Should over 70s be made to take a driving test? Options

[GMR]

Emma Soames, writing for Saga magazine (that represents the over 50s) believes that over 70s should retake their driving test.

Read the article below.

http://www.saga.co.uk/homeandlifestyle/peo...-test-at-70.asp

My view:

I am all for testing bad drivers; whatever their age. But focusing on the 70s or over is discrimination and the writer of the article should be careful. Emma Soames is supposed to speak for Saga, who represents people of a certain age. They shouldn’t be in the business of discriminating against those they stand for.

In the article Ms Soames says “I’ve changed my mind since a particularly po-faced edition of Traffic Cops featured footage of several quite serious incidents caused by the erratic driving of older people in Sussex – though it could have been anywhere.” Yippee, she saw a programme of bad drivers who happen to be old. I saw a programme of black drug dealers dealing to kids, does that mean those black dealers represent every black person? No and to suggest it is discrimination. And what she said is discrimination against people of a certain age. She should not be judging everybody by her narrow focused observations. It is offensive. There are some brilliant ‘older people’ who drive on our roads, as there are evil nasty young drivers out there.

There is also another problem with people who are no longer young, taking their driving test again. When I past my test in the 70s (i.e. 1970s) I told my driving instructor ‘Everything you taught me will go out of the window,’ in which he agreed with me. We become more skillful and judge things differently (compared to learning parrot fashion). That is why when they retest people many, many years later they fail. But they don’t fail because they are bad drivers; they fail because they are a different/ better drivers than when they first started out (naive even).

‘Older people’ have a lot of obstacle to contend with when they get older, what they don’t need is somebody who represents them also joining in to kick their legs out from under them. By all means attack and remove bad drivers – whoever they are – from our roads. But picking on good drivers because they are of a certain age is prejudice, bigotry, abusive and offensive to those that expected more from their representatives.