The Older Driver

It comes to us all of in the end. Age that is. Not that I'm old of course, well sort of middle-aged-ish perhaps, but I still think young. If I'm honest though, I know that if an attractive young lady smiles at me these days it's probably because I remind her of her dad.

Age is very much a matter of perception you see.

And we've all been there haven't we? Following a senior citizen in a Nissan Micra hugging the white line at 25 mph before indicating right and then turning left.

'Ah bless!' you smile to yourself.

Or are you perhaps a little less tolerant toward your fellow man (or woman) and start muttering about silly old duffers who shouldn't be on the road?

If you fall into the latter group you are not alone. Pressure groups and certain government organisations have been lobbying for some time to introduce annual driving tests for the over seventies along with stricter health qualifications and so on.

But is this the right way to go?

Now I know old people can be quite irritating sometimes and not just when they're driving either. They fumble with change at supermarket checkouts and they leave annoying notes on your windscreen when you park on the pavement, because they can't get their wheelchairs past.

However, before we embrace yet another piece of legislation we should consider a couple of things.

Firstly we are talking about public sector administration here. Have we got the infrastructure to cope with all these new tests? Have we got enough examiners? Where's the money coming from? What about retests? Etc. etc.

You just know it's got cock-up written all over it.

Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, what are the benefits?

Health and Safety is always a priority say the powers that be.

Utter rot of course. If they really cared about our health and safety they'd clean the hospitals wouldn't they?

And there's no real evidence to prove that the elderly are responsible for widespread carnage on our roads. Insurance companies definitely prefer 70 year olds to 17 year olds. Sure, there will always be the odd well publicised incident where a pensioner reverses off a cliff or drives the wrong way down a motorway, but mostly it's just Volvos crashing into shopping trolleys in Asda's carpark.

And how would you like the stress, cost and inconvenience of an annual driving test?

Stress is bad news for OAPs and government policy has ensured that most of them are penniless. We all know that retirement is fast becoming a fading dream (unless you're a civil servant of course,) but if we have to keep on going to work how the hell are we going to we get there? Public transport?

Getting old is something of a challenge anyway, so maybe we shouldn't make it any harder.

And remember, one day (if you're lucky) it might be you wearing a niceM&S cardigan and driving a beige Honda Jazz.