An 86 year old man has today killed 8 people, and left another 15 fighting for their lives in Intensive Care, after mistakenly hitting the accelerator pedal instead of his brake. He careered through a bustling market place at speeds of over 70mph for a quarter of a mile before finally coming to a halt. So this raises the question, should the elderly have to resit their tests? Or would this be an infringement of his civil rights and a form of age discrimination?
Everyone is different - one chap I know is 67 next month, and I'd trust him to drive me anywhere without the need to take another test... and he drives thousands of miles a year, given he's a semi retired courier.
You have to draw the line somewhere, so maybe a review of a persons driving would be a good idea after a certain age; I'm no doctor, so wouldn't like to define where that line should be without their advice.
You could also suggest that maybe the minimum age for taking a driving test should be raised, and that the power be limited on all young drivers cars, if you want to be picky...
My point?
How many stories like the one above to you do you hear of everyday, for example; it's not even something which has happened in the UK, is it?
How about this one for a comparison, which actually occured this week in the UK:
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"Five young people have been killed after a car plunged 40ft from a bridge in Leeds.
The Vauxhall Cavalier was seen driving at speed before it clipped a kerb, smashed through bollards and cleared a set of railings as it flipped upside down and crashed on to the carriageway below.
Fire Officer Chris Rose, who was at the scene, said: "When we got there it was literally pancaked. It was very nasty.
"If you could imagine where the windows are on a car, they just weren't there any more.
"It was crushed right down to the bottom of the windows."
Police say those who died in the crash in the city centre were between 18 years old and their mid-20s.
The victims, two men and three women, have not been formally identified.
Chief Inspector Peter Nicholson, commander of Leeds police, said: "I think we need to focus on the fact that five young lives have been tragically lost this morning.
"The fact that these five young Leeds residents have died in this accident is so terribly tragic I can't think of any worse circumstances."
The accident happened at 1.50am.
The car was travelling from the Sheepscar interchange along Claypit Lane towards the A58 inner ring road when it fell from the bridge at an exit road which leads from the A64.
Chief Insp Nicholson said the car was not being pursued by the police.
He added it was too early to say whether or not it was stolen."
Going by the above examples, and your logic, we ought to introduce retesting on a regular basis for both the over 65s and the under 25s?
Or should we introduce it for all drivers... or maybe we should just leave the system as it is, and accept that by their very nature, cars can be dangerous, whatever the age of the driver - you could be a blue eyed boy on the day of your retest... but just like a car could develop a potentially fatal fault the minute it leaves the MOT station, so can humans.
So we end up with hundreds of thousands of people who drive purely to pass a test????
IMHO a review at the age of retirement (i.e medical and possibly some sort of minor theory test) then further reviews every 5 years.
The driving test should be more focused on car control as well, reversing around a corner is not as important as recovering from a slide or knowing when you have less/more grip available to you.
That's what we have now. If we re-tested people it'd take the people off the road who are incapable of changing their driving style for half an hour to pass their test. I'd limit it to two tries every six months if they fail. Do you know anyone who took more than two tries on their test that's a decent driver?
Why pick out just the old people? They may drive slowly and erratically, but kevs drive quickly and erratically. Which is more dangerous?
You'd lose the ones incapable of changing. I'd guess about 10-20% of the people who took it would fail. It'd make the roads less congested for the rest of us.
I know a bloke who was driven around a circuit by Stirling Moss. He was cracking on round a corner, and said "It doesn't really matter what you do with the steering wheel, it's all to do with your feet", and proceeded to demonstrate by flinging the steering wheel around whilst carrying on round the corner :P.
I've always wondered why the penalty for having no insurance is much cheaper than getting insurance in the first place. It's a no lose situation really. If you don't get caught you save money and if you get caught you save slightly less money. At worst you can get points on the licence you probably don't have anyway.
BTW I have a licence and I'm insured in case you were wondering.
:: I got hit last November by an uninsured minicab driver :: doing about 45 in a 20 zone, round a bend, in the rain :: guess what? :: he says he can't afford to pay the costs and they told him he would :: have to pay us £5 a week :: it doesn't;t take a genius to figure out that it will take him years :: and years to pay it off
Has he still got a minicab? Pop round and set fire to it. Or if he hasn't, torch his house instead. Then lets see him try to claim for his stuff on his non-existent contents insurance...
he wrote his car off in the smash and then had the cheek to say that his mate would sort it out and not to call the police or nothing well, it's a company van, with refrigeration, that was going in for it's service that day I wonder how he was going to get out of that one? and seeing as we blocked the road up for about 20 minutes it wasn;t as if no one had seen it or twitched curtains to note what was going on pity the old bill didn't turn up there and then when I phoned I should have said I had a broken leg or something. seeing as I couldn't get out of the van and had to climb out the window
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