Comment on Drivers over 70 to undergo eye tests every three years under plans to improve road safety | LBC
FishFace@piefed.social 3 days ago
Doesn’t sound stupid, but it’s important to remember that old drivers are vastly safer than young drivers. If you can do something small like eye tests (which a lot of old people need and ought to be having anyway) then that’s sensible, but if you want to improve road safety it’s not the place to look.
Old drivers stick in people’s minds for some reason - maybe because they’ve been stuck behind them at 30mph on a national speed limit road for a few minutes - but the more regular dangerous occurrences slip by. The most common bit of dangerous driving I see is tailgating which is absolutely ubiquitous, followed by distraction leading to weaving - which I assume to be phone usage. Neither is the domain of the elderly.
I dunno… I’ve seen some absolutely shit bags that looked over 60 driving around. Failing to stop at pedestrian crossings, running lights, merging without indicating, turning into roads whilst a pedestrian is crossing half way. Basically everything that would get you a major on your test.
I don’t think age grants you better driving capability. And the lack of visual capacity probably makes you worse.
The accident statistics (I can help find them if you want) are that accident risk goes down steadily until (IIRC) mid 60s, and only increases above the risk of 20-30 year olds at a very advanced age in your 80s.
There are two things going on:
These are different processes but they can both be targeted for safety measures.
Also a nice dose of survivorship bias! All those old people survived the gauntlet of driving for decades without losing life or license, so safer drivers are more represented.
gov.uk/…/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britai…
Just plonking this here for ease of conversation.
Old people drive less as well
But the statistics are per (billion) miles traveled, not per person.
Young drivers make more claims primarily out of lack of experience in driving. It’s an issue that automatically resolves itself over time.
The same is not true for the elderly.
Boy racers don’t “automatically resolve themselves” through gaining experience. Without intervention you have to rely on reckless drivers gaining maturity, which is far from guaranteed, or having an accident that kills them or scares some sense into them, neither of which is desirable. The interventions currently are things like police catching them, which again is not desirable if an intervention earlier could prevent it escalating to the point where police have to get involved.
But my point is really that there are options to improve safety of younger drivers. If you want to reduce road deaths by 100, shouldn’t you target the group that is causing the most accidents, and the most severe ones too?
Morbidly you could just as well argue that the elderly are going to die soon anyway so the issue “automatically resolves itself” in the majority of cases too.
Aliktren@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Live in Dorset which is gods waiting room and this is spot on, people driving supremely slowly are usually old but annoying, people driving supremely slowly whilst in their phones, middle lane hoggers, idiots up your arse are the actually dangerous drivers.
FishFace@piefed.social 3 days ago
I’ve never seen a middle-lane hogger responsible for anything dangerous either - I’d put them firmly in the “annoying” category. Once in a while you see someone responding dangerously to someone driving in an annoying but otherwise basically safe way, and I also see this when the “annoying” way people are driving is driving at the speed limit, or waiting for a safe gap to pull into after overtaking, so I don’t feel like that can really be blamed on people hogging the middle lane.
Aliktren@lemmy.world 3 days ago
They force people into the outside lane and are defacto not paying attetion to anyone else, its driving without due care at least imo, they also are invariably causing a concertina behind them
FishFace@piefed.social 3 days ago
Sounds annoying to me, rather than dangerous - just like driving unnecessarily slowly.