Could this lead to tougher tests for older drivers

Interesting point made by @intheborders though.. 10 deaths on the roads vs. 5000 for all reasons, but the figures also show that the elderly are only involved in a small proportion of those 10. We’re looking at tiny numbers. I wonder if there are other lower-hanging plums that should be prioritised (like the 400bhp vehicles mentioned earlier?) or is this just seen as a cheap/easy win?

That’s not how FAI/Inquests work though – they are allowed to make recommendations to prevent the same set of circumstance occurring, they can’t go off down routes like that.  Now if there is an FAI/Inquest into other incidents then they can make recommendations about those specific incidents.

Here’s the full determination: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/qwvfczla/2024fai043-fai-alexander-irvine.pdf I suppose the Sheriff must have in his mind that if he makes recommendations which are hugely onerous to implement they will be far less likely to happen than any which are achievable.

I think 10 deaths on the roads v 5000 is a slightly odd way of saying our roads are very safe though.  I think that is per month in Scotland alone?  Official figure is 155 for 2023 so its more like 13/month (and 2023 was down from 171 in 2022).  But all of those are “premature” deaths, ie. they were sudden, unexpected and largely avoidable.  The vast majority of the 63,454 deaths in Scotland in 2023 (5,288/month) will have been through a natural process: 82% of those people were over 65, and across all ages 74% of deaths were attributed to cancer, respiratory disease (inc covid), dementia/altzeimers or circulatory disease.  There’s still a large number of deaths where covid is a factor – pre-covid the deaths figure was consistently 56-58K five years in a row.   If you were to translate the deaths into “lost years” that might be a more revealing indicator – if someone in their 80’s kills themselves through their own bad driving you could well look at it that its not really worse than dying in a care home a few years later, but if someone in their teens is killed that’s perhaps 70+ years of “valuable” life lost.  It would need way too much effort for a STW thread even if the data exists.  And of course we are only talking about fatalities in these numbers – 1,930 people were seriously injured and 3,703 people were slightly injured in Scotland in 2023.

It’s just another grumble about driving for me, along with phones/banned drivers/etc, around here you know the old folk who shouldn’t be behind the wheel, i guess that’s the same for everyone on here, you see them all the time, they have no situational awareness, no spacial awareness, battle scars around the cars and so on, thankfully they don’t tend to go fast, or far, but you do wonder how many near misses they have in a week, as they’re the ones who you notice because they’ve pulled out of a side road making you brake, or have veered over the road.

Again, meh, it’s just driving these days, aging drivers is just one small part of the nightmare, i don’t think i’ve enjoyed driving in a long time now.

Almost all of them do have choices though, they have made choices all their lives to increase their car-dependency. They don’t want to exercise the (simple and obvious) choices to do the contrary. Which in truly rural places means living somewhere more sensible, though this is only a small minority of such cases anyway.

Once you’re old enough, you are not going to be able to drive. Sticking your head in the sand about this doesn’t stop it from happening.

I am in agreement with the Captain here – currently having both sets of parents (in their 70s) living in areas which are just about served by public transport but not well enough to be convenient but also both having all their bedrooms and toilets upstairs – neither seems to be thinking ahead that ground floor living would be more sensible, yet I recall both scoffing at their own parents and in-laws for not wanting to move once their mobility started to go…

I don’t want it to be voluntary if they are incompetent.

Exactly – even mentioning choice and public transport implies these should be considerations.  Inevitably the current regime of self-declaration must involve some sub-conscious element of that even if your ability to reason has not been impaired.

What do you expect when folk have little choice though?

Theres a weird irony that part of the reason our local bus services are constantly under threat is lack of use!  Perhaps if all those who shouldn’t be driving, even once a week, were using these facilities they would be there for more people?

Because ultimately it’s the driver’s responsibility to inform DVLA, and it’s a criminal offense not to tell them about any serious conditions, and the GP details are on the form anyway, and they do occasionally follow up. If I’m honest, I’d much prefer that a different body did them, as they take up quite a bit of our time – Taxi drivers, HGV and bus drivers etc etc, they’re just an additional burden that takes GPs away from what they should be doing

But the whole point of the FAI recommendation is you can’t expect people who are not really making sound judgements any more to tell the DVLA there is a problem (especially when the form will inevitably be easier to fill in with “all good” than tell the truth).  Now there is a whole separate debate about who should do such assessments.  I am probably of the opinion that family doctors practices are actually well placed to understand the overall medical condition of the patient, but certainly no need for this to be a free NHS service.  The FAI notes that these sort of cognitive tests don’t need to be performed by doctors.  I wonder though if they might actually help identify people who need more NHS (and/or SW) support, if you had to see every 80+ yr old who wanted to continue to drive might that actually result in long term benefits not just to safety on roads but to the patient and the overall system?  Everyone knows that when faculties start to go it can be quite hard to get patients to go and see the GP, but I assume the earlier the better?

The problem with public transport around here is that it’s underfunded, and councils are trying to get bus companies to run services at a loss, which is never going to happen, it’s another big bunfight with the council cuts just now.

I doubt we’ll have any sort of fix any time soon, the good news is i think technology will assist in the next generation, as will reductions in journeys due to online and networking, but that’s yet another jam tomorrow response to a current problem i guess.

My work colleague got a call from the police informing him that they’d stopped his dad at the roadside as he was driving erratically at 2am and didn’t know where he was going when questioned. His dad still refused to give up driving. Quite sad really but thankfully no one was hurt.

I think a lot of the collisions that the elderly are involved in are low speed ones, hitting things like street furniture and parked cars, and are not reported (and in some cases not even noticed by the driver).

This time of year, as it’s dark in the morning and early evening, you’ll see cars driving very slowly about. IME, this is often older folk who are struggling to see where they’re going.

I nearly got knocked off my bike one time by a granny in a Yaris, who cut the corner on the junction I was waiting at. She was slowly shuffling the steering wheel trying to avoid me, all the time I was rooted to the spot not knowing which way she was going. Thankfully she managed to miss me by a few inches, but drove off before I could speak with her. It was quite a surreal and scary experience as it happened in what felt like slow motion.

So I’m all for have mandatory medicals every year, including eye tests in order to keep your license. This should be for everyone though.

At 66 next month, that day could be 10 years away, maybe more, maybe less. I’ll not miss driving as a past-time – I’ve always viewed cars as a utility – but rural transport is shit and I’d hate to be forced into moving somewhere busier.

We need better rural transport but moving somewhere busier would ensure that there’s a shorter wait when the inevitable ambulance request is made. A rural lifestyle choice is not usually compatible with good emergency medical outcomes.

Only in Britain do we have a mandatory roadworthiness test for vehicles that are over three years old, yet not one for the actual driver, even if they’re 80.

Theres a weird irony that part of the reason our local bus services are constantly under threat is lack of use! Perhaps if all those who shouldn’t be driving, even once a week, were using these facilities they would be there for more people?

Chicken and egg time.
See also: getting everything from Amazon or supermarket delivery rurally but upset the high street is dying…

However, under the current system if you have the flag on your licence that you need glasses and aren’t wearing them when the police stop you, you will be prosecuted for driving “otherwise in accordance with your license” (same as driving a class of vehicle you don’t haven’t got on the back of your license).

And if I have my contacts in. . . ? I can see the requirements for traffic policing requiring certifying on opthalmic equipment to be competent at the their jobs (or a lot of trips in police cars back to an eye-testing station. (To be clear I am not against a requirment for corrective vision aids to be stated on the licence but the detail will be difficult for the underfunded/manned enforcement authority).

We need better rural transport but moving somewhere busier would ensure that there’s a shorter wait when the inevitable ambulance request is made. A rural lifestyle choice is not usually compatible with good emergency medical outcomes

Doesn’t mean I have to like it though ?

(FWIW I’m currently just a few hundred metres from our local hospital, though I was here before it was).

BruceFull Member
76 to80 bar on that graph looks similar to 30 to 35 bar.

Whataboutery?

The reasons for both ends of the graph are totally different. Having assessments of driving ability at both ends of the curve may well save lives.  Imagine how bad the <25 bars would be if <25’s weren’t assessed either?  There’s plenty of suggestions on the table of how the left hand side could be improved that target the reasons why it’s so bad (restrictions on cars, occupancy driving hours etc to manage risk and black boxes to manage behavior), why are you specifically adverse to suggestions to target a scheme at the other end of the curve that targets teh likely causes of those issues?

I don’t intend to be driving whe  I am 80.

So why argue so viscerally that people who do should be assessed to see whether they are still competent and capable?

I think a lot of the collisions that the elderly are involved in are low speed ones, hitting things like street furniture and parked cars, and are not reported (and in some cases not even noticed by the driver).

I’m sure this is true – way back up the thread I mentioned all the damage to my mother’s car before we disabled it. A few months back when I was out on the bike I saw some old guy who barely get into his car pull round in the road and scraps the car opposite. Clearly completely unaware he’d done it.

It’s not just deaths that are relevant.

My work colleague got a call from the police informing him that they’d stopped his dad at the roadside as he was driving erratically at 2am and didn’t know where he was going when questioned. His dad still refused to give up driving.

No police action to stop him.  mad.

As for people saying “just take away your parents’ keys”, the child has no right to do this. It’s basically theft, you’re relying on the parent being unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

@thecaptain I think theres a point where you have a moral obligation to do this though.  We tried getting the doctor to do it, but they’re highly resistant as they don’t want to lose the trust of the patient.  Look at all the caveats in the GMC advice – very easy for them to avoid the difficult conversation.

https://www.olderdrivers.org.uk/families/how-doctors-can-help/

I can’t believe the arguments here.  You clearly cannot rely on self regulation nor on a requiring a specific referral. If everyone has the same test theres no stigma or resistance (a doctor referring for a test they’re pretty certain the subject is going to fail is really no different to them notifying DVLA and has the same issues of patient avoiding diagnosis)

We need better rural transport but moving somewhere busier would ensure that there’s a shorter wait when the inevitable ambulance request is made. A rural lifestyle choice is not usually compatible with good emergency medical outcomes

Doesn’t mean I have to like it though ?

(FWIW I’m currently just a few hundred metres from our local hospital, though I was here before it was).

currently having both sets of parents (in their 70s) living in areas which are just about served by public transport but not well enough to be convenient but also both having all their bedrooms and toilets upstairs – neither seems to be thinking ahead that ground floor living would be more sensible, yet I recall both scoffing at their own parents and in-laws for not wanting to move once their mobility started to go…

I think you’ve described most peoples’ parents here, certainly mine. In their 80s, m dad has Alzheimers and my mum basically took away the car keys when he started going out in the car and forgetting where he was. At that point he seemed to be able to drive competently but became disoriented. Now they are in a house with upstairs bathroom and bedrooms. My mum says she is willing to move but has imposed such a list of criteria that essentially it will be impossible to find somewhere. I hope that when the time comes I will be more pragmatic, but i’m not betting on it.

As for people saying “just take away your parents’ keys”, the child has no right to do this. It’s basically theft, you’re relying on the parent being unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

I was involved in doing this with my grandfather. He drove me to Manchester airport to drop off my parents as they moved abroad. I was shocked how bad his driving was, as was my mum. While my mum and uncles all hatched a plan on the phone I drove him home. The next morning he was at GP who was a family friend and as a professional my grandpa (a nurse) had respect for. The GP basically took his keys off him there and then, I took the car directly from GP that afternoon and met my uncle at a second hand car place and sold it.
You just have to do what you have to do.

I am arguing that a significant minority of all drivers are dangerous due to recklessness , speeding and impatience.

Target these and you would save many more lives.

Last time I drove on the no overtaking section  of the A515 no overtaking section at the speed limit I got over taken by a Range Rover. They could not tell if the road was clear.

Anecdotes prove nothing.

Agreed it’s ‘all’ crap drivers, not either or. But there’s two clear demographics who are responsible for a lot of incidents – seems sensible to start with young and old drivers for the biggest win…

Is there an FAI for every fatal motor crash and, if not, what are the qualifying criteria?

I am arguing that a significant minority of all drivers are dangerous due to recklessness , speeding and impatience.

Target these and you would save many more lives.

1. Its not an either/or.

2. A FAI/Inquest can only answer questions about how to prevent the same/similar circumstances recurring.   If the SoS wants to overhaul licensing and enforcement they can proactively do that anytime, but given they probably won’t it will need Sheriffs and Coroners to push them to do something in very specific areas to fix very specific circumstances.

3. Some of the people who drive like that say things like “I’m much safer than old Dorris across the road, if she’s allowed to drive why cant I”.

Apologies for my English centric lack of knowledge but is an FAI the same as a coroners inquest?

Edit – ignore me, Google shows they are specific and not usually used for the majority of RTC deaths.

I am arguing that a significant minority of all drivers are dangerous due to recklessness , speeding and impatience.

And I’m arguing, that the risk posed by some people at either end of that curve is 4x higher than that.

Is there a threshold for the number of speed cameras you think there needs to be before it’s reasonable to call for a better driving test system?

Target these and you would save many more lives.

Target any cause of accidents and you could do the same thing.  It’s pretty much the definition of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I agree that just because this might make a massive dent in the 160+ KSI per 10^9 miles doesn’t preclude doing something about the 40KSI per 10^9 miles.  Because there’s two ways to look at that, either the elderly are involved in the same levels of drink, drugs, swiping tinder, and road racing as everyone else, or there are different issues that need different solutions.

Last time I drove on the no overtaking section  of the A515 no overtaking section at the speed limit I got over taken by a Range Rover. They could not tell if the road was clear.

Anecdotes prove nothing.

Satire?

Just make dashcams compulsory and have random driving checks on the footage.

So of the car centric on here who need 600bhp  cars might learn something .

Apologies for my English centric lack of knowledge but is an FAI the same as a coroners inquest?

No need to apologise – I doubt most Scots can tell you either!

They serve a similar sort of purpose, but we don’t routinely have Coroners inquests in Scotland (there are no Coroners!).  All deaths in Scotland are reviewed by the Procurator Fiscal (COPFS).  They decided if it needs further investigation, if a Port Mortem is needed, and if a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) is warranted.  Most FAIs are actually held because the law says they must not because there is actually anything significant to learn.  All deaths in custody (police or prison), and any workplace deaths automatically get FAI’s.  Most ordinary accidents don’t.  Most road traffic collisions don’t.  So for a FAI to be held for a RTC, someone at COPFS needs to think there is an important issue about the death that is not clear or lesson that can be learned from it.  Interestingly this case had the Crown represented twice by two opposing view points – the COPFS representing essentially the Scottish state (arguing for change), and the Advocate General representing basically Whitehall (arguing for a status quo).

Because we don’t have Coroners, and they are far less common they are presided over by Sheriffs (who on other days will be doing Civil or Criminal cases – so not dealing with death every day).  Sheriffs are a similar level of Judge to a County Court Judge.  I don’t know which system is better.  However both have the power to make recommendations to prevent repeats – I don’t know if Whitehall listen to either of them.

Interesting then, I think all English road deaths go to a coroner, who can make recommendations to try and avoid a repeat.

My mum says she is willing to move but has imposed such a list of criteria that essentially it will be impossible to find somewhere. I hope that when the time comes I will be more pragmatic, but i’m not betting on it.

@DrJ

Likewise – this is almost another thread really, After my Dad died we started encouraging my mum to look for somewhere a) smaller, with much less garden b)in a village where she could walk to the shops.  But it became evident over the next year when she’d not managed to look at a single property (or deal with any of the admin of my dads’ death) that she also had dementia and was some way beyond being able to deal with decision making, let alone a move.

The in laws were sounding really positive – they live way down a singletrack lane in Herefordshire and were making noises about moving to Malvern or Ledbury.  But a few years on and nothing had happened and it’s becoming an issue  and it’s clearly too late.

I already live in a city with everything in walking distance (and I’m not going to change that) but I think you need to move into your ‘final home’ much earlier than most people think.  You need to do it when you’ve got the energy to make it yours and do any work to it.  If you wait until you actually *need* to move it’s too late for that.  So *personally* I think you need to be moving to somewhere you can live comfortably without a car, and with reduced personal mobility not much later than 70. 75 at the latest.

Hopefully we’ll all being going strong much longer than that.  But you don’t know until it hits and then it’s too late.

Just make dashcams compulsory and have random driving checks on the footage.

That seems like considerably more work than just having annual / every 5 years retests once you’re over 60 (or whatever age you set) and it would only show the aftermath of any incident.

Regular retests would prevent the dangerous / incompetent / medically impaired driver from getting behind the wheel and causing the chaos on the first place.

I think you need to move into your ‘final home’ much earlier than most people think

very much this. I’m aware of the ticking clock and I’m 55, in a house that I certainly don’t want to grow old in. Of course not having children to bale me out focusses the mind somewhat. FiL just sailed blithely on oblivious to the problems he was dumping on us (mostly my wife), my parents slightly better but still a level of denial.

Regular retests would prevent the dangerous / incompetent / medically impaired driver from getting behind the wheel and causing the chaos on the first place.

Some of the evidence at the FAI wasn’t convinced that such a retest would actually spot someone who was losing the plot, whereas a short cognitive assessment may.  Thats a little odd, and counter intuitive but i guess if you test on driving ability alone then so long as someone doesn’t make mistakes you pass them but the scenario that might force a mistake may not arise during the test.  Many medical impairments would not show on a test because they are variable – on a good day you may be fine.

I’m sure Specsavers etc would happily encourage DVLA to require eye tests every 2 yrs for glasses wearers and 5 yrs for those who don’t and could easily handle some extra test like a reaction time test etc.  It could all be very simple – turn up with your driving license and the optician records the outcome immediately.

I suspect the problem with a “retest” is more complex- what do you do with someone that fails?  Is their license revoked immediately?  Can they retake the test again ASAP?   For all the many people who argue that retests should be mandatory (here or elsewhere) – very few of them ever voluntarily go and have someone review their driving.  My wife does for work and she says its quite interesting watching her colleagues both getting anxious going to and then their perceptions coming back from their assessments – but there is no actual impact there just some “coaching” on how to be a better driver.  Some take it on the chin and say fair comment, some shrug it off, and some believe the instructor is a “jumped up traffic warden nazi who obviously was just too short and fat to get in the police” (direct quote!).

“fussing over” the preventable circumstances that lead to the death of a toddler on the pavement is quite an interesting characterisation

I am arguing that a significant minority of all drivers are dangerous due to recklessness , speeding and impatience.

Target these and you would save many more lives.

The argument that “bad things aren’t important because there are other bad things” should have a Law or a Razor or a Your Logical Fallacy Is or something attached to it. It crops up on here semi-regularly, it’s the forum equivalent of “why aren’t you out there catching real criminals?

I got into a debate recently with an older driver who was adamant that the A road out of town was a 40mph limit throughout. She was convinced that there were signs painted on the roadway advising that there was a 40mph limit and that as there was no NSL signpost after then it applied all the way to the next town.

There are no 40mph signs. There are huge SLOW markings on the entry to bends.

So it’s 60 then?

10 deaths on the roads vs. 5000 for all reasons, but the figures also show that the elderly are only involved in a small proportion of those 10. We’re looking at tiny numbers.

Isn’t this self-fulfilling? The incidence of accidents in the over-120s is zero.

The argument that “bad things aren’t important because there are other bad things” should have a Law or a Razor or a Your Logical Fallacy Is or something attached to it. It crops up on here semi-regularly, it’s the forum equivalent of “why aren’t you out there catching real criminals?

Whataboutism, no?

So the proposal is that you are going to retest all people with a driving license every five years?

There are allegedly 50 million people with a driving license that’s 10 million retests every year.

The lower estimate for driving license holders is about 33 million. Thats 6.6 million retests.

That’s doable?

I see we’ve moved onto ‘improving this isn’t instantly straightforward so let’s not bother’.

There are about 1.6 million tests anually and its hard get a test slot.

It’s not a instant fix to produce another 5 to 8.4 million tests anually.

Its common sense not anything else?

It’s not a instant fix to produce another 5 to 8.4 million tests anually.

Its common sense not anything else?

Which is why the recommendation was to focus it onto a relatively small number of people at a point in their life where their risk profile starts to increase.

It’s almost like the sheriff at the FAI did some thinking about it.

And if I have my contacts in. . . ? I can see the requirements for traffic policing requiring certifying on opthalmic equipment to be competent at the their jobs (or a lot of trips in police cars back to an eye-testing station. (To be clear I am not against a requirment for corrective vision aids to be stated on the licence but the detail will be difficult for the underfunded/manned enforcement authority).

Eyesight and medical problems aren’t an area of police expertise. BITD we could carry out a test in good daylight on a British Standard number plate at a distance appropriate to the letter height. We couldn’t run that test in the dark, for example, it was that simple.

Police can make reports to the DVLA Medical Branch for further enquiries, as can GPs. GPs can make the referral without their patient’s permission if serious harm to anyone is an over-riding concern

That’s doable?

Tomorrow? Of course not. Eventually? We (as a species) went from Project Mercury to walking on the moon inside of ten years. The first manned flight was 190something, 60 years ago. Yet training people to be driving evaluators isn’t doable?

The only reason the infrastructure isn’t there is because it doesn’t need to be, there’s no call for it. A six week waiting list for a test is perfectly fine because it’s not like it’ll come to people as a surprise. You don’t scale for extraordinary load. We didn’t have people providing Speed Awareness Courses, until we did.

“jumped up traffic warden nazi who obviously was just too short and fat to get in the police” (direct quote!).

That’s well into FAFO territory and the speaker is all ready demonstrating the wrong attitude to driving and should maybe take a rest from such a stressfull activity.