To think people over 80 should not drive

[TorridAntelope]

I don't care how bright and sparky they are, the stats show they are dangerous

The worst drivers I’ve seen are young women.

the stats don’t agree with you . Young men cause far more serious & fatal accidents then any other group by a huge margin .
Young and middle aged men are also the group that physically attack other people & make women’s lives a misery & restrict our freedom to move about safely alone . Logically society should monitor them with tags / curfews rather than have everyone else take precautions & try and protect themselves best they can .

i agree that people over 75 should retake tests and then be retested every 3/5 yrs after that. Personally, I think something should be done about under 21s having passengers in car. Been watching BBC programme The Crash Investigators and many of these crashes involve young men, high on drugs or alcohol; a fair few of them don’t even have driving licenses. Something should be done about these people before sensible older drivers.

I am pretty sure that regular eyesight checks for drivers over 70 are coming in soon anyway (or did I dream hearing about that?). I think that is definitely a good idea and probably some sort of cognitive test too as obviously self reporting of cognitive issues is bound to be unreliable. I am 70 by the way and a driver and am fine with all these requirements and when/if I become unfit to drive I won't have a problem with that either. I would however have a problem with an arbitrary cut-off age that bore no relation to a person's actual abilities.

Given that everyone of pension age gets a free eye test every two years, that’s hardly onerous. I think you might have dreamt it though. I agree with you, I stopped driving before my cataract surgery despite the consultant saying I was still safe.

Have never been tail-gated by an 80-year-old because I’m abiding by 20mph speed limit that covers most of my city. Plenty of 20/30/40/etc angry males, though.
Agree eye-sight needs regular testing and possibly health conditions.

My MIL drove miles during her career. At 80 she's bloody awful. Cutting across junctions, staying in second gear with car doing 6000 revs, 38mph in a 60 zone, hitting same bollard twice and puncturing tyre, hit another cars wing mirror and just drove off but the other driver accosted her. All in the last 12 months

Those tests should apply to all age groups.

I’m all for making our roads safer.

I don’t think drink and drug drivers or drug dealers should drive.

I don’t think excessive speeders should drive.

I don’t think uninsured drivers should drive.

I don’t think banned drivers should drive.

I don’t think people who can’t meet the sight rules for driving should drive.

Just a few off the top of my head but why use a specific age group when there are other rules and regulations which prohibit people from driving if they don’t meet the required criteria ?

The issue with eye tests is the driver may pass an eye test but decide not to wear the glasses they passed the test wearing. No good prosecuting after the fact. Older people are more likely to obey rules because they are no longer worried about being ‘cool’.

If you want to ‘pick’ on an age group you might make the roads safer if you take 17/18 – 24 year old males out of the equation. Good luck with that and when you let them on the roads they won’t have the experience.

I’ve been a passenger with various ages of driver and sworn I would never travel with them again.Strangely none of them were over 80.

Absolutely depends. My 81 year old dad is still a great driver. Happily trust him driving my children round. My mum stopped driving (voluntarily) at 74 because of age related conditions. It's very situation dependent.

My mother is 81. She chose to give up during lockdown so I guess when she was 75ish. She lost her confidence after not driving for a while I think and never wanted to get to a stage where she thought she was still ok to drive and wasn't. She was an absolutely superb driver who lacked confidence in her abilities. She is still very 'with it' now and I think would probably still be a good driver. It very much depends on the individual.

Personally I feel that people should have to take a refresher course of 2-3 lessons every 10 years. My DD's seem to have been taught some things differently to when I learnt.

If I have to change my car and drive an electric or automatic I will be having some lessons

YABU just being over a certain age does not mean you are unsafe to drive.
My grandad still drove into his 80s. He had his eyes regularly checked. He would just drive to the supermarket, or to take his dog for a walk.
My mum has a friend who is nearly 90 and still drives. Uses her car to do tip runs and meet friends for meals. She is very fit and active. During Covid, she would leave the house in the morning and do about 15k steps.

I partly agree, younger men are definitely the most dangerous. Older people are easily the next category, I’ve seen at least 3 accidents over the years caused by older drivers being completely oblivious to everything going on around them.

The Government’s recently published Road Safety includes consulting about a learner period for young drivers & eyesight measures for older drivers.

I think these and possibly other measures for both year groups are to be expected - the recent reports of people dying in road collisions involving these age groups have been horrific and have built up an impetus for action. Someone posted earlier that public transport needs to be improved first, but I don’t expect that to happen.

I think we all probably need to get used to the idea & start to think & talk about what our local communities need to help older people manage their lives without a car. That’s going to be quite some change of outlook, but I don’t think it’s avoidable as the collisions such as those posted earlier are appalling tragedies.

I voted YANBU however I just read a news article where an 80 yr old lady ran over a family of 4 waiting at a bus stop. So my vote was influenced by that but I actually believe that more testing is needed once people get to a certain age. I was a great driver but now in my mid fifties my eyes aren’t great and I don’t drive well in the dark. Yet I know someone 25 years older that is an excellent driver.

With respect, your mum doesn't need to carry on living rurally. She could have planned better and moved into an area better supplied with public transport/shops accesible in a wheelchair at a much younger age. Her choice to live rurally doesn't give her a special entitlement to continue to drive unless she is fully safe to do so.
No one knows, at this stage, whether the state will have to pick up the bill for her or not.

You won’t think this when you’re 79.

Do you genuinely believe a woman who has lived rurally all her life should have given that up to live in a town years before she needed to because of some arbitrary concept that 80 is past it, which is the argument of the thread? If you insist she is no longer fit to drive purely on an age basis, I 100% guarantee you that she will move into a care home and her savings will be gone in a flash.

She knows she will have to do it at some point. And it will probably accelerate her ageing, so maybe she won't live that long. For some reason, I think this will meet with your approval.

Why the odd, defensive response?
I do think that people should take responsibility for themselves and make sensible plans, yes.
What they definitely should not do is make strange threats that the tax payer can pick up the tab if they is forced to stop driving. What entitlement! I'm not sure if this is just your attitude or extends to your mother too.

I have not said that everyone over 80 should stop driving. I don't agree with the OP. I do think that there should be compulsory retesting and eye tests over 75. If people are safe and capable well into their 80s, even 90s occasionally, that is fine. If not, they should not drive. No one, however isolated (their choice usually), has the right to drive simply for this reason. Everyone else's right to safety on the roads, etc supersedes this by a very wide margin.

The word you are looking for is protective, as are most children about their elderly parents. My mother is a safe driver. If she wasn't, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I will continue to protect her right to remain independent for as long as she is able, not based on a number. To repeat, that is the OP’s premise, safety is dictated by a number. If you don't agree, I am unclear why you have decided to pick a fight with me.

It is fact, not threat, that once an individual has spent all their savings on care, the state has to step in. It isn't a hard concept to follow. My mother is just one example.

If you re-read what you have written, you will hopefully see that your posts are defensive and show an entitled attitude. Your very first post talked about the state picking up the bill, almost as if your mother is doing the tax payer a favour, which is clearly untrue. I also think that people should take more responsibility for themselves and that there is a great deal of entitlement in general in the UK due to the way the system has worked for decades.

As I said, I don't believe that there should be an arbitary cut off as people vary a great deal and would therefore support your mum in driving as you say she is still a good driver. I do, however, think it is entirely wrong to use the 'independence' argument to justify an elderly, unsafe or borderline unsafe driver. It doesn't sound as if you disagree with this.

But @rainingsnoring 's argument it right.

Your mother's choices about where she lives and whether or not she made a choice to future proof her independence, doesn't impact on whether it is right or wrong for her to carry on driving. That should be done on assessment of reaction times and vision. Like rainingsnoring, I disagree with the OP's arbitary suggestion that no-one should drive once they reach 80. I have a 94 year old friend who drives (not in the dark anymore) and who is very safe. I've had lifts of various people over many decades, aged from 17 - 80 who I didn't feel were safe drivers, let alone 'good' drivers. At a population level, ageing is something that raises enough concerns that I do think there should be some real assessments not just self declarations, but obviously that doesn't mean everyone who reaches a certain age would fail those assessments.

It is you who has spun it as 'doing a favour'. You are inferring intent that simply is not there. I see it as fact, a consequence of the impact of ageist assumptions. Neither she, nor I, want her to be reliant on state support any earlier than absolutely necessary.

I think stats would also be likely to show that young men under 25 shouldn’t drive. Some 80 year olds drive well and some don’t. Some 17 year olds drive well and some don’t.