It should be mandatory to retake a driving test again age 70 and every five years after that

Whilst everybody queues up for the over 70 test ,Iwonder who will pick up all the thousands of children who hop into Grandma's car to go home after school.

So apparently the government are considering raising retirement age for state pension to over 70, so presumably the over 70s are thought to be mentally and physically capable of work, yet it’s now suggested that over 70s aren’t considered capable of managing a car. How does that work?

Due to the collisions involving young drivers, particularly those where there are a group of friends in a car. There have been calls for this from victims’ families & also from Scottish Ministers.

Yes! So many people I know talk about elderly parents’ driving and then shrug and say “well, what can we do?”

My late FIL was a fucking liability behind the and also stubborn. We were powerless to stop him. He was only 75.

Haven't RTFT, but exactly this. It takes literally months to get a test slot as it is. The last thing we need is any policy that will make it even harder to get a driving test!

I think 70 is too young but would agree at 80.
I also think much more needs to be done about young male drivers.

Excellent point.

Exactly.

Why? It's not illegal to be drunk at work for almost every profession (my job role fortunately it is actually illegal). It's only illegal to drink and drive.

I do think they try hold on to this part of their independence for way longer than they should (based on their capability) and I’m saying as someone whose FIL refused to stop driving even when he had ‘the car is faulty- I press brake and the instead the gas activated’ reasoning after a mild accident (was mild because the other party’s reflexes were luckily very very good!).

An 8 year old girl was killed by a 92 year old driver in a town near me a few years ago. The driver mounted the footpath while trying to park his car and trapped the little girl between the car and a wall, killing her. Her mum is campaigning for Scarlett’s Law in Northern Ireland which would introduce restrictions for elderly drivers to prevent similar tragedies.

Going back to the OP, 70 seems needlessly young but that doesn’t mean there should be no age limit where tighter monitoring and restrictions are enforced. What’s frightening at the moment is this upper age-limit doesn’t exist and so it’s left up to the individual’s own judgment to decide if they’re fit to drive which is how tragedies like Scarlett’s occur.

@ Completely agree. I made the same point upthread, almost word for word.

I agree. I have several friends in their 70s who are very competent drivers, as is my 82 year old neighbour. My late DF decided he would stop at 90, unfortunately he died at 88. However he also was a good driver and was only involved in one accident, which was totally not his fault.

You have a strange idea of what 70 year old people are like OP, your father not being a good driver doesn't automatically make all people in that age group bad drivers. Most of the dangerous drivers I see on the roads are far younger than that.

I forgot to say that I'm not in the UK and drivers here have to get a medical certificate at 75 and 80, and then every two years after that. If the doctor thinks you need it you might have to pass an on-road safety test.

That is one death out of over a thousand a year, even one is needless and almost all are avoidable.

What I advocate would probably apply to all ages, and as noted, it is middle aged men who commit most of the dangerous driving in the UK (and probably elsewhere). That is before those I would take off the road for other conduct that in my opinion should mean no licence, such as middle lane hoggers on motorways.

What a wonderful idea! Let them have a stroke and live on for years requiring full time care.

So my BIL and others like him should sell their farms and lose their business just because they reach 70. You need to get real. I’m sorry your husband is unable to drive and I agree it could happen to any of us, but you can’t go through life thinking of what ifs and maybes.

Yanbu op, but as expected you’ll get a lot of whataboutery in response to your entirely reasonable idea.

’But my 90 year old father is a great driver and never had an accident before’

’But young people’

’But how will people maintain their independence?’

’But there isn’t the capacity for tests’

’But just because one 70yo is nearly blind and can’t turn their head to check blindspot, doesn’t mean they’re all like that’

Nobody is going to take away their licence unless they aren't fit to drive.

People at the age of 70 need to be making sure they can access other means of getting to where they need to be.

That's all I said.

What do you find unreasonable about that point of view?

Governments aren’t very proactive on road safety though - if they were there would have more engagement on this & many other road safety issues (eg driving using a mobile, speeding etc). It’s also poorly reported - for example BBC Sussex ran a report on the Government not acting on a petition by a bereaved mother wanting lifetime bans for drink/drug drivers who kill. That was just regional news & didn’t make their main page (at least on my app) even though it’s arguably a matter of public interest. It’s certainly difficult to understand why bans are so short in some cases.

What does seem to happen generally re road safety in my experience is that things do tend to happen when situations become untenable because there’s a feeling that something needs to be done (not necessarily the best solution). That’s why I think eventually there will be action as there are too many of these cases where details about the defendants suggest that they are people who just shouldn’t be driving & eventually the Government will have to address the issue.

Look theres a laughable backlog so its not practical right now.

As with everything what they will do in wait another 30/40 yrs and once it looks like millennials / gen z might benefit suddenly introduce the policy.

Exactly this.

I'm 76. Earlier this year I did a seniors' driving course run by our council, which comprised a morning group session with instructor and a test drive on a later date. It was free and I found it very useful. You can get into bad habits as you get older and I feel I'm a better driver now. I was prompted as I had a prang in a car park (my fault).

I don't particularly like driving and if I lived in a town I wouldn't, but I live semi rurally so have no choice.

It's really not logistically viable to test every person at 70.

The defensiveness is extraordinary isn't it?

There was a documentary about older drivers on TV the other night. They went out with the police to a random sight check operation. The number of older drivers who couldn't read a numberplate at 20 metres was astonishing, and that's a very easy test.

I have field of vision tests every 6 months because of glaucoma and the over 70s really need field of vision as well as the standard optician test. Some eye conditions take your sight so slowly you can be only partially sighted before you are forced to accept how bad things have got.

The "how will people maintain their independence" infuriates me. You don't lose your licence if you're safe to drive. Are other drivers supposed to accept dangerous drivers on the road so that somebody can still drive to the shops?

I don't agree with a full retest, and it won't happen anyway. There are very few drivers with years of experience who would pass a full diving test without comment. Who drives with their hands at ten to two after a decade on the road? But I firmly believe we should require good eyesight in one eye with a full field of vision test and a cognition test, which should be able to be done online.