Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport. Cars are dangerous, and if you can't see clearly, you're obviously not fit to drive. It's true that there will be negative impacts on people who will fail the eye tests, and we should be compassionate, but ultimately those people aren't safe behind the wheel, and put other peoples lives at risk, not just their own.
The practical details of implementing this are important - is the eye test done at an ordinary optician/optometrist's shop? How are the results going to be submitted to DVLA, etc.? What protections will be in place to prevent people from shopping around for a dodgy optician (as people often do with cars and MOTs)?
I think this is a reasonable and practical step in the right direction. I accept that given the shortage of driving examiners it would be impossible to require re-testing of existing drivers in the foreseeable future, but as the article says, people already get eye tests frequently and often for free, so this is something that can be done without too much additional infrastructure.
A personal anecdote: my grandfather is in his 90s and is not at all fit to drive due to cataracts and various other issues, but he still does "short journeys" because it's convenient and he feels that it's necessary. The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by (though this is not at all universal). Most British towns and cities are very different from their US counterparts in this respect. My grandfather moved house relatively recently --in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age. The only thing that will stop him and others like him from putting people in danger is taking away his licence. He has been told by doctors, opticians and family members that he's not safe to drive, but in the absence of any enforcement he persists. I hope that this policy comes in before he or someone else gets hurt.
You can anonymously report your concerns to the DVLA at [1]. Select "driver's medical". I had to do this with an elderly family member who refused to stop driving despite being manifestly physically and cognitively incapable. Its a difficult call but you may be saving someone's life.
Thank you for this. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was not possible to raise these concerns with DVLA anonymously.
Do you know what the process that follows this looks like? Are they just asked to self-certify again? Are they told that someone has reported them (even if they aren't told who it was)?
From memory, and from the one time I did it about three years ago: they get a letter saying that the DVLA has reason to believe that they are unfit to drive and that they must pass a medical examination in order to keep their licence. I don't believe the letter says that they've been reported.
And to be clear: when I said "anonymously" I meant from the pov of the person being reported. The DVLA requires some basic details of the person making the report, but they're definitely not disclosed to the subject.
What happens after this? Even if they lose their license, what happens to their vehicles? I ask in the context that many people drive without licenses.
> My grandfather moved house relatively recently -- in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age.
On the other hand, my grandfather was the exact opposite. He recognized that he would have to move from the country to the city in order to live in a place with adequate public transportation and easier access to medical care. Which he did, and he lived in his own home until he passed away. Likewise, in my university days, I rented a floor in an elderly woman's house. It allowed her to remain independent in a community where she had social connections (e.g. friends and church), health care was easy to access, and everything she needed was within walking distance. To many, renting part of their house out would be unthinkable, but the alternative would be living in a place where everyone is car dependent.
Unfortunately, some people aren't planning with their current or future needs in mind. Or they are unwilling to make compromises in order to address those needs.
The only solution to people driving is viable alternatives to driving.
Under the previous Conservative government, half of UK bus routes ( ~8,000 ) were cancelled[1]. HS2 high speed train route phase 2 the extensions from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds - which would move freight as well as people, freeing up space on local train lines for better passenger transport - was cancelled[2]. Phase 1 of it was due to be opened in 2026-2033 timeframe but was bungled now has no planned opening time, and Reform are calling to scrap that, too. Local council budgets were reduced[3] under the austerity measures, including one consequence of 40% less transport spending. The West Coast mainline was sold from VirginRail to Italy's TrenItalia in 2019[4] (Deutsche Bahn, French SNCF and Dutch Nederlandse Spoorwegen own most of the other UK railways) although this government is bringing Rail them back into public ownership.
And Reform are promising to remove bike lanes, and scrap Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to let cars use residental roads as through-roads again[5][6].
The UK doesn't have it as bad as the USA - but that's not for lack of trying to make car the only way to move.
To have none at all, yes, it would have to be very remote.
To have very limited public transport, then lots of places outside big cities.
I just dropped by daughter off at a friend's house. 4 minutes by car, 40 minutes by bus. Busses here are infrequent and unreliable. You need to take a bus to get to a train if you are going a longer distance.
This is in a town with a population of about 20 thousand in Cheshire.
Car drivers are always like this, everywhere. Even when I was a little kid, last century, it's a village school, every pupil lives in the same mile or so radius and yet loads of them get picked up in a car.
I now live in a big city but when I walk to the office it's just before school starts, so I see that yeah at first I'm passing kids happily walking with parents but just outside the school it's a jam of idiots who "just quickly" are here to drop the child from a car. The contrast in a few weeks when school is closed will be dramatic, that street is dead, but I bet every one of those parents thinks of it as a "busy road, they ought to do something about that" while not remembering that it's busy because of them.
The good news is that, generally, the places most affordable are the places that have public transportation. Affordability is gained through density (not only in direct housing concerns, but also things like access to jobs), and density is also conducive to public transpiration.
The places where public transportation isn't normally found are the places where the average Joe wouldn't have a hope in hell of being able to afford to live there (affluent suburbs, rural areas, etc.) anyway.
One of my elderly uncles was in this position, but he was a bit more responsible about it than your grandfather. His way to solve it was like this: he sold his car at a discount to someone else in the same building on the condition that when he needs transport they'll drive him. It works out well, he only uses it when he absolutely has to and the rest of the time he either walks or has stuff delivered. It was a painful decision for him but in the end it worked out well (and I'm the backup driver but I'm about 100 km away from where he lives so it would always take me at least an hour to get there).
> Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport. Cars are dangerous, and if you can't see clearly, you're obviously not fit to drive. It's true that there will be negative impacts on people who will fail the eye tests, and we should be compassionate, but ultimately those people aren't safe behind the wheel, and put other peoples lives at risk, not just their own.
This is an absurd take. I grew up in a town of ~60,000 people in the UK. The public transport, was, and _still_ is terrible. To get to the nearby shopping center which was the only place with bowling and a movie theatre, and any shops that weren't charity shops involved 2 trains and a bus taking about an hour and a half. A drive would be 20 minutes and a negotiation with my parents to give me a lift.
Nowadays my mother is in her 70s and lives in this same town, and drives into the countryside every day to take her mental health walks. Without this, she probably wouldn't be here today. Taking her car away from her would be giving her a death sentence to rot at home on a council estate that she hates living in.
> The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by
I mean this simply isn't true. You must live in London or a bubble.
Maybe I should have snipped the first part of the paragraph, but no absolutely not. If you're unfit to drive you should have your license taken away.
I was commenting primarily on the suggestion that all these old people who rely on their vehicles will suddenly be able to use a functional public transport system - allowing them to get around freely. This is simply not true outside of London.
> Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport.
My parents live somewhere that has two buses a week. They could get to the nearest city, then come back two hours later. If they miss the return bus they'd have to wait until next week.
A lot of these things sound great until you actually look at the reality.
The shift from male to female is fascinating. In younger drivers accidents are disproportionately male, I guess due to high testosterone buffoonery but in older drivers it's disproportionately female. My personal observation is that older male drivers are much more slow and less confident whereas females tend to be overly confident and driving way too fast, especially the ones in huge cars.
According to this women become more dangerous than male 17-24 year old drivers only when they reach 80+ whereas for men they only become more dangerous than female 17-24 year old drivers at 86+.
I actually think more should be done about younger drivers than older.
> The shift from male to female is fascinating. In younger drivers accidents are disproportionately male, I guess due to high testosterone buffoonery but in older drivers it's disproportionately female.
When you correct for population size, I think you’ll see that difference largely, if not completely, goes away. There are more women than men in the UK from age 50 upwards (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2025/)
One reason there are more females in accidents at the oldest ages is because the males are dead. In the UK, the average life expectancy for a female is 82.9 vs 77.9 for men, a 5-year gap.
US has token eye exams at the BMV. I've never seen or heard anyone fail.
During such a test that I could barely read anything, and afterwards realized I could not read most roadsigns--having relied too much on map apps. A visit to the eye doctor confirmed I shouldn't be driving, so I ordered glasses that same day.
Reporting unsafe drivers in my state is not anonymous. And at one point I had to tell a family member that if I found out they were still driving that I'd report them. (They had 3 accidents in 2 years, claiming it's all the computers in the cars.)
My mother completely stopped driving in her early 70s... thank god for the Swiss medical driving fitness test! (now at 75 instead of 70?) she was perfectly fine with it, online food order+delivery had become available, and her immediate neighbors were loving people helping her whenever I+siblings were not easily available.
A friend of mine who was cycling in his 60s got hit by a driver in his 80s, taking his regular route to church, but apparently not very observantly. The cyclist was thankfully able to recover.
Unfortunately what is needed are tests of driving ability. Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It is unfortunate that things like this become politically impossible because older people are one of the most reliable voting groups out there.
I will always be bitter that older voters chose Brexit by a large margin, in opposition to the younger voters who will actually be around to feel its long term effects. Not taking that into account in voting feels wrong but there’s no politically palatable way of addressing it.
This assumes parents would vote in the interests of future adults. In my experience, parents are quite happy to vote against future adults, even their own. Housing policy is the most obvious example.
Actually the US maintains a Senate and Electoral College because of slavery, and refuses to abolish them for (supposedly) any and every other reason. These systems allow whites in less populous states to exercise outsized power.
The movie was a satire, the novel was earnest. If you arent willing to sacrifice everything for democracy, then why should you have a voice? I am with Heinlein 100% here.
Having since read more about the author I'm pretty sure you're right the novel was earnest, but honestly it read as excellent satire when I didn't know it wasn't meant to be (and I read it prior to seeing the movie). Would recommend.
It's worth noting that in the book "service" is heavily implied to be primarily military in nature yet Heinlein purported years after the fact that in the book's canon "95 percent" of citizen service was actually civil. I think it's debatable whether or not this was his intention all along or a retcon to fit his more, ahem, liberal worldview that emerged as he aged.
I also loved Verhoeven's film adaptation but he straight up admitted that he didn't finish the book before making the film, which was itself based on a Neumeier (of "Robocop" fame) script called "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7" that bore only superficial resemblance to the book. He made the same mistake as many others in casting the book as fascist merely because of its militaristic elements when it's clearly not. On top of lacking many essential elements of fascism (a dictator, a directed economy, suppression of political dissent, etc) there are also several spots that veer into philosophical treatise to espouse the opposite. The flashback scene involving Rico's professor talking about how a society is obligated to raise its children correctly (and how it's society's failure if they end up delinquent) is a perfect example - "the system is the problem" hardly reads as far-right.
This is all to say that I think Heinlein was more interested in exploring a concept of reciprocal responsibility between a citizenry and its government. The militaristic aspects of the novel as regards a distant, dehumanized enemy and the dominance of the fight over all other aspects of life are far more alarming in my opinion.
I think people should be able to get up to 3 votes:
1. Veteran
2. Property ownership
3. Having children.
If you dont hit 1 of those criteria, you dont get a vote. You need skin in the game. Letting anyone vote is why “tax someone else, give me things” is such a popular platform. Politicians should have to hit maybe 2 out of 3.
Property ownership seems like a pretty transparent way to disenfranchise the poor. In what way does a renter not have “skin in the game” compared to a homeowner?
Having children? Why not consider instead: teacher, healthcare professional, municipal worker, civil engineer, volunteer ...and all of the many other roles that make society. Being a parent isn't the only indicator of caring for others.
I am none of these. I'm in my late 50's and have been paying income tax since I was 16. Sure, rescind my voting rights ... I'd like all my 40+ years taxes back please then.
The book does address that, in that the federal service is universally available (and even the blind, deaf, or crippled would spend their time performing some job, even if it eas "counting the hairs on a caterpillar by feel".
You're right about military eligibility, but also that you shouldn't make calls for a nation which you will never see. Doubly so if one does not have children. No skin in the game, no alignment of incentives, no moral right to choose.
Even moreso when you consider basically the whole generation relies on leeching off the young and have continued to capture an ever-increasing proportion of public spending across the western world despite owning an outsized proportion of both real estate and wealth overall.
You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous. Most of them only stop driving when they cause an accident. Sometimes its a serious one.
There are already some measures for young people, like the 6 point thing. Maybe there could be more. Doesn't change the facts about dangerous OAP drivers
They also get less likely to commit crime, but that’s not how we gauge risk. We don’t generally say “that teenager’s crime risk is going down so they are less risky than that geriatric whose crime risk is fairly constant.” Risk probability is usually the area under a hazard rate curve.
Over a long enough interval, that reduction in risk would be important. So what is the appropriate time interval for these risk assessments?
Yes - I’ve seen the pricing algorithms at several large insurers. Massive surcharges for young people 16-25, rates level out 30-55, and then slowly start to go back up, but it’s a slow increase compared to the young ones.
AIUI, that's a misleading figure, because the elderly self-correct, in awareness of the greater difficulty, by driving a lot less, so the greater danger is masked in the per-unit-time accident rate.
So, in theory, policy could appropriately adjust for this dynamic by only requiring the test of over-70s driving more than X miles/year, but that adds hassle to enforcement.
As European, that has lived across multiple countries, that only applies to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Also healthy enough to be able to walk stairs, as very few places care about people with disabilities, or carrying stuff that is a pain to transport across stairways.
People visit the touristic centre of the main cities and assume we all enjoy nice public transport systems.
The point is that Europe is not much better when one goes outside the regional capitals of each state, or district, depending on how each country is organised.
Most towns and villages are also not great examples of infrastructure, especially in the southern countries.
I love the accessibility and diversity of large city living in the US, but it is definitely the exception to the rule. The US is hoping for technological breakthroughs in self driving electric cars to bail us out from the sprawl we've created.
> to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Which is also, to some extent, the reality in the US as well. Some number of the "city centers" have better public transport and/or walk-ability [1] available than what is available just outside those city centers.
One big difference in the US is the massive land area difference as compared to Europe means there is a huge amount more land area (and therefore population) with little to no public transport or walk-ability available and a car becomes mandatory rather than optional in those areas.
[1] It's not perfect, I'm sure there are plenty of city centers in western states where even the city center itself is so spread out that walk-ability suffers and that a car tends to become more necessary.
Which is the same in small European towns and villages, there are only a couple of buses, many of which stop around 8 PM, and tend to occur once an hour in most cases, if not less.
Basic stuff like taking kids to school requires having a car, or being lucky to have some kind of Bus service collecting the kids, for some school levels, and doesn't cover stuff like taking them to other after school activities.
Want to go to the big commercial surfaces? They are all outside the town center and seldom have bus connections.
UK transport is much worse than the continent. London is fairly well served but elsewhere not so much, especially not the countryside. The trains are very expensive (even with an old person's railcard) and the buses are often irregular or non-existent in large areas of the countryside.
Well there's a big gap between something like London, a very dense city, and actual countryside. There's also a big variation in will. Where I grew up (Metroland, just beyond the end of the Metropolitan "underground" Line) the services are (other than the afore-mentioned London underground) abysmal because providing services costs money & people there want lower taxes. But where my mother lives today, near Bingley, there are enough buses that I get confused as to which one goes closest to her house when I visit.
The difference in London is also in large part because London was allowed to retain a unified transport system when Tories dismantled other systems because ideologically their position is the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will fix everything.
I am aware, having spent some time in Bristol and Cardiff, in various occasions.
That situation is very comparable to many places in the continent, some of them even worse.
Also here that are many small towns and villages that an hourly bus is already something, and naturally there aren't stops scattered all over the place, or worse, offer no protection from weather.
I’m an American and my vision, fully corrected, is right at the legal borderline to get a license without restrictions. I’ve never “failed” a vision exam at the DMV; one time the clerk even said, “good enough”. (Don’t worry, I never drive, I only keep my license up to date for serious emergencies).
A serious emergency isn't going to be helped by someone with very little driving experience. I don't follow your reasoning. If it was a serious emergency who would care if you had a license?
A police officer would. The penalty for an accident might be negligent driving.
The penalty for an accident without a license is, at minimum, driving without a license. You're also not likely to be covered by insurance without one either, even if you're not at fault.
People think about things differently. It may be that for OP, "but I don't have a license" would cause a second thought and waste time in an emergency. They may be self aware enough to head that off.
This is one of the strangest internet myths. Every single state in America will issue a photo ID which is fully equivalent to a drivers license for every purpose other than permitting you to drive.
Also, you don't need "Real ID" to fly no matter what they say. You don't even need a photo ID at all (although they'll force you to waste time if you don't have one. I found this out when I lost mine but still had to travel.)
I know it doesn’t work everywhere, but I’m happy there are services like Uber and Lyft when I get older. I could see myself using those services a lot when I am no longer able to drive.
This depends a lot on where you are. I've lived in York, Darlington, Leeds, London, Oxford, and Liverpool for decent periods and used buses in all of them regularly. Only Darlington was really unpleasant for buses - they were often every half an hour and if one came early and you missed it you would be left in the cold for ages without information.
Oxford was great (though cycling was even better); Leeds, Liverpool, and York were perfectly fine, with regular and reliable services; London's are famously efficient.
Antisocial behaviour isn't honestly that common in my experience, though I'm sure that varies by location. Had some aggro in London once, and again on a London night bus. The football special to the LNER stadium in York was properly boisterous, and quite threatening to the poor away-supporting family on the lower deck, but that at least carried a copper to make sure nothing stupid happened. Other than that, I've only ever really seen loud schoolchildren - who can be annoying but have never caused difficulty for anyone outside their group. I've honestly seen worse behaviour on the tube (and been the object of it on Cross Country Trains).
Nope, even best countries in the world with great public transport like Switzerland have tons of remote places basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
Guess what, mostly old folks live there and all this applies there. Its just not financially feasible to cover everybody. Proper full self driving should fix this, nothing less I am afraid.
Proper self driving is furthest away from being able to handle these cities as well, don't see these driving in Sicily before 2040.
Many of these older people don't even know how to use a smartphone so even a 'perfect solution' will take some effort.I still have to help my grandpa with landline calls because he never had one himself (I live in one of the most developed countries in the world).
> basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
This sentence is hilarious from an American perspective. There are central business districts of major US cities that are less connected to public transit than the most remote rock at the end of a steep canyon in Switzerland.
A bus that ran 1x a day on any day of any week would be a drastic improvement for nearly all of the US.
Its not mutually exclusive - most of the world thats not in stone age has better public transport than US, I guess everybody knows that and its not by accident but for good (well bad but logical) reasons.
That some PT is still not covering somebody's full needs for long term living is understandable too I presume, especially if its few days gaps in service.
Yep. In practice, you've probably got a group of over 70s who are much safer drivers than the average 17-24 year old and some with declining eyesight who are worse. The test proposes to distinguish between the two
The issue is that the "over 70s" group, while on the whole averages out to moderate safety, includes a number of individuals that are very dangerous drivers (to themselves, and to others). If one looks at the overall statistics, the group as a whole looks ok, but those dangerous outliers are the ones that get the "press coverage" on the nightly news when they do cause an incident, skewing peoples view of "over 70s drivers".
I am not objecting to the test. I am disagreeing with the sweeping statement.
I think testing eyesight is important. In fact you need to make a declaration about your eyesight when you first get a license and when you renew after 70. There is no real enforcement of the former either (they just ask you to read a number plate at a distance IIRC).
I imagine there’s something of a bathtub curve where young (under 25) drivers have higher accident rates due to some combination of inexperience and immaturity, while older drivers (over 70) have higher accident rates due to disability creeping up on them without them noticing.
Agreed over 70s are safer than younger drivers, but consider young drivers in most jurisdictions face restrictions while elderly drivers do not.
Further I’d say anecdotally that past a certain point, certainly by 80s, elderly drivers are not accident free. It’s that they have an increasing number of small accidents until someone takes away the keys. If they do not have someone in their life to do that it’s probably reasonable that the government make that determination.
At some point the reduced vision and reflex speed makes them too hazardous on the road to others, even if they are driving slowly and carefully. Parking lot accidents, hitting kids, slamming the gas instead of the brakes, etc.
Teenagers have obligations. Retirees don't or if they do they're far more flexible. Grandma can just not drive at night or in bad weather. Somme teenager typically can't.
So the inherent risk of the situations in which they drive does tend to favor seniors generally
I wouldn't say over 70 year olds, average 70 year old is fine. Problem gets a lot worse at 75 or 80. Most these people don't drive nearly as much as younger people anyway.
My grandma is 90 and drives 5 miles to the grocery store, a slow road. I don't think she'd pass a driving test but she drives during the day when barely anyone is on the road, chances of serious injury are nil.
Is it worth it to spend large amounts of money on testing these people, taking their license away if they fail? Getting rid of their car will force them to replace it with someone else driving or cycling which could be a problem in many places. Worst case scenario they'll need to go in a retirement home.
For my parents it was 65-70 when I noticed and started to become very concerned for their ability to drive safety. At 75 now, my dad at least only drives during broad daylight but even so he can't maintain a safe speed and does barely half the speed limit, then complains about tailgaters not liking his "retired lifestyle" (which is his personal excuse for driving slowly, when in reality he lacks the skill to keep up with traffic, which is very dangerous in my view...)
It's a danger for sure, I think for many the best they can do is limiting their driving as much as possible to 'safe' roads. With elderly driving slowly it's more a problem of ruining their car when they crash than endangering lives. Wish there was a better solution for all of them.
Across the western world, elderly benefits increasingly outstrip the growth young workers paying taxes for their benefits are able to eke out. I do not think they need free taxis as well.
There's not many taxis in most places, I come from a town of 400 people it'd be a very uneconomical solution.
I'm not saying it's great for them to drive, I just doubt there's a way to fix it in these sort of places. My grandma cycles to the small store for most of her groceries everyday, it's only the big store she drives to bi-weekly. Honestly the cycling is probably more dangerous, and there's some elderly in my town who're pushing 100 cycling daily.
The purpose of a system is what it does. There's lots of literature on what the best, or at least better, voting systems (hello preference voting) and decision making approaches are. Getting them implemented is another story.
I don't have a view on the main thrust of the comment, but "the purpose of a system is what it does" is very obviously wrong (as detailed in the linked blog post) and that is what I was responding to.
> Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It shouldn't be permanent. If they can improve, then why not? Maybe illness causes their poor driving and they find a treatment for that illness.
Theoretically it can be, though usually not, so the question is what should be the law to cover the general case. It wouldn’t be such a problem if it were easy for them to get around without driving. Either self driving cars, subsidized Ubers, public transit, walkable cities, home delivery, etc.
My opinion is that in the general case people over 70 shouldn’t be driving and I say this as someone who has 4 spritly grandparents in their 90s. I really don’t like how dangerous roads are, a fact that we accept because we did not really have good alternatives, now that we do we should implement them.
Is your point that we should be governed by the exceptions? I think that would be a bad idea. Does he even need a license for a racetrack? I’m sure he could easily afford Uber rides, and just maybe he would like to lower his odds of getting T-boned at an intersection by a geriatric.
The numbers are not arbitrary if they’re based on data, and generalizations are done for the sake of expediency and practicality. If such things are wholly unimportant then sure, capability test all the things.
You have no way of knowing that. There's no reason it should be written into law. If they can pass the test, then they can drive. Testing already takes care of what you want. If it truly isn't a temporary condition, then you have nothing to worry about.
In my experience, the 70+ are bad at driving in ways that do lighter accidents. Typically: Drive 50 km/h everywhere, even if the road is 30 or 70. General weird behaviour. Swerving slowly left right left forever.
They do cause a lot of cursing, but they are signalling hard enough they're bad at driving and other drivers leave huge margins, overly grant right of way, don't cross the road, etc...
Fairly regularly an 80-something will end up driving down the wrong carriageway of a motorway or dual carriageway. Fairly regularly this results in deaths.
In Switzerland we do it all. After 75 there is requirement for periodic health check by doctor which consists of various mental checks and eyesight. I would put it at 70, everybody degrades with age at different pace, some lose it even before 50 (ie sclerosis or parkinson) but cca 70 is an age I can see clear mental decline in every person I ever interacted closely.
Wife is a GP and she regularly faces this at her work. I begged her numerous times to take away those licenses without mercy if the person is unfit, no amount of pleading, begging, crying of threats should change that. And they do it all, oh so much - to the point she is giving up this revenue stream, too much emotional burden (from somebody who sometimes has to tell patients they have ie cancer).
Why so harsh - we live in more rural place with tons of old folks. They are properly dangerous behind the wheel - they can't handle any sudden situation, heavy traffic is a challenge at best, they need to drive at absolute minimum speed at bright daylight to handle situations.
Its tough, they live their whole lives in the middle of nowhere, too stubborn to sell and move someplace more reasonable and without a car they can't easily take care of themselves in their remote places (but its 2026 we have ubers, taxis and home deliveries, and once further down the road good social housings for elderly). Often, they know old but still working doctors who turn the blind eye because they are old buddies and then its sometimes sad news.
When they handle 1.5 tonne of steel that accelerates fast and easily kills others, very easily it stops being primarily about them but about rest of society. When you see them barely managing driving around local primary school, its either them or us/our kids
Of course it makes their lives worse. In a lot of parts of the UK, the public transport is barely fit for purpose, irregular, non-existent (in much of the countryside) or dangerous (in the city). I speak from personal experience. I've been harassed and assaulted on British buses and trains on more than one occasion. Once had to phone the police to get rid of someone who started to follow me home, after he had hit me getting out of a train in a small branch station. It's like the Wild West. In one village I visited, there was only one bus there a day, and a bus back on a different day. How are old people supposed to function with that?
As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
> As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
This is zero-evidence bullshit. On and after the age of 70, all UK drivers have to renew their licence every three years anyway - it's been like that since 1976. This new change just adds a requirement to get an eye test (which the government doesn't "make money" from) as well, rather than self-certifying.
Starmer was talking about getting over 55s to get a new licence every five years a few months ago. He hasn't managed to push that through. Of course, you would have to pay more money to them every time you get one. British TV licences are overpriced as are British passports, but you have to have one or the other as ID. I have one just now, but no car. The public transport is awful.
Most of the price of petrol in the UK is government duty and VAT, then there is the extortionate road tax etc. The British exchequer rakes it in off motorists but fails to help provide safe and reliable alternatives.
Actually, as a British over-55-under-70 myself I would support this. I've always thought that drivers should have to take a test every ~10 years in any case.
The main problem I see with over-70s renewing their licence currently is that they have to self-certify that they are safe to drive. Many are reaching a position in which they rely on the car more and more because walking and going on the bus is harder when your agility, cognition and eyesight diminishes. Of course, they will self-certify that they are safe, that is perfectly understandable from their perspective. It needs to be independent.
This is good, no? The intent is obvious, it's likely improving the current situation, and I don't see any reason not to applaud it as an low-barrier incremental improvement.
driving in downtown Austin this morning, the waymo swarm is real. the US may not have robust public transit but why can't we subsidize ride shares for seniors who lose their ability to drive safely?
I’m still a couple decades off from “senior”, but I have already reached a point where most day to day driving feels like a chore. If/When Waymo finally arrives in my smallish Bay Area city I can see myself using it a quite a bit. Hopefully self-driving cars are ubiquitous by the time I reach “shouldn’t be driving” age.
When I lived in Charleston the transit system had both subsidized ride share and ADA-compliant ride services (literally a government taxi service) for seniors and the disabled. So it certainly can be done.
- Self driving vehicles are truly vs theoretically safer than humans or at least the average 70 year old.
- Self driving vehicles can be attained or reliably rented for an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fraction of a seniors monthly stipend or pension or disability. Reliably meaning no waiting line or shortages of rental self driving cars or vans.
> Drivers in the UK must be able to read a number plate from 20 metres away, according to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).
I would like to see better tests. I have a pet theory that visual perception deficiencies along the lines of simultanagnosia are considerably more common among older people than is generally recognized, and people with these conditions may be able to easily read letters and numbers at a distance but be unable to drive safely due to inability to reliably detect obstacles.
Visual screening is fairly easy and every bit as quick, but it needs different tests. Something along the lines of an Ishihara plate but with colors that are perceptible even to color blind people might work. Or a visually busy image with instructions to identify one or two particular objects in the scene.
Does any country have a good system? In Norway it used to be your doctor taking away your license. But that didn't turn out too well. People need to be able to tell their doctor about their issues without fear of "retaliation", and doing it would of course damage the relationship going forward.
So I'm all for doing it, too many old people that shouldn't be on the road, but unsure how.
What I’m getting from this discussion is that maybe we should just make this universal, rather than picking an arbitrary age. Too onerous, perhaps, but under-70s definitely can experience serious decline in eyesight.
Hmm? Where I live you have to renew your license (basically pass a few medical exams) every 10 years since the day you get your first license. Why wait until 70?
People forget or don't keep up to date on rules. Some kind of retaking the theoretical parts would at least be nice. For instance the UK has a new highway code (I've heard), and most countries it's quite different to drive now than lets say 20 years ago. For instance the amount of cyclists and the rules around that I feel drivers in Norway have a bad grasp on.
And heck, when I got my license I lived in a remote town, 3 hours away from the nearest street light. Lots of things I got away with not learning, and whatever I memorized for the theoretical test 20 years ago is mostly forgotten. I think many people think they "know" the rules, but really don't
You also have the problem that the pass rate for tests has changed massively in the years since most 50 year olds took their tests in the UK. Anecdotally, it is not at all uncommon for young drivers to fail the test 3+ times (at least amoung the youngsters I know). 30 years ago it was rare to have to take the test more than 2x before passing.
That and the scandal of test slots being bought up months in advance by what are essentially touts, as well as the lack of testers you noted, make it unworkable.
> Nearly one in four car drivers killed in 2024 were aged 70 or older, according to government figures.
So, somewhat less than 25%. Let's guess 23% or whatever.
What are the age demographics? According to 2024 stats, 19.7% of the UK was aged 65 or older. 17% in the 0-14 age range.
Thus 65-year-olds and older make up 23.7% of the population older than 14.
It seems, roughly, as if the proportion of 70-year-olds and older might be more or less in line with their representation in the driving age population.
It's not the statistics we need, but close enough to defeat the alarmist idea of OMG, a whopping quarter (almost) fatalities are 70+; get the old buggers off the roads!
That's not a good counter. I think you need to look at how many of that demographic actually drives, not how big the demographic is. Or maybe kilometers driven per accident.
That onus is on the article: convince me that almost a quarter of the facilities being 70+ means something (s not explained by statistics but follows age).
Well I guess this is one good thing about the UK nanny state. Although it's telling that they had to practice their authoritarian muscles by arresting people for tweets for several years before they dared inconvenience the baby boomer generation.
Why pick on the over-70s though? Most drivers in the UK either can't see or don't bother looking, so we should be demanding higher standards of all drivers.
They won't test everyone on a regular basis due to the cost and because it would be politically unpopular. Heck, I saw someone in their 30's go ballistic about losing their license after having two seizures while driving (both of which resulted in collisions).
Enforcement is another issue. I don't even bother reporting being hit by cars anymore because the police refuse to do anything about it. That is after an incident and with a plate number. Enforcement of people driving without a license would be next to impossible unless there is an incident.
As for "don't bother looking", well, you cannot really test for that since it is usually the result of some form of distracted driving or carelessness. Both of which are unlikely to show up when someone knows they are being assessed.
Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport. Cars are dangerous, and if you can't see clearly, you're obviously not fit to drive. It's true that there will be negative impacts on people who will fail the eye tests, and we should be compassionate, but ultimately those people aren't safe behind the wheel, and put other peoples lives at risk, not just their own.
The practical details of implementing this are important - is the eye test done at an ordinary optician/optometrist's shop? How are the results going to be submitted to DVLA, etc.? What protections will be in place to prevent people from shopping around for a dodgy optician (as people often do with cars and MOTs)?
I think this is a reasonable and practical step in the right direction. I accept that given the shortage of driving examiners it would be impossible to require re-testing of existing drivers in the foreseeable future, but as the article says, people already get eye tests frequently and often for free, so this is something that can be done without too much additional infrastructure.
A personal anecdote: my grandfather is in his 90s and is not at all fit to drive due to cataracts and various other issues, but he still does "short journeys" because it's convenient and he feels that it's necessary. The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by (though this is not at all universal). Most British towns and cities are very different from their US counterparts in this respect. My grandfather moved house relatively recently --in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age. The only thing that will stop him and others like him from putting people in danger is taking away his licence. He has been told by doctors, opticians and family members that he's not safe to drive, but in the absence of any enforcement he persists. I hope that this policy comes in before he or someone else gets hurt.
You can anonymously report your concerns to the DVLA at [1]. Select "driver's medical". I had to do this with an elderly family member who refused to stop driving despite being manifestly physically and cognitively incapable. Its a difficult call but you may be saving someone's life.
[1] https://contact.dvla.gov.uk/driver/capture-transaction-type
Thank you for this. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was not possible to raise these concerns with DVLA anonymously.
Do you know what the process that follows this looks like? Are they just asked to self-certify again? Are they told that someone has reported them (even if they aren't told who it was)?
From memory, and from the one time I did it about three years ago: they get a letter saying that the DVLA has reason to believe that they are unfit to drive and that they must pass a medical examination in order to keep their licence. I don't believe the letter says that they've been reported.
And to be clear: when I said "anonymously" I meant from the pov of the person being reported. The DVLA requires some basic details of the person making the report, but they're definitely not disclosed to the subject.
What happens after this? Even if they lose their license, what happens to their vehicles? I ask in the context that many people drive without licenses.
Thankfully, the government doesn't steal a car away from a person who is unfit to drive cars yet.
> My grandfather moved house relatively recently -- in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age.
On the other hand, my grandfather was the exact opposite. He recognized that he would have to move from the country to the city in order to live in a place with adequate public transportation and easier access to medical care. Which he did, and he lived in his own home until he passed away. Likewise, in my university days, I rented a floor in an elderly woman's house. It allowed her to remain independent in a community where she had social connections (e.g. friends and church), health care was easy to access, and everything she needed was within walking distance. To many, renting part of their house out would be unthinkable, but the alternative would be living in a place where everyone is car dependent.
Unfortunately, some people aren't planning with their current or future needs in mind. Or they are unwilling to make compromises in order to address those needs.
> Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport.
Which is fine if you live somewhere where there is public transport.
The only solution to people driving is viable alternatives to driving.
Under the previous Conservative government, half of UK bus routes ( ~8,000 ) were cancelled[1]. HS2 high speed train route phase 2 the extensions from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds - which would move freight as well as people, freeing up space on local train lines for better passenger transport - was cancelled[2]. Phase 1 of it was due to be opened in 2026-2033 timeframe but was bungled now has no planned opening time, and Reform are calling to scrap that, too. Local council budgets were reduced[3] under the austerity measures, including one consequence of 40% less transport spending. The West Coast mainline was sold from VirginRail to Italy's TrenItalia in 2019[4] (Deutsche Bahn, French SNCF and Dutch Nederlandse Spoorwegen own most of the other UK railways) although this government is bringing Rail them back into public ownership.
And Reform are promising to remove bike lanes, and scrap Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to let cars use residental roads as through-roads again[5][6].
The UK doesn't have it as bad as the USA - but that's not for lack of trying to make car the only way to move.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/map-bus-route...
[2] https://www.railfuture.org.uk/article1904-HS2-Phase-2-cancel...
[3] https://ifs.org.uk/news/core-funding-english-councils-still-...
[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-a...
[5] https://road.cc/content/news/reform-council-conduct-review-s...
[6] https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/lifestyle/reform-councils-...
You have to be pretty remote to have no public transport in the UK.
And not very remote at all for it to be practically non existent and unreliable
Every passing year non-city/big town buses get cut and cut and cut because councils are bankrupt
To have none at all, yes, it would have to be very remote.
To have very limited public transport, then lots of places outside big cities.
I just dropped by daughter off at a friend's house. 4 minutes by car, 40 minutes by bus. Busses here are infrequent and unreliable. You need to take a bus to get to a train if you are going a longer distance.
This is in a town with a population of about 20 thousand in Cheshire.
> I just dropped by daughter off at a friend's house. 4 minutes by car
In most urban areas that equates to about 20 minutes on foot. Why bother to even get into a car/bus for that?
Edit: I checked your weather. Definitely wouldn't want to wait at a bus stop.
Car drivers are always like this, everywhere. Even when I was a little kid, last century, it's a village school, every pupil lives in the same mile or so radius and yet loads of them get picked up in a car.
I now live in a big city but when I walk to the office it's just before school starts, so I see that yeah at first I'm passing kids happily walking with parents but just outside the school it's a jam of idiots who "just quickly" are here to drop the child from a car. The contrast in a few weeks when school is closed will be dramatic, that street is dead, but I bet every one of those parents thinks of it as a "busy road, they ought to do something about that" while not remembering that it's busy because of them.
True, though maybe that's covered by OP's "The practical details of implementing this are important...".
Then there's the fine detail of affording to live somewhere with public transport. :(
The good news is that, generally, the places most affordable are the places that have public transportation. Affordability is gained through density (not only in direct housing concerns, but also things like access to jobs), and density is also conducive to public transpiration.
The places where public transportation isn't normally found are the places where the average Joe wouldn't have a hope in hell of being able to afford to live there (affluent suburbs, rural areas, etc.) anyway.
One of my elderly uncles was in this position, but he was a bit more responsible about it than your grandfather. His way to solve it was like this: he sold his car at a discount to someone else in the same building on the condition that when he needs transport they'll drive him. It works out well, he only uses it when he absolutely has to and the rest of the time he either walks or has stuff delivered. It was a painful decision for him but in the end it worked out well (and I'm the backup driver but I'm about 100 km away from where he lives so it would always take me at least an hour to get there).
> Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport. Cars are dangerous, and if you can't see clearly, you're obviously not fit to drive. It's true that there will be negative impacts on people who will fail the eye tests, and we should be compassionate, but ultimately those people aren't safe behind the wheel, and put other peoples lives at risk, not just their own.
This is an absurd take. I grew up in a town of ~60,000 people in the UK. The public transport, was, and _still_ is terrible. To get to the nearby shopping center which was the only place with bowling and a movie theatre, and any shops that weren't charity shops involved 2 trains and a bus taking about an hour and a half. A drive would be 20 minutes and a negotiation with my parents to give me a lift.
Nowadays my mother is in her 70s and lives in this same town, and drives into the countryside every day to take her mental health walks. Without this, she probably wouldn't be here today. Taking her car away from her would be giving her a death sentence to rot at home on a council estate that she hates living in.
> The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by
I mean this simply isn't true. You must live in London or a bubble.
But if she’s unfit to drive, should she still be allowed to drive?
Maybe I should have snipped the first part of the paragraph, but no absolutely not. If you're unfit to drive you should have your license taken away.
I was commenting primarily on the suggestion that all these old people who rely on their vehicles will suddenly be able to use a functional public transport system - allowing them to get around freely. This is simply not true outside of London.
> Older people in the UK already have free bus passes and various other substantial concessions regarding public transport.
My parents live somewhere that has two buses a week. They could get to the nearest city, then come back two hours later. If they miss the return bus they'd have to wait until next week.
A lot of these things sound great until you actually look at the reality.
To inform the thread, UK accident statistics from 2024 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...
The shift from male to female is fascinating. In younger drivers accidents are disproportionately male, I guess due to high testosterone buffoonery but in older drivers it's disproportionately female. My personal observation is that older male drivers are much more slow and less confident whereas females tend to be overly confident and driving way too fast, especially the ones in huge cars.
According to this women become more dangerous than male 17-24 year old drivers only when they reach 80+ whereas for men they only become more dangerous than female 17-24 year old drivers at 86+.
I actually think more should be done about younger drivers than older.
> The shift from male to female is fascinating. In younger drivers accidents are disproportionately male, I guess due to high testosterone buffoonery but in older drivers it's disproportionately female.
When you correct for population size, I think you’ll see that difference largely, if not completely, goes away. There are more women than men in the UK from age 50 upwards (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2025/)
One reason there are more females in accidents at the oldest ages is because the males are dead. In the UK, the average life expectancy for a female is 82.9 vs 77.9 for men, a 5-year gap.
In South Africa, all drivers are subject to an eye retest every 5 years, regardless of age. What the UK is doing seems pretty sane IMO.
US has token eye exams at the BMV. I've never seen or heard anyone fail.
During such a test that I could barely read anything, and afterwards realized I could not read most roadsigns--having relied too much on map apps. A visit to the eye doctor confirmed I shouldn't be driving, so I ordered glasses that same day.
Reporting unsafe drivers in my state is not anonymous. And at one point I had to tell a family member that if I found out they were still driving that I'd report them. (They had 3 accidents in 2 years, claiming it's all the computers in the cars.)
My mother completely stopped driving in her early 70s... thank god for the Swiss medical driving fitness test! (now at 75 instead of 70?) she was perfectly fine with it, online food order+delivery had become available, and her immediate neighbors were loving people helping her whenever I+siblings were not easily available.
A friend of mine who was cycling in his 60s got hit by a driver in his 80s, taking his regular route to church, but apparently not very observantly. The cyclist was thankfully able to recover.
Unfortunately what is needed are tests of driving ability. Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It is unfortunate that things like this become politically impossible because older people are one of the most reliable voting groups out there.
I will always be bitter that older voters chose Brexit by a large margin, in opposition to the younger voters who will actually be around to feel its long term effects. Not taking that into account in voting feels wrong but there’s no politically palatable way of addressing it.
Give parents extra votes for their children who are not yet eligible to vote. Perhaps half a vote per child for starters.
This assumes parents would vote in the interests of future adults. In my experience, parents are quite happy to vote against future adults, even their own. Housing policy is the most obvious example.
Is that a reference to one of the sources of the civil war in the US? Voting rights for disenfranchised (literally enslaved) people?
Actually the US maintains a Senate and Electoral College because of slavery, and refuses to abolish them for (supposedly) any and every other reason. These systems allow whites in less populous states to exercise outsized power.
Make voting be based on military eligibility. This is something Starship Troopers was sort of correct about.
You can't be drafted in war time emergencies? You can't vote (also yes I do want women to be draftable)
> This is something Starship Troopers was sort of correct about.
It might also suggest further reflection is warranted.
The movie was a satire, the novel was earnest. If you arent willing to sacrifice everything for democracy, then why should you have a voice? I am with Heinlein 100% here.
Having since read more about the author I'm pretty sure you're right the novel was earnest, but honestly it read as excellent satire when I didn't know it wasn't meant to be (and I read it prior to seeing the movie). Would recommend.
Then you're against democracy. Think about what the word means.
In the movie. The book wholeheartedly endorsed service for citizenship.
It's worth noting that in the book "service" is heavily implied to be primarily military in nature yet Heinlein purported years after the fact that in the book's canon "95 percent" of citizen service was actually civil. I think it's debatable whether or not this was his intention all along or a retcon to fit his more, ahem, liberal worldview that emerged as he aged.
I also loved Verhoeven's film adaptation but he straight up admitted that he didn't finish the book before making the film, which was itself based on a Neumeier (of "Robocop" fame) script called "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7" that bore only superficial resemblance to the book. He made the same mistake as many others in casting the book as fascist merely because of its militaristic elements when it's clearly not. On top of lacking many essential elements of fascism (a dictator, a directed economy, suppression of political dissent, etc) there are also several spots that veer into philosophical treatise to espouse the opposite. The flashback scene involving Rico's professor talking about how a society is obligated to raise its children correctly (and how it's society's failure if they end up delinquent) is a perfect example - "the system is the problem" hardly reads as far-right.
This is all to say that I think Heinlein was more interested in exploring a concept of reciprocal responsibility between a citizenry and its government. The militaristic aspects of the novel as regards a distant, dehumanized enemy and the dominance of the fight over all other aspects of life are far more alarming in my opinion.
Another in a long line of tech people not understanding science fiction
Or policy. We have an embarrassing chap in these comments advocating for the equivalent of Jim Crow voting laws.
Who, amusingly, dodged his military service.
I think people should be able to get up to 3 votes:
1. Veteran
2. Property ownership
3. Having children.
If you dont hit 1 of those criteria, you dont get a vote. You need skin in the game. Letting anyone vote is why “tax someone else, give me things” is such a popular platform. Politicians should have to hit maybe 2 out of 3.
Property ownership seems like a pretty transparent way to disenfranchise the poor. In what way does a renter not have “skin in the game” compared to a homeowner?
Having children? Why not consider instead: teacher, healthcare professional, municipal worker, civil engineer, volunteer ...and all of the many other roles that make society. Being a parent isn't the only indicator of caring for others.
The main issue off the top of my head with property ownership is how you define property.
I am none of these. I'm in my late 50's and have been paying income tax since I was 16. Sure, rescind my voting rights ... I'd like all my 40+ years taxes back please then.
Did the government not provide you with services (roads, police, etc) in those 40+ years?
Taxation without representation? Hellooo, Earth calling Americans, are you there?
We already tried this in America and it’s not the flex you think it is.
What about people with a medial disability?
Are we talking one spurs? Or dementia?
Either way, they sound like they have leadership potential.
Should still count if you can be 'drafted' into an 'office job' right?
The book does address that, in that the federal service is universally available (and even the blind, deaf, or crippled would spend their time performing some job, even if it eas "counting the hairs on a caterpillar by feel".
You're right about military eligibility, but also that you shouldn't make calls for a nation which you will never see. Doubly so if one does not have children. No skin in the game, no alignment of incentives, no moral right to choose.
Even moreso when you consider basically the whole generation relies on leeching off the young and have continued to capture an ever-increasing proportion of public spending across the western world despite owning an outsized proportion of both real estate and wealth overall.
The worst age group behind the wheel is by far 16-25. The middle age group is the safest and the gap is actually moderate compared to 70-75.
You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous. Most of them only stop driving when they cause an accident. Sometimes its a serious one.
There are already some measures for young people, like the 6 point thing. Maybe there could be more. Doesn't change the facts about dangerous OAP drivers
> Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
> You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous.
You sure about that?
Over 70s do have higher rates of accidents per 100m over average, although it is small until you get to 80+.
“I'm talking about a significant minority of [under 25 year olds] who are wildly dangerous.” (Edit mine)
Don’t you think that statement is also true?
16 year olds get better at driving.
They also get less likely to commit crime, but that’s not how we gauge risk. We don’t generally say “that teenager’s crime risk is going down so they are less risky than that geriatric whose crime risk is fairly constant.” Risk probability is usually the area under a hazard rate curve.
Over a long enough interval, that reduction in risk would be important. So what is the appropriate time interval for these risk assessments?
Yes - I’ve seen the pricing algorithms at several large insurers. Massive surcharges for young people 16-25, rates level out 30-55, and then slowly start to go back up, but it’s a slow increase compared to the young ones.
> The worst age group behind the wheel is by far 16-25. The middle age group is the safest and the gap is actually moderate compared to 70-75.
Retest everyone's skill every 3-5 years (whenever up for driver card renewal).
AIUI, that's a misleading figure, because the elderly self-correct, in awareness of the greater difficulty, by driving a lot less, so the greater danger is masked in the per-unit-time accident rate.
So, in theory, policy could appropriately adjust for this dynamic by only requiring the test of over-70s driving more than X miles/year, but that adds hassle to enforcement.
Especially in the US. In countries with more robust public transport, you can get away with not having a car. That's basically impossible in the US.
As European, that has lived across multiple countries, that only applies to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Also healthy enough to be able to walk stairs, as very few places care about people with disabilities, or carrying stuff that is a pain to transport across stairways.
People visit the touristic centre of the main cities and assume we all enjoy nice public transport systems.
There's definitely a lot of truth to that, Europe is not a monolith in terms of transport infrastructure.
On the other hand, it's hard to overstate just how radically car-centric the majority of the infrastructure in the USA is.
The point is that Europe is not much better when one goes outside the regional capitals of each state, or district, depending on how each country is organised.
Most towns and villages are also not great examples of infrastructure, especially in the southern countries.
++1
I love the accessibility and diversity of large city living in the US, but it is definitely the exception to the rule. The US is hoping for technological breakthroughs in self driving electric cars to bail us out from the sprawl we've created.
> to the lucky ones able to afford living close to the city center.
Which is also, to some extent, the reality in the US as well. Some number of the "city centers" have better public transport and/or walk-ability [1] available than what is available just outside those city centers.
One big difference in the US is the massive land area difference as compared to Europe means there is a huge amount more land area (and therefore population) with little to no public transport or walk-ability available and a car becomes mandatory rather than optional in those areas.
[1] It's not perfect, I'm sure there are plenty of city centers in western states where even the city center itself is so spread out that walk-ability suffers and that a car tends to become more necessary.
Which is the same in small European towns and villages, there are only a couple of buses, many of which stop around 8 PM, and tend to occur once an hour in most cases, if not less.
Basic stuff like taking kids to school requires having a car, or being lucky to have some kind of Bus service collecting the kids, for some school levels, and doesn't cover stuff like taking them to other after school activities.
Want to go to the big commercial surfaces? They are all outside the town center and seldom have bus connections.
And many other possible examples.
UK transport is much worse than the continent. London is fairly well served but elsewhere not so much, especially not the countryside. The trains are very expensive (even with an old person's railcard) and the buses are often irregular or non-existent in large areas of the countryside.
Well there's a big gap between something like London, a very dense city, and actual countryside. There's also a big variation in will. Where I grew up (Metroland, just beyond the end of the Metropolitan "underground" Line) the services are (other than the afore-mentioned London underground) abysmal because providing services costs money & people there want lower taxes. But where my mother lives today, near Bingley, there are enough buses that I get confused as to which one goes closest to her house when I visit.
The difference in London is also in large part because London was allowed to retain a unified transport system when Tories dismantled other systems because ideologically their position is the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will fix everything.
I am aware, having spent some time in Bristol and Cardiff, in various occasions.
That situation is very comparable to many places in the continent, some of them even worse.
Also here that are many small towns and villages that an hourly bus is already something, and naturally there aren't stops scattered all over the place, or worse, offer no protection from weather.
I’m an American and my vision, fully corrected, is right at the legal borderline to get a license without restrictions. I’ve never “failed” a vision exam at the DMV; one time the clerk even said, “good enough”. (Don’t worry, I never drive, I only keep my license up to date for serious emergencies).
A serious emergency isn't going to be helped by someone with very little driving experience. I don't follow your reasoning. If it was a serious emergency who would care if you had a license?
A police officer would. The penalty for an accident might be negligent driving.
The penalty for an accident without a license is, at minimum, driving without a license. You're also not likely to be covered by insurance without one either, even if you're not at fault.
People think about things differently. It may be that for OP, "but I don't have a license" would cause a second thought and waste time in an emergency. They may be self aware enough to head that off.
You also need a drivers license that doubles up as a real id if you want to travel by air. So the issuance of a DL isn't just for driving.
I'm not sure if they give regular state id's as real id.
Not true.
>No Real ID? The TSA Will Now Charge You $45 to Fly
https://money.com/no-real-id-tsa-fee/
This is one of the strangest internet myths. Every single state in America will issue a photo ID which is fully equivalent to a drivers license for every purpose other than permitting you to drive.
Also, you don't need "Real ID" to fly no matter what they say. You don't even need a photo ID at all (although they'll force you to waste time if you don't have one. I found this out when I lost mine but still had to travel.)
Here in New Zealand you don’t need any ID to fly (nationally), so even the claim that ID is required is shaky.
At least in CA, the DMV does issue Real ID state IDs. I have one.
At least in Oregon they definitely do offer non-driver real ID cards. I’d guess that’s likely true everywhere.
I know it doesn’t work everywhere, but I’m happy there are services like Uber and Lyft when I get older. I could see myself using those services a lot when I am no longer able to drive.
I wonder if communities will move away from things like buses to public autonomous cars.
If you could run a fleet of $30k Waymo’s, that would be nice
Not impossible, with uber/lyft being available. And yes public transit is not good everywhere in the US, but in high density cities it generally is.
UK public transport is not good, especially when you get out of the major cities. Better than the US, but worse than Continental Europe.
The buses turn up when they feel like it, and there are problems with antisocial behaviour on a lot of them, including assault.
This depends a lot on where you are. I've lived in York, Darlington, Leeds, London, Oxford, and Liverpool for decent periods and used buses in all of them regularly. Only Darlington was really unpleasant for buses - they were often every half an hour and if one came early and you missed it you would be left in the cold for ages without information.
Oxford was great (though cycling was even better); Leeds, Liverpool, and York were perfectly fine, with regular and reliable services; London's are famously efficient.
Antisocial behaviour isn't honestly that common in my experience, though I'm sure that varies by location. Had some aggro in London once, and again on a London night bus. The football special to the LNER stadium in York was properly boisterous, and quite threatening to the poor away-supporting family on the lower deck, but that at least carried a copper to make sure nothing stupid happened. Other than that, I've only ever really seen loud schoolchildren - who can be annoying but have never caused difficulty for anyone outside their group. I've honestly seen worse behaviour on the tube (and been the object of it on Cross Country Trains).
Nope, even best countries in the world with great public transport like Switzerland have tons of remote places basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
Guess what, mostly old folks live there and all this applies there. Its just not financially feasible to cover everybody. Proper full self driving should fix this, nothing less I am afraid.
Proper self driving is furthest away from being able to handle these cities as well, don't see these driving in Sicily before 2040.
Many of these older people don't even know how to use a smartphone so even a 'perfect solution' will take some effort.I still have to help my grandpa with landline calls because he never had one himself (I live in one of the most developed countries in the world).
> basically unreachable by public transport, or bus that goes 2x a day on some days of the week.
This sentence is hilarious from an American perspective. There are central business districts of major US cities that are less connected to public transit than the most remote rock at the end of a steep canyon in Switzerland.
A bus that ran 1x a day on any day of any week would be a drastic improvement for nearly all of the US.
Its not mutually exclusive - most of the world thats not in stone age has better public transport than US, I guess everybody knows that and its not by accident but for good (well bad but logical) reasons.
That some PT is still not covering somebody's full needs for long term living is understandable too I presume, especially if its few days gaps in service.
> Most over-70s are significantly worse than the average driver and some are so dangerous they shouldn't be on the road at all.
Evidence? I thought over-70s were on average safer than young drivers
UK statistics here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua... The issue is that the rate of accidents rapidly increases after 70 and the easiest detectable indicator is deteriorating eyesight.
I opened the link and didn’t expected a report about younger drivers. This link is about older drivers: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...
Yep. In practice, you've probably got a group of over 70s who are much safer drivers than the average 17-24 year old and some with declining eyesight who are worse. The test proposes to distinguish between the two
The issue is that the "over 70s" group, while on the whole averages out to moderate safety, includes a number of individuals that are very dangerous drivers (to themselves, and to others). If one looks at the overall statistics, the group as a whole looks ok, but those dangerous outliers are the ones that get the "press coverage" on the nightly news when they do cause an incident, skewing peoples view of "over 70s drivers".
I am not objecting to the test. I am disagreeing with the sweeping statement.
I think testing eyesight is important. In fact you need to make a declaration about your eyesight when you first get a license and when you renew after 70. There is no real enforcement of the former either (they just ask you to read a number plate at a distance IIRC).
https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/study-sheds-light...
I imagine there’s something of a bathtub curve where young (under 25) drivers have higher accident rates due to some combination of inexperience and immaturity, while older drivers (over 70) have higher accident rates due to disability creeping up on them without them noticing.
Seems that is true, at least for the ones currently on the road https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-dr...
Agreed over 70s are safer than younger drivers, but consider young drivers in most jurisdictions face restrictions while elderly drivers do not.
Further I’d say anecdotally that past a certain point, certainly by 80s, elderly drivers are not accident free. It’s that they have an increasing number of small accidents until someone takes away the keys. If they do not have someone in their life to do that it’s probably reasonable that the government make that determination.
At some point the reduced vision and reflex speed makes them too hazardous on the road to others, even if they are driving slowly and carefully. Parking lot accidents, hitting kids, slamming the gas instead of the brakes, etc.
> Agreed over 70s are safer than younger drivers, but consider young drivers in most jurisdictions face restrictions while elderly drivers do not.
What jurisdictions? The one that is proposing the eye tests?
Teenagers have obligations. Retirees don't or if they do they're far more flexible. Grandma can just not drive at night or in bad weather. Somme teenager typically can't.
So the inherent risk of the situations in which they drive does tend to favor seniors generally
The people with the most obligations are us middle aged who have to do stuff at times set by kids requirements, or elderly parents, or work.
I wouldn't say over 70 year olds, average 70 year old is fine. Problem gets a lot worse at 75 or 80. Most these people don't drive nearly as much as younger people anyway.
My grandma is 90 and drives 5 miles to the grocery store, a slow road. I don't think she'd pass a driving test but she drives during the day when barely anyone is on the road, chances of serious injury are nil.
Is it worth it to spend large amounts of money on testing these people, taking their license away if they fail? Getting rid of their car will force them to replace it with someone else driving or cycling which could be a problem in many places. Worst case scenario they'll need to go in a retirement home.
For my parents it was 65-70 when I noticed and started to become very concerned for their ability to drive safety. At 75 now, my dad at least only drives during broad daylight but even so he can't maintain a safe speed and does barely half the speed limit, then complains about tailgaters not liking his "retired lifestyle" (which is his personal excuse for driving slowly, when in reality he lacks the skill to keep up with traffic, which is very dangerous in my view...)
It's a danger for sure, I think for many the best they can do is limiting their driving as much as possible to 'safe' roads. With elderly driving slowly it's more a problem of ruining their car when they crash than endangering lives. Wish there was a better solution for all of them.
Maybe less of an issue if they’re given taxi vouchers to the value of about the typical amount of driving they would have done?
Across the western world, elderly benefits increasingly outstrip the growth young workers paying taxes for their benefits are able to eke out. I do not think they need free taxis as well.
For UK in particular look up triple lock pension.
There's not many taxis in most places, I come from a town of 400 people it'd be a very uneconomical solution.
I'm not saying it's great for them to drive, I just doubt there's a way to fix it in these sort of places. My grandma cycles to the small store for most of her groceries everyday, it's only the big store she drives to bi-weekly. Honestly the cycling is probably more dangerous, and there's some elderly in my town who're pushing 100 cycling daily.
Public services don't need to be 'economical'
Well the obvious solution is take away the vote for over-65s!
/s … maybe
They do have less stake in the future and want short term policy payoffs...
Combine that with the initiatives of many a conservative or liberal political party to raise the retirement age beyond or up to 70 years.
Yeah, you have to work but you are not allowed to drive or vote any longer. Sounds fair.
It's not like voting does anything, anyway. Once elected, they do what they want.
I’ve come around to the belief that the biggest benefit of democracy is not choosing the best and wisest leaders.
The benefit is the regular ability to remove bad leaders. It doesn’t always happen as fast as we want but it happens eventually.
It’s not perfect, but imagine your least favorite president instead presiding for decades until death or coup.
The purpose of a system is what it does. There's lots of literature on what the best, or at least better, voting systems (hello preference voting) and decision making approaches are. Getting them implemented is another story.
Conversely, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
Scott aggressively missing the point of Beer’s maxim is not a counter-argument. Making a specific point would be more persuasive than a mere link.
I don't have a view on the main thrust of the comment, but "the purpose of a system is what it does" is very obviously wrong (as detailed in the linked blog post) and that is what I was responding to.
> Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
It shouldn't be permanent. If they can improve, then why not? Maybe illness causes their poor driving and they find a treatment for that illness.
> If they can improve, then why not?
I'm talking about removing licences due to cognitive decline. It's not a temporary condition
Theoretically it can be, though usually not, so the question is what should be the law to cover the general case. It wouldn’t be such a problem if it were easy for them to get around without driving. Either self driving cars, subsidized Ubers, public transit, walkable cities, home delivery, etc.
My opinion is that in the general case people over 70 shouldn’t be driving and I say this as someone who has 4 spritly grandparents in their 90s. I really don’t like how dangerous roads are, a fact that we accept because we did not really have good alternatives, now that we do we should implement them.
Paul Newman won his last race at Lime Rock in Sept. 2007 driving a 900-horsepower Corvette when he was 82.
Is your point that we should be governed by the exceptions? I think that would be a bad idea. Does he even need a license for a racetrack? I’m sure he could easily afford Uber rides, and just maybe he would like to lower his odds of getting T-boned at an intersection by a geriatric.
We should be governed by capabilities, not arbitrary numbers.
The numbers are not arbitrary if they’re based on data, and generalizations are done for the sake of expediency and practicality. If such things are wholly unimportant then sure, capability test all the things.
> It's not a temporary condition
You have no way of knowing that. There's no reason it should be written into law. If they can pass the test, then they can drive. Testing already takes care of what you want. If it truly isn't a temporary condition, then you have nothing to worry about.
It can be for "3 months" (with a low expectation that after 3 months they improve enough to get the licence again).
It's a vague definition though.
All cognitive decline is not equal.
If they're able to drive they should be allowed to
In my experience, the 70+ are bad at driving in ways that do lighter accidents. Typically: Drive 50 km/h everywhere, even if the road is 30 or 70. General weird behaviour. Swerving slowly left right left forever.
They do cause a lot of cursing, but they are signalling hard enough they're bad at driving and other drivers leave huge margins, overly grant right of way, don't cross the road, etc...
Fairly regularly an 80-something will end up driving down the wrong carriageway of a motorway or dual carriageway. Fairly regularly this results in deaths.
In Switzerland we do it all. After 75 there is requirement for periodic health check by doctor which consists of various mental checks and eyesight. I would put it at 70, everybody degrades with age at different pace, some lose it even before 50 (ie sclerosis or parkinson) but cca 70 is an age I can see clear mental decline in every person I ever interacted closely.
Wife is a GP and she regularly faces this at her work. I begged her numerous times to take away those licenses without mercy if the person is unfit, no amount of pleading, begging, crying of threats should change that. And they do it all, oh so much - to the point she is giving up this revenue stream, too much emotional burden (from somebody who sometimes has to tell patients they have ie cancer).
Why so harsh - we live in more rural place with tons of old folks. They are properly dangerous behind the wheel - they can't handle any sudden situation, heavy traffic is a challenge at best, they need to drive at absolute minimum speed at bright daylight to handle situations.
Its tough, they live their whole lives in the middle of nowhere, too stubborn to sell and move someplace more reasonable and without a car they can't easily take care of themselves in their remote places (but its 2026 we have ubers, taxis and home deliveries, and once further down the road good social housings for elderly). Often, they know old but still working doctors who turn the blind eye because they are old buddies and then its sometimes sad news.
When they handle 1.5 tonne of steel that accelerates fast and easily kills others, very easily it stops being primarily about them but about rest of society. When you see them barely managing driving around local primary school, its either them or us/our kids
Of course it makes their lives worse. In a lot of parts of the UK, the public transport is barely fit for purpose, irregular, non-existent (in much of the countryside) or dangerous (in the city). I speak from personal experience. I've been harassed and assaulted on British buses and trains on more than one occasion. Once had to phone the police to get rid of someone who started to follow me home, after he had hit me getting out of a train in a small branch station. It's like the Wild West. In one village I visited, there was only one bus there a day, and a bus back on a different day. How are old people supposed to function with that?
As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
> As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
This is zero-evidence bullshit. On and after the age of 70, all UK drivers have to renew their licence every three years anyway - it's been like that since 1976. This new change just adds a requirement to get an eye test (which the government doesn't "make money" from) as well, rather than self-certifying.
In fact the government pays for eye tests once you are over sixty.
Starmer was talking about getting over 55s to get a new licence every five years a few months ago. He hasn't managed to push that through. Of course, you would have to pay more money to them every time you get one. British TV licences are overpriced as are British passports, but you have to have one or the other as ID. I have one just now, but no car. The public transport is awful.
Most of the price of petrol in the UK is government duty and VAT, then there is the extortionate road tax etc. The British exchequer rakes it in off motorists but fails to help provide safe and reliable alternatives.
Actually, as a British over-55-under-70 myself I would support this. I've always thought that drivers should have to take a test every ~10 years in any case.
The main problem I see with over-70s renewing their licence currently is that they have to self-certify that they are safe to drive. Many are reaching a position in which they rely on the car more and more because walking and going on the bus is harder when your agility, cognition and eyesight diminishes. Of course, they will self-certify that they are safe, that is perfectly understandable from their perspective. It needs to be independent.
This is good, no? The intent is obvious, it's likely improving the current situation, and I don't see any reason not to applaud it as an low-barrier incremental improvement.
driving in downtown Austin this morning, the waymo swarm is real. the US may not have robust public transit but why can't we subsidize ride shares for seniors who lose their ability to drive safely?
I’m still a couple decades off from “senior”, but I have already reached a point where most day to day driving feels like a chore. If/When Waymo finally arrives in my smallish Bay Area city I can see myself using it a quite a bit. Hopefully self-driving cars are ubiquitous by the time I reach “shouldn’t be driving” age.
When I lived in Charleston the transit system had both subsidized ride share and ADA-compliant ride services (literally a government taxi service) for seniors and the disabled. So it certainly can be done.
How about stall this in courts until:
- Self driving vehicles are truly vs theoretically safer than humans or at least the average 70 year old.
- Self driving vehicles can be attained or reliably rented for an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fraction of a seniors monthly stipend or pension or disability. Reliably meaning no waiting line or shortages of rental self driving cars or vans.
> Drivers in the UK must be able to read a number plate from 20 metres away, according to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).
I would like to see better tests. I have a pet theory that visual perception deficiencies along the lines of simultanagnosia are considerably more common among older people than is generally recognized, and people with these conditions may be able to easily read letters and numbers at a distance but be unable to drive safely due to inability to reliably detect obstacles.
Visual screening is fairly easy and every bit as quick, but it needs different tests. Something along the lines of an Ishihara plate but with colors that are perceptible even to color blind people might work. Or a visually busy image with instructions to identify one or two particular objects in the scene.
Does any country have a good system? In Norway it used to be your doctor taking away your license. But that didn't turn out too well. People need to be able to tell their doctor about their issues without fear of "retaliation", and doing it would of course damage the relationship going forward.
So I'm all for doing it, too many old people that shouldn't be on the road, but unsure how.
What I’m getting from this discussion is that maybe we should just make this universal, rather than picking an arbitrary age. Too onerous, perhaps, but under-70s definitely can experience serious decline in eyesight.
It sould be every year. Over 70 shouldn’t drive in my opinion. I’m in my 50s and still believe this.
Hmm? Where I live you have to renew your license (basically pass a few medical exams) every 10 years since the day you get your first license. Why wait until 70?
I think everyone should do a re-test every 10 years then maybe 5 years after 70.
There aren't enough driving testers for people to take a test once in their lives, let alone 8 times.
It would also be totally pointless between 20 and 60 at the very least. The vast majority of people don't have any cognitive decline before then.
People forget or don't keep up to date on rules. Some kind of retaking the theoretical parts would at least be nice. For instance the UK has a new highway code (I've heard), and most countries it's quite different to drive now than lets say 20 years ago. For instance the amount of cyclists and the rules around that I feel drivers in Norway have a bad grasp on.
And heck, when I got my license I lived in a remote town, 3 hours away from the nearest street light. Lots of things I got away with not learning, and whatever I memorized for the theoretical test 20 years ago is mostly forgotten. I think many people think they "know" the rules, but really don't
You also have the problem that the pass rate for tests has changed massively in the years since most 50 year olds took their tests in the UK. Anecdotally, it is not at all uncommon for young drivers to fail the test 3+ times (at least amoung the youngsters I know). 30 years ago it was rare to have to take the test more than 2x before passing.
That and the scandal of test slots being bought up months in advance by what are essentially touts, as well as the lack of testers you noted, make it unworkable.
There could be, it's just that we don't value testing highly enough and we're happy to see people killed and seriously injured by these things.
https://archive.ph/yjDN0
Gonna suck to lose your license when you live in outer places like Roadhead, Carlisle. :(
Would you rather people who can’t see well enough continue to drive?
I wonder if there are non optical visual tests, like cognitive ability to perceive multiple details at once.
Waymo is the answer to all our problems
How about testing people in a driving simulator?
Let's examine this:
> Nearly one in four car drivers killed in 2024 were aged 70 or older, according to government figures.
So, somewhat less than 25%. Let's guess 23% or whatever.
What are the age demographics? According to 2024 stats, 19.7% of the UK was aged 65 or older. 17% in the 0-14 age range.
Thus 65-year-olds and older make up 23.7% of the population older than 14.
It seems, roughly, as if the proportion of 70-year-olds and older might be more or less in line with their representation in the driving age population.
It's not the statistics we need, but close enough to defeat the alarmist idea of OMG, a whopping quarter (almost) fatalities are 70+; get the old buggers off the roads!
That's not a good counter. I think you need to look at how many of that demographic actually drives, not how big the demographic is. Or maybe kilometers driven per accident.
That onus is on the article: convince me that almost a quarter of the facilities being 70+ means something (s not explained by statistics but follows age).
Well I guess this is one good thing about the UK nanny state. Although it's telling that they had to practice their authoritarian muscles by arresting people for tweets for several years before they dared inconvenience the baby boomer generation.
Why pick on the over-70s though? Most drivers in the UK either can't see or don't bother looking, so we should be demanding higher standards of all drivers.
They won't test everyone on a regular basis due to the cost and because it would be politically unpopular. Heck, I saw someone in their 30's go ballistic about losing their license after having two seizures while driving (both of which resulted in collisions).
Enforcement is another issue. I don't even bother reporting being hit by cars anymore because the police refuse to do anything about it. That is after an incident and with a plate number. Enforcement of people driving without a license would be next to impossible unless there is an incident.
As for "don't bother looking", well, you cannot really test for that since it is usually the result of some form of distracted driving or carelessness. Both of which are unlikely to show up when someone knows they are being assessed.