How, what, why?............. Obviously wrong to make judgement as we are not privvy to the evidence and it is still early days, but these are the sorts of crashes I used to hate dealing with, just on the basis that it probably could have and should have been avoided. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...-hospital-in-manchester/ar-AAnZh4p?li=BBoPWjQ
Very sad for all parties involved. I suspect that unless there was a massive vehicle failure, the age of the gentleman is possibly a factor. With the best will in the world it must be very difficult driving on today's roads when you're pushing 90. My neighbour has just persuaded his elderly dad to give his car up after he kerbed it in Sheffield, burst the tyre, damaged the wheel & continued driving home at rush hour through the city. He hadn't even realised he'd done it until his son saw it a few hours later. Although I'm reluctant to add to the general corrosion of our freedoms these days I do think something more stringent needs to be in place regarding very elderly drivers, perhaps a subsidised re test & medical.
To be fair some much younger drivers could do with retests! And it still baffles me how you can pass a test with no motorway experience or minimum should have post test motorway training, as it might curb some middle lane idiots
Perhaps we should do 10 year drive validations so when your licence is up for renewal you have to sit a one or two hour competence training as part of price of renewal
Won't happen. That has been visited, looked at and dismissed. I was one of those they asked to become an examiner. I sit on a number of road safety committees and I have also raised this subject several times at parliamentary level, and there are no plans to revisit any time soon for political reasons. Like I said in opening thread, don't pre-judge because as you rightly say there could have been a massive mecahnical failure (or not so big for that matter, just one with massive consequences). We won't know until the inquest and even then we will only know what the press decide to tell us. I deal with these types of things on a daily basis, and the cause is not always as first thought, but then following on from that I also see drivers of all age groups in my capacity as an advanced examiner for both bikes and cars, and believe me, I trust some of the older drivers far more than I do some of their younger or middle aged compatriots and certainly far more than some of the newly qualified riders or drivers Well Motorway tuition is forming part of the current ongoing consultation at the moment, but...This will only work if the instructors themselves know how to drive on a Motorway. The majority have no idea. My brother in law is an ADI and his lack of knowledge is frightening, his standard of driving is pretty awful as well.
I wasn't having a dig at elderly drivers, far from it. Poor driving is across the full spectrum. But I believe that having a driving licence is a privilege not a right. We have a system in place where new drivers can lose their licence after 6 points, experienced drivers after 12 for speeding etc . I just think there should be a bit more in place for when age can start to impact badly on people's driving standards. For the vast amount of elderly drivers it won't be a problem, because as you say they are probably safer & calmer than a lot of other driver groups. But it will help weed out the odd one who is patently no longer safe to be on the road.
