Motorist, 81, who twice crashed into cyclist while overtaking him keeps driving licence

grOg wrote:

I don't agree with re-tests for older drivers but there should be compulsory annual medical checks for drivers over 75; doctors are best placed to make the call as to whether an elderly person is safe to drive; good driving is more about attitude than driving skills and road rule knowledge; I'd rather see young hooligans and texting twits taken off the road than healthy elderly drivers.

I agree with not demonising all older drivers. Re-tests would be useful for all drivers, but I like your idea of specific medical tests for elderly drivers. Also, more road policing would probably be more effective than re-tests as new drivers can be on their best behaviour during a test and then turn into a speed demon when let loose on the roads.

As I mentioned in another thread, the 2 main medical problems are pathological eye damage and dementia. These are the ones that need testing.

I'm not so sure about being on their best behaviour. Once you have bad habits, it is hard to shake them or turn it on for a while.

hirsute wrote:

As I mentioned in another thread, the 2 main medical problems are pathological eye damage and dementia. These are the ones that need testing. I'm not so sure about being on their best behaviour. Once you have bad habits, it is hard to shake them or turn it on for a while.

I was thinking of young boy-racer types that are impeccable during a test, but then have unofficial street races with their mates.

I truly believe that ALL drivers, regardless of age or profession, should have to undertake additional checks on a periodic basis

They have no intention of doing any of this, in the same way as the police have no intention of policing MOTs, RLJs or anything else. Consequently, the rate of offending is increasing rapidly- at least in Lancashire. Two consecutive vehicles had no MOT this morning on the A6- PH11 GSD was the second, so there is no possibility that any new unenforced regulation will be introduced.

Dicklexic wrote:

 I truly believe that ALL drivers, regardless of age or profession, should have to undertake additional checks on a periodic basis. I would propose a theory test every 5 years, and a practical (plus theory) test every 10.  

Your proposal is quite likely workable Dick and might bring about some small improvement in driving standards but, I'm afraid, not the wholesale rise you hope for.  The problem, you see, is not that people can't drive reasonably well, in fact they have proved that they can by passing a test.  No, the problem is that, free from day to day supervision, they don't wish to do so.  

It seems to me that, for many people, driving well is too much trouble, it's uncool, it's a distraction from their phones, it's an infringement of their right to do exactly what they want.  And your system won't change any of that, in fact it might actively make things worse by upping the resentment factor.

I fear that the only answer could be recognising that society doesn't need eighty percent of the population to be drivers and to raise the standard of the test to the IAM Roadsmart level and thereby reserve the skill to those few who  deserve it.

Yes... but although "risk compensation" is a thing even with a massive increase in people (and more older people) driving the last several decades we have seen a fall in KSIs.  That's due to a multitude of factors but a lot of that is due to design changes (in vehicles) and on the roads.

I certainly agree with "distractions" - that's always been the case but we seem to be accepting a greater degree of this now, which is not helping.  Part of me does see sense in setting the bar higher / forcing people pay attention.  However - like the driving test - once people have achieved a standard their attention may decrease as the activity becomes habit.  And some of the habits become bad.

I think that yes, we can certainly do better with enforcement and training.  So retests of some kind.  But accepting that humans gonna human we can get more safety by looking at the environment e.g. safer design.

People easily get overloaded so road design should be very clear.  We should engineer things so people are only dealing with one thing at a time where possible.  Some crashes can be engineered out entirely:  on 2 lane roads if you can't physically overtake that eliminates one very dangerous type of crash.  If modes are completely separate you won't have one crashing into the other.

It's true, young drivers are significantly more dangerous than older ones.  It isn't one age group that needs regular re-testing, it's all of them, me included.

I'm not sure young drivers are that much more risky than the very old. Take a look at how much insurance is for 80 year old drivers. There's a reason for that.

I'd guess insurance for under-25s is the highest of all because of their accident rate.

alchemilla wrote:

I'd guess insurance for under-25s is the highest of all because of their accident rate.

Ish. As a rule, under 25s pay the highest insurance rates* though rates go up a lot at 70 and again at 80... and big differences depending on the car. An 80 Yr old in a dickhead mobile could pay a lot more than an 18yr old.

*so many don't have insurance but are fraudulently named drivers on mom or dads insurance.

I can't recall the exact statistic but I think drivers aged 17-24 are something like eight times more likely to be involved in a crash than the average driver. I'll see if I can dig out the research. This is reflected in the huge premiums young drivers pay. Insurance firms are generally very good at cracking the statistics and figuring out who is the biggest risk. 

Older drivers not only drive slower, they also tend to drive less. Yes, they do have a higher risk of crashes than the average driver, but only about twice as much as I recall. 

I'll see if I can find the stats.

Both older and younger drivers are high risk - see chart 3a here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-...

However, I do think the causes and therefore solutions are likely to be different. Whilst some of the risk of a young driver may be the result of inexperience, I suspect a large part of it is deliberate disregard for the rules and thrill-seeking behaviour. Re-testing isn't going to change that - they will simply drive sensible during the test and then resume their previous behaviour as soon as the examiner gets out of the car. (Indeed, even with re-testing every five years, it's likely to make very little difference as the highest risk is within the youngest age category - by the time a retest is due, the driver is likely to have natually matured). 

With older drivers, the higher risk is more likely to be associated with (as Cycling UK say) declining reactions, sight and road confidence. Re-testing could spot those issues earlier, rather than relying on motorists recognising for themselves that they are no longer fit to drive, interventions from friends/family, or their driving career being ended with a collision such as this one.

OnYerBike wrote:

Both older and younger drivers are high risk - see chart 3a here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-...

However, I do think the causes and therefore solutions are likely to be different. Whilst some of the risk of a young driver may be the result of inexperience, I suspect a large part of it is deliberate disregard for the rules and thrill-seeking behaviour. Re-testing isn't going to change that - they will simply drive sensible during the test and then resume their previous behaviour as soon as the examiner gets out of the car. (Indeed, even with re-testing every five years, it's likely to make very little difference as the highest risk is within the youngest age category - by the time a retest is due, the driver is likely to have natually matured). 

With older drivers, the higher risk is more likely to be associated with (as Cycling UK say) declining reactions, sight and road confidence. Re-testing could spot those issues earlier, rather than relying on motorists recognising for themselves that they are no longer fit to drive, interventions from friends/family, or their driving career being ended with a collision such as this one.

That suggests to me that we need different strategies to deal with the youngest and oldest drivers. The only practical way to deal with young drivers would seem to be extra enforcement of road rules (e.g. automated speed cameras, dashcam footage, more police etc). Re-testing would help identify older drivers that are struggling with driving, but my favourite would be to install black boxes that can measure smoothness of driving and thus detect early signs of slowed reactions.

I'm not sure that a dual approach would be necessary. 

Accepting that youngsters are more likely to be thrill seeking, I still feel the biggest challenge is around basic competence. 

What is worse that a young idiot driving like a loon? An incompetent young idiot driving like a loon!

For every person that sails through the driving test first time, there is someone that takes multiple attempts to meet the basic standard. Now sometimes, that struggle is due to exam nerves, but its often because the person is a poor driver. 

It always amazes me that, having finally fluked a pass, we just leave them to it until the day they die. Why wouldn't this person be as thrill seeking as anyone else? However, their testing track record suggests a poor overall ability.

I personally see a solution where retesting happens after 12 months of a first pass, then 24 months, then five years, then once a decade until the driver reaches 60 (or even 65). After that the frequency ramps up again, every five years to 75, then every 2 years to 80, then annually from there on in.

It could be administered in a positive way, so if you fail the test, you can book straight on to an intense half days training with a retest at the end. 

The end result would be better trained, more conscious, and better monitored motorists. 

At either end of the age / experience spectrum, the testing costs would likely be mitigated by lower insurance premiums. 

I'd like to see black boxes installed in all motor vehicles. By using accelerometers and GPS info, they could quite easily produce a metric for smooth driving that could identify both the aging drivers that are less able and also the aggressive young drivers.

I'd suggest that the data is made available primarily to the driver/owner of the vehicle so that people can decide if they want to improve their stats or see a doctor. Maybe have some kind of threshold so that when they go over the threshold for an extended period of time, their insurers or the DVLA are notified.

The principle sounds sensible.  As usual the question is how to break out of the UK "stable status quo" (or vicious circle...):

1. Driving is considered a normal activity that essentially all adults can do.
2. ...and in many ways people "need" to drive in order to participate in society / achieve many goals (like living in the country but not having to grow their own food / make their own entertainment / treat their own injuries... because all that has been centralised in bigger places).
3. ...so there is great pressure on people to drive
4. ...AND therefore pressure on the system to allow almost everyone to do so.

While (4) exists I don't think lawmakers will want to change anything.  Likely any change wouldn't succeed or would be immediately reversed.  Plus it looks like a quick route out of power and for what?  How many people are shouting about this issue now?  To fix that needs removing (3) which needs provision of alternatives so that activities don't require a car (2) ... which hopefully will eventually feed in to the perception of motoring as a rite of passage into full adulthood (1).  (Apparently Maggie Thatcher wasn't the source of the famous "failed in life" quote on this).

On the positive side with more people using buses (trams?) and cycling / scootering the problems mass motoring causes become apparent to more people, helping with social and political pressure to address the issue.

We obviously want those re-tested to have a real potential of failing (e.g. rather than it just a bureaucratic formality).  So I can see that part being a problem if people don't feel there are good alternatives to driving (or things they need to drive for).  That could create incentives for people to drive illegally.  This is already an issue of course - and one that is much larger than most think.  Of course to deal with that we need to address another feedback loop e.g. we need better road policing and backup from the courts and ultimately for illegal driving (of all kinds) to be less socially acceptable...

Fortunately younger drivers are increasingly required to use forms of 'black box' monitoring of their driving style, it can soon make more risky styles of driving unaffordable.

Having watched a number of drivers of all age groups struggling with basic car control in the snowy weather this week, we need to do something about retraining / retesting all drivers periodically. Our driving standards are atrocious. Modern technology has left people cocooned in their cars, reliant on it's systems such as traction control, ABS etc and with little idea on how to adjust their inputs (steering, brakes, throttle) to deal with slides or loss of traction. Would it be too sarcastic of me to suggest that the best compulsory safety device we could implement for ensuring drivers paid more attention and kept to sensible speeds appropriate for the conditions would be a six inch sharpened spike welded to the centre of the steering wheel.