wasting your time.

don simon fbpe wrote:

I'd start by looking at the post that this was responding too, I'd then have a quick think to see whether it should be taken so literally.

You're new here, so forgiven. Sorry for wasting your time.

I really can't tell if you are being serious or just trolling the comments section, nothing you say makes any sense to me. I'm resonding to what you are writing.

"You're new here, so forgiven. Sorry for wasting your time". Supercilious much?

I'm serious about taking the piss out of the guy that thinks age is a measure of starting the removal of driving licences. Neither serious, nor trolling. See if you could find something in between.

Supercilious...

Chao!

How about taking the piss out of the person who thinks he'll live forever with no decline in faculties? I'm not saying take all old people off the road (I'm 60 next month myself) and agree that in general older drivers are safer, but some aren't and don't realise it. I'm saying there should be a mechanism it place to monitor the inevitable decline.

+1 for regular re-testing.

Written tests every 5 years.

Practical test every 10 or 15 years until 60, then every 5 years.

Waiting for someone to make a mistake before you retest them, is just dumb.

Chalk and cheese. Young drivers have, after a little experience, good reactions unless they drink, drug or fatigue drive or are distracted. They do not suffer from uncorrectable degeneration of their eyes and nervous systems.

Statistically, young drivers are a much bigger problem than old drivers. I believe old drivers tend to mitigate their declining abilities by going slower and only driving on 'known' routes where they have lots of experience.

However, I think it'd be worthwhile to have driving re-tests every 5-10 years or so as that'd identify people with declining eyesight and also hopefully correct bad habits. The other aspect is that it might change people's belief that once you pass a driving test, then you're licensed forever and even causing someone's death through your own fault wouldn't necessarily stop you from being able to drive on public roads.

Remarkably (for road.cc), almost a consensus. Is socraticyclist on holiday or something? However, introducing compulsory retesting after (say) 70 won't fix the problem. First, people's health can go downhill very quickly over 60 so retesting every 5 or 10 years won't help much. Also, it's hard enough getting an appointment for a test already, without adding thousands of over-70s to the queue. A simpler solution might be to replace the (useles, imo) self-certification with a proper eye test & a doctor's certificate, & repeat the process every year. It wouldn't fix the problem entirely but would take most of the worst drivers off the road, especially if the medical includes testing for short term memory loss & early signs of dementia.

Fessing up, I'm 71 & have recently renewed my licence for the first time (it's every 5 years incidentally). I'm an MTBer, so I'm pretty sure if there was anything wrong with my reflexes &/or eyesight I'd be a permanent resident in the Fracture Clinic. However I do know I'm not the man I was 40 years ago. I think I'm still OK to drive, not least coz my driving has definitely calmed down a lot in recent years. But it is an issue. Already some of my friends aren't people I'd readily accept a lift from these days...

Private pilots' licences are like this - you need a medical and an eye test every so often (I know this because my dad is about to give his up through age). It doesn't catch everything and is a pain - there are registration hoops for the medics and it's not cheap (nothing is with flying, of course).

But we mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If the testing was routine and part of general care, that would help. Eg have a standard eye test, just like your normal one, but if you want to retain a driving licence, an eye test within the last 2 years must have been logged with DVLA. Similarly (but more expensively) it would probably help us all to have a medical every 2 years, and might well save lives & NHS costs. Again, that assessment should be logged for those trusted with driving.

There's no sweeping generalisations here... as relevant as your position that young inexperienced drivers pose the greatest danger, so to is the argument that driving standards inevitably decline with old age. 

To look at one before the other makes no sense when a system can be surely be created to manage both. 

How about mandatory retests for all drivers, with the frequency of these retests determined by age and driving history. Could be as often as every year for new / young drivers, then 5 and as long as ten years for drivers in their theoretical 'prime'. Then at certain age milestones, the testing frequency starts increasing again.... every 5 years between 60 and 70, 3 years 70 - 80 and the yearly there on.

Expensive, yes, but you could argue the consumer costs for annual tests (especially for the young), could be recouped in potential lower insurance premiums.

I don't think its beyond reason to make driving competency an ongoing requirement in order to use vehicles on the roads. 

I would be happy with regular testing for all ages.

That said, I think there is a distinction between young drivers who choose to drive recklessly and old drivers who become incapable of driving safely due to deteriorating health. I suspect that the former group would be perfectly capable of passing the test, with little effect on their driving habits outside of the test conditions; where as the latter group may be more likely to fail and removed from the roads.

The corollary of that is that I do think younger drivers who choose to drive recklessly are more culpable and therefore more deserving of lifetime bans. There have been plenty of stories on here where I have felt very frustrated that drivers will be back on the roads in a matter of months, and I doubt their long term driving behaviour will have changed. 

The initial test has to be tougher and penalties have to be higher. We need to move away from driving being a right and away from a position where money can allow you to circumvent current restrictions of high cost insurance. An old friend of mine was driving a Lotus of some sort at 17, because daddy could afford it.

I drive (drove) in excess of 30k miles per year, surprisingly there is no clear demographic for the bad driver to fit in. They come in all shapes, sizes, ages, locations and vehicle marques.