Florida’s requirement that we drive anywhere we want to go is also why we have so many elderly drivers on the roads doing 25 in a 45 mph zone with one blinker on, even though they can be a danger to every other motorist or jaywalking pedestrian. It also explains a phenomenon I have sometimes heard referred to as “Sudden Elderly Acceleration Syndrome.” (Incidents of SEAS got so bad last year the Postal Service put out a PSA asking Floridians to please stop ramming into their post offices.)
As of last year, Florida had 455 licensed drivers who were 100 or older. Between the ages of 91 and 100, there are 65,000. Maybe perhaps possibly it couuuuuld be that some of these folks shouldn’t be driving anymore—but if you take away their car keys, they will be stranded as surely as if they’d been dropped on an Alaskan ice floe.
And I thought WE had it bad. Can you imagine that? There are 65,000 people who are 91-years old or more driving around!
More “opinion masquerading as “research”, this time from Be Wiser Insurance. They’ve discovered that many parents don’t feel their little darlings are properly equipped to drive when they pass their tests, with over 60% saying they were especially worried about them going on motorways.
Look. It would be great if we could take them on motorways during lessons, but that is not where they have their accidents.
The favoured location for this is on a country lane, on a bend, at night. More importantly, the correct procedure when at the location is to have a car full of mates screaming and shouting, a full stock of freshly-bought McDonalds food, and to be in the middle of a “bad testosterone” day, thus forcing you to show off how far away from maturity you really are. Oh, and all this must happen in a pratmobile – most likely part-financed by mummy and daddy – decked out to scream “I go faaaaast” from every angle.
To be fair, lesser worries are also given in the same story, such as driving at night, driving in town centres, and being distracted. But no further detail is given. The main focus is that motorways comment.
Be Wiser is either wholly irresponsible – or just very bad at interpreting and reporting important data correctly – for following the comment up with:
And the statistics appear to back up the worries of parents as drivers aged between 18-25 years are the group mostly likely to be involved in an accident according to Government figures.
YES! ON COUNTRY LANES, AT NIGHT, ON A BEND… NOT ON MOTORWAYS! Be Wiser has missed a trick by not expanding on the actual problems that it must – as an insurer – know about and which are the real causes of accidents. Apart from country lanes, other important factors include texting, showing off, driving and accelerating far too quickly then braking far too harshly, not knowing where you are going and changing direction at the last minute, not knowing the rules of the Highway Code (or not caring), and so on. All related to attitude, by the way. Motorways don’t even make the top ten.
This Is Guernsey reports that elderly drivers don’t think they should be retested. And that comes from an Age Concern group. The entire premise is based on the comment:
Many spoken to felt they were very capable of driving and would be housebound if they did not have a licence.
Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?
This Is Guernsey must have an absolutely tiny circulation, and yet requires a subscription in order to read stories in full. At nearly £2 per copy it is horrendously overpriced. So we’ll just have to go with the above quote as being the sum total of the story. After all, apart from a load more old people saying it’s “unfair” and “discriminatory”, it’s hard to imagine anything that gives the claim any greater substance.
It’s a simple fact that a driving licence isn’t something you get free when you reach 65 along with a bus pass and pension. It’s something that should be taken away at the first signs of health issues likely to impair driving ability, and any form of dementia should immediately be notifiable with mandatory surrendering of the licence. And while we’re on the subject, similar checks should be carried out before anyone is allowed to ride a mobility scooter. If you’re unfit to hold a driving licence there’s almost no way you’re going to be fit to ride one of those things.
I mention mobility scooters because I was out on a lesson last night and this old guy was riding one of them in the road. My pupil asked if they were allowed to do that, and I explained the law (or lack of), and how these scooter riders are often not even aware of what they should and shouldn’t do. Even if they are, they simply don’t care (being old gives you special rights, doesn’t it?) What made this case especially noteworthy was the fact that this particular comedian was carrying a heavy 8 foot metal post with large square platforms either end. If it had fallen on a child (or anyone, come to that) it could easily have killed them, and if it had fallen into the road it could have caused a nasty accident with a lot of damage. His ability to control the scooter was obviously massively impaired as he had it balanced upright between his legs. Anyone doing that with a car or motorcycle would have been on Road Wars in 10 seconds flat, with 3 shiny new points on their licence.
It’s frightening to think that this clown could still have had a drivers licence and a car for all anyone knew.
An Audi driver was driving whilst twice the legal limit. William Watson, 27, drove into a hedge and wrote off his car, ran away from the scene of the accident, then evaded arrest when he was spotted by police a short time later. He was also reported for a separate offence a few days earlier of texting while driving, having been seen doing so by a police officer.
The funny part was his defence lawyer’s plea in mitigation:
[Watson] was held in high regard by those who knew him and had behaved in a way which was out of character.
I must say that he chose a bloody good way to behave “out of character”. Most people would have just picked one of the things he did, but Watson went for all three.
It occurred to me that defence lawyers would be better off not bothering trying to provide mitigating circumstances anymore. For a start off, if someone is guilty as hell the sob stories just make them look even more foolish as the courts totally ignore any pleas for leniency. The only realistic chance you’ve got of getting off is if you’re pregnant (or if you claim that post-natal depression made you do it). And let’s be honest, men can’t really pull that stunt.
Just when you thought you’d heard it all, something like this comes along. Alfa Romeo (a manufacturer of fast cars with added prat attraction) along with Marmalade (a company that makes its money insuring young drivers) have teamed up to do some “research” and come to the astounding conclusion that young drivers have accidents because they cannot afford new cars!
First of all, it is not “research”. Not in the slightest. It’s another survey, the sole purpose of which is to create publicity for the two companies involved.
The “research” – in particular, the article reporting it – is so amateurish it defies description. What is the point of reporting what the public thinks, when the facts are staring you right in the face?
Almost half of new young drivers believe they are being forced into less advanced motors – and this is a major contributor to those aged under 24 being involved in more car accidents than any other age group, according to a survey by manufacturer Alfa Romeo and insurer Marmalade.
Absolute bollocks. Young drivers (and anyone else) who have accidents do so because they drive badly. And insurance premiums are high for the age groups having most accidents as a direct result of this.
And young drivers in new cars are no different. Any safety features are only likely to mask the underlying appalling attitude and driving ability.
Some of the results so far are terrifying. In particular, a 66-year old in Eastbourne was found to be unable to read a car number plate from more than 4 metres! That’s less than a fifth the normal required distance. For all practical purposes he was driving whilst completely blind. The story rides on the back of that of 69-year old Wayne Metcalfe, who was jailed for 6 months (suspended for two years) after he killed a motorcyclist when he knocked him off without seeing him.
The guy who couldn’t read a plate beyond 4 metres also ought to be looking at a prison stretch. You don’t just overlook eyesight that poor (after all, the quality of vision within 4 metres is unlikely to be perfect in such a case, and not being able to see your feet properly would tend to register as there being something slightly wrong). In fact, ignoring such obvious problems has to be down either to criminal stupidity… or just the fact that criminal acts don’t bother you.
It’s a tragic story, but the fact that Lutman’s father was a driving instructor is totally irrelevant. That’s the Daily Mail for you, though.
The law in this country really is in a mess when you read the full story. Lutman was the driver, to be sure, but the deceased – Ian Deer, also 19 – appeared to be at least as responsible for what happened. Lutman didn’t want to drive, but was eventually coerced into doing so by Deer. In fact, Deer was messing with the dual controls (dangerous enough by itself) and even pulled Lutman’s arm off the steering wheel just before the crash. He was not wearing a seatbelt, and text messages received by Lutman made it clear that it was Deer’s idea to take the car keys.
Deer’s mother does not blame Lutman for the crash.
Lutman’s whole life is now ruined by a 3 year and 4 month jail sentence (it would have already been seriously damaged by what he had done, and what he never tried to deny responsibility for). I’m not defending him in any way, but far worse offenders from the dregs of society get away with much more lenient sentences. Lutman, on the other hand, was a good student at Leicester University, with a bright future ahead of him.
This made me smile. Not the main story itself, about a learner who passed first time with no faults (well done for that), but the bit at the end where he is quoted:
My lack of a driving licence was holding me back. Now I can move my career to the next level. I’ve already bought a van.
The story dwells on the fact that the learner had “only” had seven hours of lessons. So what? I started with a new pupil last week who’d never driven before. He’d never even sat in the driver’s seat of a car. Yet on the first lesson he ended up driving by himself for a distance of at least 15 miles. We had the third lesson today (which now totals 5 hours), and we’ve attempted all of the manoeuvres – and the only thing to sort out with those involves practice and polish.
Although it’s been a while since I had one of these, at the other end of the scale you occasionally get people who take two or three times that amount of lessons before they can even negotiate a simple junction, and even then it can still go wrong. They can’t help it, and they aren’t doing it deliberately. They just aren’t natural drivers.
We don’t know anything at all about the learner in the story. No one seems interested in the important facts, or in how that pupil must feel knowing everyone is rubbing their hands over her misfortune. They just want to gloat.
It appears that she hit the gas instead of the brake, which isn’t uncommon. Mine will sometimes do it when they first try a manoeuvre, but I never lose control. My feet hover over the pedals just in case. And it’s the same with steering – I always assume that pupils will do something strange or dramatic until I know them well enough to be sure that they won’t. They sometimes try it, especially when they see a bus or lorry coming towards them, and I even had one dyspraxic who suddenly tried to drive across a pavement next to a straight road, and who couldn’t explain why.
So the only question that seems to crop up here is why the instructor wasn’t ready for it.
However, there is a saying, often attributed to John Bradford, which goes “there but for the grace of God, go I”. In a nutshell, it means that it could happen to anyone – and that means both the learner driver, the instructor, and any other driver in cases such as these.
Coolledge was banned for a further 3 years just for the driving rap. The alcohol one is still to come.
What always fascinates me in these stories is how anyone could live a life like that. I mean, to have been in such trouble permanently from at least the age of 12, and to show no signs of trying to crawl up out of the pond and improve yourself. You really cannot believe such people are human, sometimes.
The do-gooders would berate you for thinking that. But what will Coolledge and those like him do next? They have no concept of “rules”, so other people mean nothing to them.
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