How would you manage if you lost your driving licence tomorrow?

[tomorrowisanotherdate]

For example, vertigo is a common one, I have had several friends develop vertigo and lose their license,

You cannot be insured to drive within 6 months of a vertigo attack, and both friends had attacks out of the blue in their early 40s - one only ever had one serious attack and had her license back in about a year - the other has never since gone 6 month between attacks, and has sold her car now

So suppose you have a vertigo attack out of the blue tonight, and can't drive for 6 months, starting now, how would that impact on your life?

Am I Being unreasonable to think lives should be planned around possibly being in this contingency, when choosing homes, jobs schools etc?

It wouldn’t bother me. I wouldn’t notice. We don’t have a car as it is.

YABU, you can’t plan for every shit thing that might happen.

I lost my license after surgery for a brain tumour. It was a right PITA as I live in a city but work in a rural location. I got a disabled person’s buss pass but that couldn’t get me to work.

I got taxis to work funded by Access to Work for a year which was a godsend. I helped a colleague who had on-call commitments get the same a few years later, it does exist but is little known.

I'd be fine, it would be an inconvenience but that's it. I don't drive to work and I could never live somewhere where I was totally reliant on a car anyway.

My mum had cancer in various places and at one point she had a tumour in her brain. Steroids and chemo etc were successful and the tumour shrank away. On her final check up with the doctor he told her she’d be able to drive again now she’d finished treatment. She was horrified. She didn’t know that she shouldn’t have been driving and had been carrying on as normal. Luckily nothing had happened!

I went through a patch of attacks a few years back.

It's much worse than just a dizzy spell.

I couldn't stop vomiting, couldn't focus my vision. The room was literally spinning much like when you are extremely drunk. I couldn't walk without falling, and it lasted days each time.

Nothing like feeling a bit dizzy when looking down from a height, and in no way connected to the feeing of height.

None really. I’d be impacted on cheap holiday choices and some leisure activities, but in the main I’d be able to carry on as normal

lucky, yes! Insurance would have been invalid! Thats what I mean when I said upthread that no one will necessarily sit you down and tell you that you are not allowed to drive, you are expected to report yourself. Either to be banned or to be assessed to see if you should be banned - I suppose like drink driving, really - you are expected to take responsibility yourself to know if you can legally drive or not (There is a poster upthread with BPPV who says she is still driving and has not been assessed - she may well not have valid insurance either)

I would be ok I think - easy walking distance to work, the train station, town, vets, GP and several supermarkets. Would still be pretty restricting though.

Me too!
I live rurally and need my car, not just to get to work but to do my work I need to drive to a lot of out of the way places. Two of my kids couldn't get to school. We'd have to move.

I would be devastated. No freedom without my car. I can't walk very far and can't use public transport. So I would be housebound.

I clicked assuming this was about losing your license somewhere and not being able to find it! 😁

2yrs ago I lived in central london, so had no issues with transport etc then.
We've since moved 2hrs away and far more reliant on the car normally. Recently though, our car was at the mechanics and due to it being ancient, was there over 2 weeks waiting for parts. We both WFH anyways, so I ordered online shopping instead and it made little difference day to day.
On the weekend, we walked to the nearest high st and it was actually quite nice to walk, rather than use the car.

Wouldn’t matter too much tbh. Barely go anywhere, wfh. The kids riding and other stuff would be faffy but it wouldn’t be a huge disaster.

I don't drive often as I live in London and don't have a car.

But I do increasingly drive my dad to and from hospital appointments in his car and it would be difficult if I couldn't. We could afford taxis and would have to do that. And beg for hospital transport if they need him to go to the other hospital 40miles away.

YABVU, you're basically suggesting that no one should base their career on a job that involves driving. Eg I'm a community midwife, I couldn't get to my visits without a car - so no one should take up this job in case they get vertigo and can't drive? So we just don't have community midwifery?

People need to live their life, not be frightened of what ifs and so restricting their life.

I could get public transport to work but it would be tedious

i’d get round the local area on bike. I’d go back to online food deliveries. There is some public transport round here which helps.

kids walk and bus to school thankfully.

but my kids do lots of extra curricular and instead of about half my dh would have to do the vast majority. Which would be exceedingly difficult given his working hours.

Due to limited public transport here it would.be hard, my husband would have to do school runs and I would struggle to get to work (only 1-2 days a week though as wfh 3-4 days). My personal life would suffer eg going to gym classes, seeing friends and family).

It would be a pain but not the end of the world .

I mostly work from home, but need to drive DD 15 mins each way to nursery. The bus would take forever.

It would curtail our freedom to do things and we'd spend a lot more time on buses.

We had a long spell without a car which only ended at the start of lockdown. We managed by hiring a car occasionally and using buses and taxis. Our local public tansport has pretty much collapsed since covid and is now expensive, unrealiable and irregular. Most of our local taxi firms only do school runs and booked longer trips to airports - it's not economic for them to be more available. There's no uber here. Our daily lives would be fine without a car, as we deliberately chose to be walkable to our daily needs. But the fun things in life would be very difficult - we would be locked into our small town which lacks shopping, cinema, cultural things like museums/theatres/concerts. DC would be limited to clubs and friends within walkable distance. There is no functionable bus service to our local train station (3 buses a day which do not match up with any trains). Cycling to the train station would be an act of suicide and it's over an hours walk with no footpath along a main road and windy country lanes.

It would be a bit of a nightmare, but we would cope.

I could work from home permanently. Can walk one child to school. Other child needs to go to a different school which is not walkable and would be the massive issue. I can see us managing through a mix of DH rearranging work to do more drop offs, arranging a couple of transport shares, and my mum doing some pick ups.

The loss of independence would hit me very hard though. Not being able to pop out (our village only has a pub), not being able to pop in to feed my mum’s cat.

YABU to say that we should all take this in to account though. Like the people who say you should have someone at home in case the schools close, or only relying on one salary if you have two.

It would be devastating to me, as it would have a massive impact on my life.

However, I think YABU with this
Am I Being unreasonable to think lives should be planned around possibly being in this contingency, when choosing homes, jobs schools etc?

Statistically, it is unlikely to happen.
I know one person who had a stroke in their 40s, however, I know thousands of people who didn't have a stroke in their 40s. You can't completely live your life covering every possible thing that might possibly happen to you, even though it is statistically very unlikely.

Plus, I do actually live in a City, near bus routes, and near a train station and we have ubers and lots of competing taxi firms, plus shops, Drs, Dentist and a High Street I can walk to. I'm not sure what better place I could have chosen to live without a car, but as I do have a car, I currently choose to do some things I can only realistically do with a car. It gives me lots of options I would lose.

youd Get a free bus pass if you lose your licence on medical grounds.

id use bus and train.

I’ve had my car since 2017 & driven 33000 miles, so 4,700 each year. Mostly linger trips, I drive 120 to see dd and have done 5 trips this year - but I could do it by train.

I drove to Portugal last year, I could go by train or plane

You cannot be insured to drive within 6 months of a vertigo attack, and both friends had attacks out of the blue in their early 40s - one only ever had one serious attack and had her license back in about a year - the other has never since gone 6 month between attacks, and has sold her car now

I'm really shocked to hear this. I had 2 vertigo attacks last year, 6 months apart. On both occasions it came on gradually during the night and I woke up with the room spinning, feeling nauseous and spent the day in bed.

I had to renew my driving licence recently and this prompted me to tell DVLA about the vertigo attacks. I got a letter back saying they were happy for me to continue driving.

And my last attack was in October and I sent my medical form to the DVLA in January.

We’d be fine if I couldn’t drive.

I’ve suffered from vertigo in the past, as I was symptom less when I wasn’t walking (apart from when I first woke up) it had zero impact on driving.

It wouldn't change anything