Today on the outskirts of Edinburgh at a roundabout the old guy in front pulled away from the lights as they changed to green, only to stop dead in front of me as he reached the next set at red, pity the were angled to face the traffic stopped at the next entrance to the roundabout. A quick toot toot and waving of the hand encouraged him to continue but FFs, the light wasnae for him. Still I was in a good mood, just had an interview and got the job, nothing fancy but paying loads more than the feck all the dole was giving me.
Getting drunk tonight.

 

As I said, if they are competent to drive I have no real issue. Also as Pete says, it's human nature to get wound up by someone doing 15 mph in a 30 and pulling away from the lights when they have been on green for 10 seconds. It depends how you react (or don't more to the point) that is the key.

It's the ones who are dangerous i'm really on about.

So no, I won't give that category a break

I do think the options for people without a car are poor though, so that doesn't help.

 

Very easy to stereotype people.

'Old people' are individual like you or I and shouldn't be categorised as a generic group.

Some have always been bad drivers from a young age and their advancing age has nothing to with heir lack of ability behind the wheel.

Others have always been brilliant right through to old age. e.g John Surtees and Stirling Moss

I find that bad drivers very much come in all age groups and the worst are the young who think they are immortal.

Interesting that the over 50's get much cheaper insurance - who are having the bulk of accidents I wonder?

Could it be sports car drivers?

Perhaps people who drive powerful cars should have an extra driving test, statistically it would seem to make sense, they are the most dangerous drivers on the road and very often the most impatient?

 

True, my choice of "old people" prob wasn't too fair.

It's easy to stereotype someone who is old and can barely get into their car though. Funnily enough I was thinking of Stirling Moss today, unsure what age he is but I suspect he will be driving to a good standard for years to come.

 

my Grandad at 87 recently had a bump - he had to (i.e. doctor recommendations) take his driving assessment again as he had gluacoma and has been reassessed 5 years later with no issues. He is not fast, and yes you might yet annoyed following him as he sticks around 45mph on A and B roads. His bump was due to a 21 year old moron who came up behind him at +50 mph to a roundabout and smacked into him pushing him on to the roundabout and into the path of an on coming, who avoid him (thank goodness) but hit the 21 year old moron in the car (resulting in him being caught)
I do think that doctors should be ale to flag to the DVLA / local police if they consider a person to be potentially problematic behind the wheel AND the appropriate action being taken to assess and improve the people or remove them from the road.
Whilst the accident fatal figures are low for the older age bracket, I do wonder how many low speed incidents are attributable to lack of ability, (not necessarily age related) and how of those are due to older people?
That's my two penneth FWIW

 

 

Or for an alternative viewpoint, he stopped due to no visibility, the following drivers also managed to stop due to driving at a safe distance, and an impatient younger driver overtook the whole line of traffic with no idea why it had stopped (possible hazard?) and then moved off (without checking his mirrors which isn't age related )

No idea what happened just playing devil's advocate.

However yes often when I see "doddery" driving - people being uncertain, very hesitant, driving very slowly, wavering over the road etc., it is invariably an older person.

My grandad drove when blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other - I wasn't old enough to twig I should have reported him (I would now) but I've no idea why my parents didn't. Then my grandad's girlfriend couldn't understand why people got cross when she slowed down to read road signs because she couldn't make them out properly. And my other grandad himself exhibited all the stereotypical "Old person" characteristics - the good old BSM steering shuffle which when executed slowly takes an age to straighten the car out while it's heading into oncoming traffic, indecisive etc. etc.

I think there should be re-testing, there should be a responsibility/right of the doctor to contact the DVLA in the case of medical reasons why someone is potentially unfit to drive (rather than leaving it up to the individual), none of these are age related though.

Unfortunately the irritating characteristics aren't inherently dangerous, at least no more dangerous than any other driver's irritating characteristics!

Having said all that they do my head in around here crawling everywhere But then I'm a member of HPC and some of those drivers are more senior than me and put me to shame regularly.

 

Well, of course family can do that too in a lot of cases. My wife's grandfather would still occasionally drive into his nineties. We all gently discouraged him wherever possible, and he wouldn't really go anywhere in his car apart from the occasional trip to the supermarket.

It was a case of trying to replace his car wherever possible, and friends and family rallied round to ferry him to and fro. I think what made the difference was that he could use the car if he wanted to, and as such as long as he didn't have to, then he didn't use it. And that's kind of what I'm thinking about with the elderly and their cars. He would have been completely trapped without his car, completely reliant on others. Sometimes I fear people forget that an old person is still a young person inside. When we all reach our eighties we are still going to be just as we are now in our heads. Imagine how frustrating that's going to be for us all.

Of course, if a person is dangerous they simply can't drive, I don't think anyone would dispute that. But there's all too often an example of an elderly person driving poorly - but not dangerously - and the response is that they shouldn't be on the road. And when I was 21 I was probably guilty of having that viewpoint too. It's as I've got older and seen how important it is to so many that I've softened my opinion.

 

I see lots of overweight young men and women who have the same problem.

Very often they are the ones who drive with a phone stuck to their ear or a fag in the steering wheel hand or is that another stereotype?

 

Most of the "old person bad driving" related in this thread could easily have been attributed to drivers of any age.

For example, as I was walking to work on a recent frosty morning, I saw a Golf approaching, driving erratically, swerving around. It then pulled over briefly, then pulled out almost into the path of a car that approached it from behind. As I walked on the car pulled up alongside me and stopped again. At this point I realised the 20-30-something woman driving it had not bothered to defrost or demist any of the windows and couldn't actually see where she was going but she probably had an appointment to keep

On another point, there seems to be a misconception about insurance. In fact, premiums do increase again once you get past a certain age (65 or so) as old people do make more claims for various reasons. So there is some truth in the old people not being as good as younger folks.