A new report is recommending that elderly drivers be sent on special training courses to ensure that they are still safe to drive.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (Pacts) has produced a report entitled It’s My Choice, which has highlighted the huge rise in the number of elderly drivers in the UK, up from 15% of over 70’s holding a licence in 1975 to almost 60% in 2010. While the report does not actually recommend mandatory retesting, it does raise the subject and does call for a national strategy to deal with the issue of more elderly drivers on the nation’s roads.
The Pacts figures also suggest that, as an issue, it is certainly not going away. More than 80% of those aged between 60 and 69 hold a licence and most of them will continue driving for another 20 years, so a wider discussion on this topic is overdue and welcome. Robert Gifford, executive director of Pacts said: “We need to move beyond seeing older people as a problem to viewing them as contributing to a mixed society.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9136979/Strategy-needed-to-cope...