Quote Originally Posted by mickd1961 View Post
How many times do you see or hear of a fatal accident being caused by an older driver compared to a younger driver?

Back in 1981, my wife’s brother John killed himsflf ( aged 17 ) and put some girl he’d met literally for the first time minutes earlier, in a wheelchair for life after crashing his minivan on a country lane.

Kets and a few other locals will know Wassell Grove, right by Old Halesownian’s rugby club, 43 years later you can still see the scars on the oak tree he hit.

I drove like an idiot in my ****s and 20’s and even well after that but I now take a lot of care and have gone quite a long time without a speeding ticket.

I read with interest that there’s a massive backlog in driving tests for our younger hopefuls due to a lack of examiners, I think we can breath easy, our governments haven’t the wit to organise this particular p I s s up in a brewery.

I wonder how many on here will, like myself, admit they’d probably fail the theory exam?

I’m pretty sure I would.

However, that doesn’t limit my/our actual driving ability and the ability to control a car safely.

I’d rather have a 70 year old heart surgeon who’s been doing the job for 40 years but who hasn’t read the manual recently than the 30 year old surgeon just out of medical school.

You get my drift I assume?
Totally understand what you're saying and am in total agreement with you regarding younger drivers being the ones who cause the vast majority of major accidents, mostly due to them driving dangerously and driving too fast. At that age maybe too many think they are invincible, take risks because they don't have the experience to know better and put others in danger because they only think of themselves.

All I am saying is that, whilst I wouldn't support the idea of compulsory re-tests after 65, I do think that there are becoming issues with the increasing numbers of elderly drivers on the roads who do not acknowledge the deterioration in their abilities.

At the end of the day though, until the data around the numbers of road accidents and percentage of serious incidents in relation to age is more closely examined, it is impossible to put forward any corrective measures.

Tbh, I am more concerned with how easy it seems for those who shouldn't be behind a wheel in the first place to continue to do so even with previous convictions and the reduction in the numbers of police on our roads to help monitor this is surely a big factor alongside too much leniency from courts. Last year my son in law lost several members of his close family due to an uninsured and drugged up driver in an untaxed car with previous convictions for the same crashing into them whilst doing 90 mph in a 30 mph zone. The risible sentence he got for killing 3 people led to a social media campaign that attracted thousands of signatures to review the case and award a far heavier prison term.