Category - Bad Drivers

This is why insurance is so high for teenagers – because of dickheads like this as-yet unnamed 18-year old.

He was driving through a village 30mph zone and was clocked at 89mph. As the police said, if anyone walking home had stepped out he would have had no chance of stopping.

He was driving a red Fiesta and failed to stop for police. They later traced him and arrested him, but released him on bail. If it were me, I’d have kept him locked up because our wonderful legal system will probably let him off lightly if the case ever makes it that far.

The Guardian reports that UK police have seized their millionth uninsured vehicle (it was in the West Midlands). The report mentions that out of 34 million drivers in the UK, around 1.2 million are uninsured.

Since 2005, when police gained powers to seize uninsured vehicles, an average of 500 a day have been nabbed! About a third of those have ended up being crushed.

The article says that uninsured drivers kill 160 and injure 23,000 people a year. That’s quite frightening when you think about it.

This Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) “research” (it’s actually just a survey-cum-press release) says:

New research* undertaken amongst communities in the West Midlands and West Yorkshire highlights that a third of people still do not understand the current laws on car insurance, so are risking fines of up to £5,000; points on their licence and having their cars seized by police. Some of the reasons cited by motorists living in these hotspot areas, include: the cost of motor insurance, not understanding the law and penalties, and a belief that they’ll get away with it.

I love the way they completely avoid mentioning the extremely significant cultural issues which are involved here. Even so, they contradict themselves in that paragraph.

On the one hand, they say people “do not understand” the law. Then, in the next sentence they say that those questioned say insurance in “too high” and believe “that they’ll get away with it”. So which is it, MIB?

The postcode areas in question have very significant demographics in terms of ethnicity and poverty, and it is clear that people are anxious to protect that aspect and avoid identifying it. Of course, if you are hit and killed by an uninsured driver, it doesn’t matter to you or your family who the driver was – you’re still dead, and the he was still uninsured.

But the police – and any other authority wanting to change things – should be very concerned about the obvious common denominators.

As I’ve said before, driving is a privilege, not a right. Of the people who drive uninsured, 95% of them KNOW that they are driving uninsured, and they know it is illegal.

At last! This sort of sentence needs to be passed out more often – particularly when you bear in mind the events surrounding the e-petition for Cassie’s Law, which I’ve written about several times previously.

Turner Waddell, 90, managed to get on the A30 in Hampshire and head the wrong way. In spite of being flashed by other drivers, what is left of his aged brain still failed to alert him to the fact that something was wrong – as it would have done with anyone who was fit to drive in the first place.

Waddell travelled for nearly a mile before colliding head-on with Neil Colquhoun.

Neil Colquhoun died (at the scene, if I read the story correctly). The police have stated categorically that there was nothing he could have done, and that he was entirely blameless.

The police also pointed out that Waddell has defective eyesight and was not fit to be driving on the road.

The ITN report is quite poorly written, but the indications are that Waddell received a life ban from driving (I wish they’d explained that in proper terms) and a nine-month sentence suspended for two years.

Let’s be in no doubt about this: Waddell committed this act BECAUSE he was 90, and BECAUSE he was suffering from deficiencies that are many more times likely in someone who is 90 (see update below) than they are in people who are 20 or 30. Anyone who suggests it wasn’t due to age is talking out of their backside.

The bleeding hearts out there who believe that all old people should be allowed to drive “because it gives them mobility” ought to be doing reality checks when stories like this crop up. Some ADIs even specialise in teaching people who should not be on the roads at all – which makes you wonder precisely whose interests they are serving.

We need new laws to prevent age-impaired drivers from killing innocent people, and they need to be removed from the roads by legal force instead of continuing to be allowed to lie on their periodic licence renewal forms.

It’s vital that Cassie’s Law gets more signatures. (Petition now closed)

In an update to this story, it turns out that the the idiot responsible, Dr Turner Waddell, was also in the early stages of dementia! He walks with a zimmer frame and is also hearing-impaired.

It’s a little hard to believe sometimes that that people like this are legally allowed to drive.

It’s even harder to believe that some instructors actually specialise in getting them on the roads, and are continually whinging about how hard the testing system is for the poor darlings? It is appalling – and just as bad, in its own way, as allowing such incapable people out on the roads in the first place.

Judge Keith Cutler said: “If there is any message that should come from this it should be that the elderly and those that care for them – their families and doctors – should think very, very carefully about whether the elderly should still be able to drive on the road.

“There is sometimes a form of arrogance that one can carry on exercising a right to drive when that should not be done.”

Absolutely correct. As I said above, it’s vital that Cassie’s Law gets more signatures. We NEED the Law to change. (Petition now closed)

In a related story, there was a phone-in on LBC 97.3 FM, according to one of the presenter’s blogs. He notes:

Twenty motorists aged 80 and above took their driving test for the first time, according to figures released by the Department for Transport, and 5 of them (including a 91 year old) passed. Why we’re they allowed to do this? Surely this is a bad idea. I wanted to know if you think old drivers should face restrictions? For example, once they turn 70, perhaps they should stop driving? Or take another test? It turned into a bit of a blood bath, with some irate callers telling me that a ban on driving, for them, would bring their lives to a sudden halt. I wasn’t convinced; just because you want to drive doesn’t mean you should!

The problem – the REAL problem – is tucked away in there if you look. It’s old people calling foul if anything goes against them. What you basically have is (some) dangerous elderly drivers who are not fit to be out alone on foot, never mind in a car, arguing that being banned would affect their cushy little lives.

I’m sure that Neil Colquhoun and Cassie McCord – if they can see any of this – who have both been removed from this world by absolutely decrepit people behind the wheels of cars they shouldn’t have been would be happy to hear the nonsensical rantings of these people. And I’m sure their families would, too.

Barkes is right: Just because you want to, doesn’t mean you should!

That applies to all aspects of life.

A lot of people confuse this issue with that of retesting ALL drivers. It’s not the same thing.

This is about confiscating the licences of people who are effectively “too old” or otherwise infirm to drive, and who are found to be so by the police at the time of an incident. This is as a direct result of increasing numbers of high profile incidents involving that group.

It is the police inability to confiscate such licences that led to Cassie’s death.

The whole point here is that if the police find someone to be deficient they need to have powers to remove them from the roads immediately. At present, the police could attend an incident, find someone to have age-related eyesight (or other faculty) problems, and yet they cannot force that person off the road.

To make matters worse, that same driver who the police are unable to remove from the road could immediately fill in a form to declare they are fit to drive and get their licence renewed for another 5 years. Many do exactly this each and every day. It is only by good fortune (and other drivers’ quick actions) that they haven’t had accidents.

It was such an age-impaired driver who killed Cassie McCord – he had had an accident only a short time before, and was found by the police at that time to be incapable of driving safely. But the police were powerless to get him off the roads.

Of course, this leads some of the big-heart/small-brain types out there to start feeling sorry for elderly drivers – as if that is some sort of justification for them to hold on to their licences once they start to lose their faculties. It isn’t.

The fact remains that as we get older we all start to wind down – to wear out – prior to the inevitable end. It affects some people much more than others. There’s no point trying to compare older drivers with younger ones in this respect, or by rattling on about how dangerous other drivers can be.

Younger drivers (especially the males) tend to have accidents because they’re arseholes, but who don’t realise that fact. Older drivers of the type in question tend to have accidents because they simply can’t cut it any more (in many cases, they just can’t see – but tell the DVLA that they can). The two situations are as different as chalk and cheese. The drivers who killed Cassie McCord and Neil Colquhoun were deficient due to advanced age – nothing else.

I hear there is a campaign being started saying that driving instructors should be given cycling lessons so that they can “understand” how vulnerable cyclists are in order to be able to pass it on to their learners.

As regular readers will know, two of my pet hates are dumbing down and deferring responsibility away from where it should be targeted. This ridiculous suggestion ticks both boxes.

Any driving instructor who needs cycling lessons in order to realise that cyclists and cars don’t mix shouldn’t be an ADI in the first place. And neither should anyone who thinks this is a good idea. It’s idiotic.

Although I don’t have an issue with cyclists as a whole, there are two groups who are their own worst enemies. Notably, the Spandex crowd and teenagers. Even young children with stabilisers fitted ride their bikes better than these two groups do, which strongly suggests their actions are deliberate or, at best, in the couldn’t-care-less category. That tells you where the problem is.

Councils have spent millions building cycle routes, which the Spandex lot in particular totally refuse to use, putting themselves needlessly close to traffic in situations where it is obvious that there is danger. Teenagers on those stupid BMX bikes that are too small for them will happily ride the wrong way down roads, jump off kerbs without looking, and do anything else their ineffective and totally irresponsible parents and teachers haven’t tried to stop them from doing.

I was on a lesson today with a pupil who was passing parked cars too closely – not even deviating a little when he approached them. Yet when he went past any cyclist he was giving them at least two car widths room, sometimes crossing into the path of oncoming traffic! He was more concerned about the cyclists than the other vehicles. That’s because he already knows how vulnerable cyclists are, as do I, and as does 99% of the motoring public.

This kind of suggestion is what you get when you put knowledge and expertise lower down the priority list than some wishy-washy modern “coaching” initiative. It is such nonsense which has allowed non-experts with little knowledge to gain unfortunately prominent positions in many areas they shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of (yes, it isn’t just the driver training industry that has suffered).

Efforts should be made to encourage cyclists to stay away from traffic, not to get closer to it and attempt to pass needless responsibility on to motorists.

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