Could this lead to tougher tests for older drivers

And if I have my contacts in. . . ?

 the conversation at the roadside goes something like this:

cop: your license says you need glasses
driver: yeah I’m wearing contacts
cop: can you read the numberplate on the [red fiesta]
driver: [AB12CDE]

and assuming it’s correct then nothing further happens BUT if it goes

cop: your license says you need glasses
driver: yeah I forgot them

then you find yourself in bother

My in-laws moved to a more rural location after retiring, ten miles in any direction to reach a town and more than triple that to the hospital. They will not move, and get quite annoyed when asked about moving closer to a town. Yet they moan about the fuel oil prices, the shared waste water pump, the state of the roads, the terrible state of driving, too many agricultural vehicles on the road, getting snowed in, etc, etc. All the negatives of living in the country yet they chose to live there and it’s only getting harder for them to maintain the big garden and are needing more frequent visits to the hospital.

They’re stubborn and it will be us that will be making weekly 150 mile round trips, as well as one day having to take their car keys off them. But they’re not alone, in the tiny village they live in, most folks are retired.

I can only see this as a growing issue.

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.

if he worked for my wife he wouldn’t be there – this is already quite far down the list of things he’s done wrong.  His own boss just laughs it off and says “you know what he’s like”.    But the point was that as we all know people don’t take kindly to having their driving criticised – lots of voices lobbying for retests but few actually voluntarily lining up to have someone critique them every few years.

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?

41m licence holders.
6m of them over 70.

Given that over-70’s need to apply for their licence renewal online (self-certifying) every 3 years anyway, surely it’s not too much to add a reactions test, a quick Highway Code test into there as well? It’s not 10m retests, it’d be 6m but spread over 3 years so 2m a year which is exactly what the licence renewal system is at the moment anyway.

Fail the online test, get referred to an actual person to double check it and do a physical driving test.

Hell, if I have to take a reactions test every time I hire a Lime bike at 10pm, I’m fairly sure an online renewals process can add a short questionnaire into the system.

Plus it’d be phased in anyway, it’s not like 2m people would all turn up at the test centre on day 1!

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

That’s not dissimilar to the people who go on Speed Awareness Courses (and yes, I have done one, I got done at 34 in a 30 zone, accelerating too fast out of the village onto the NSL road, a camera van at the far end caught me going from the 30 zone into the NSL zone at 34, there was no arguing about it, it was purely my fault).

Probably 2/3rds the people on the course were on at least their 2nd one. They regarded it as a bit of a ballache, something to sit through. The remaining 1/3rd (inc me) were on their first. Some (inc me) took it as it was intended and actually the guys running it were pretty decent. Some (a couple) made it their mission to be as obnoxious, disruptive and twatty as possible. Smart arse comments, petty whataboutery and then, right at the very end, just as everyone was getting ready to go home, the instructor said “any questions or comments?” and one guy went off on one and you could hear the whole room just sigh and go “FFS, we were literally about to leave and now look what you’ve done!”