“A red Peugeot was reported to be driving the wrong way on the London-bound carriageway of the A13.”

This happened on Monday and when it turned out that the driver was in her eighties the knee-jerk reaction was immediately that older people should not be driving. Why is it that one incident triggers an insistence that “Something should be done” – implying a change in the law? Now that particular driver managed to go the wrong way in broad daylight – looks like time to take her off the roads. I quote below from an article by the BBC – click here to read it. The Department for Transport (DfT) says there is no evidence older drivers are more likely to cause an accident, and it has no plans to restrict licensing or mandate extra training on the basis of age.

• Drivers under the age of 20 have more fatal accidents than drivers over 75
• Over 70s can struggle with high-speed junctions and slip roads
• There is some evidence drivers over 80 are at increased risk

. . . The young-versus-old driver data is used by a number of road safety charities to argue elderly drivers don’t pose the greatest danger behind the wheel. “There’s a stat that young drivers under the age of 24 have twice as many crashes as you’d expect, given the numbers on the road, and older drivers have half as many as you’d expect, given the number on the road,” says Neil Greig, director of policy and research at the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM).

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