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Elderly Drivers

21 Mar 2012

The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) has reported that it wants elderly drivers caught speeding and breaking other traffic laws to go on training courses.

This comes at a time when the number of over 70's on our roads has exceeded 6 million.

PACTS is concerned that with no mandatory retesting, elderly drivers may be continuing to drive when becoming increasingly unsafe to do so.

The system for checking the fitness to drive of any driver can be haphazard. There is an obligation on all drivers to notify the DVLA of a medical condition that may affect that person's ability to drive safely, but in terms simply of becoming older, no such notification is expected.

What this means is that elderly drivers are unlikely to come to the attention of the DVLA unless an accident has occurred or possibly a near miss. Where the police attend, they do have the option of notifying the DVLA by completing a fairly short questionnaire. The danger with this is that the police are not medical experts and in one case Davenport Lyons' Philip Somarakis had, a police officer described an elderly client of his as "confused" (because there was a box on the form with the word "confused" next to it, with the option to tick it) where in fact his client was fatigued - he had driven quite a distance and accepted he was perhaps a little tired. This led to Philip's client being required to undergo a medical (which he passed) and at one point was told he had to undergo an on-road driving assessment, until Philip intervened.

There is a balance to be struck between the complete retesting of the elderly and identifying those older drivers who are too frail to drive. In many cases the car is an important lifeline and understandably people don't want to give up driving licences easily.

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