jezer wrote:This story has been featured on the MX5 Owners’ Club pages for some days, and has attracted many comments. (The car involved was a Mazda MX5). Condemnation of the driver has been as universal as it has on here, with comments similar to this group. There is certainly no attempt to offer any excuse for the appalling driving standards of this man.
Something a bit dubious about an 81 year old chap who chooses to drive a hairdresser's car. Even so TC's suggested solution would have been a good way to have dealt with the case.
A retired gentleman in my village drives an MX5, the appeal being that it is the nearest modern equivalent of the MGB / Triumph Spitfire he would have liked to have had when he was young. But he has good eyesight and drives well. His one regret about the car is that his Brompton won't fit in.
There was a large manhole cover near the accident, if this had any bearing I cannot say. The car make is listed as about 1680 mm wide, some cars are 80mm narrower, Suzuki Alto for example. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.98093 ... 6656?hl=en
Some testing of older people to estimate how well they judge passing clearances may be worthwhile. The vision tends to be better on the central area of viewing for older people, they tend to miss kerb details in comparison to younger people. At 70-75 and older perhaps most drivers would be more suited to smaller cars/narrower.
Licences expire at 70 years of age. I think some conditions could be attached to having a licence after 70 depending on eyesight, not just in terms of wearing glasses, but I am not a specialise in eyesight aspects.
Loss of peripheral vision. Aging also causes a normal loss of peripheral vision, with the size of our visual field decreasing by approximately one to three degrees per decade of life. By the time you reach your 70s and 80s, you may have a peripheral visual field loss of 20 to 30 degrees.
A court should have details of the eyesight of the driver when hearing the case.
Steady rider wrote:There was a large manhole cover near the accident, if this had any bearing I cannot say. The car make is listed as about 1680 mm wide, some cars are 80mm narrower, Suzuki Alto for example. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.98093 ... 6656?hl=en
Some testing of older people to estimate how well they judge passing clearances may be worthwhile. The vision tends to be better on the central area of viewing for older people, they tend to miss kerb details in comparison to younger people. At 70-75 and older perhaps most drivers would be more suited to smaller cars/narrower.
Licences expire at 70 years of age. I think some conditions could be attached to having a licence after 70 depending on eyesight, not just in terms of wearing glasses, but I am not a specialise in eyesight aspects.
Loss of peripheral vision. Aging also causes a normal loss of peripheral vision, with the size of our visual field decreasing by approximately one to three degrees per decade of life. By the time you reach your 70s and 80s, you may have a peripheral visual field loss of 20 to 30 degrees.
A court should have details of the eyesight of the driver when hearing the case.
8cm further away would still have been dangerously close - close enough to potentially hit any cyclist avoiding an imperfection (sic) in the road surface. I don't believe driving a narrower car would have made this driver any safer.
Many people of all ages have problems judging widths and clearances. Young eyes 'may' have better visual acuity - or not. Many more young people of my acquaintance wear glasses than in my youth - this may be a fashion thing or marketing. Even if it results in better eye tests, it educates the brain to pay attention to what is seen through the glasses - i.e. the centre of the visual field as opposed to the periphery.
I teach a martial art and find students (young and old) lacking in peripheral awareness, which they need to use when working at medium distance (closer in, vision is less important than touch) and for situational awareness.
When driving however it should not be so important: You should not be squeezing a vehicle past vulnerable road users using your preripheral vision to judge the distance (it is bad for that anyway, much better than central vision for detecting movement though). Passing distance needs to be planned before you are that close and relying on youth, quick reactions and peripheral vision rather than planning is just another way to drive dangerously.
Unless there's something that's gone unreported, we seem to have a case of somebody conventionally respectable who has continued to drive when he wasn't up to the task. It's been dealt with by charging him with an indictable offence which means a Crown Court disposal. Had he exercised his undoubted right to plead not guilty, the witnesses, a judge, two teams of lawyers, various court officials, and last but not least a dozen jurors would have spent several days coming to a decision, whose main purpose would have been to stop him repeating the behaviour: stopping him driving. If I'm not making the point 100% clearly, the criminal law is cumbersome, involving procedures which weren't developed to deal with something like this.
It all needs modernising, but most of the streamlining is concentrated on getting cases more easily into the Crown Court, rather than reviewing the criminal justice system as a whole.
Whatever anybody thinks about custody, the jails - often squalid jails - are full to bursting and there's no prospect of that being alleviated. The system couldn't cope with people like this being locked up as a deterrent to others. FWIW, curtailing this trial by accepting a guilty plea to the serious but lesser offence may have allowed the trial of a defendant or defendants remanded in custody, thus moving things along.
Another important aspect which has been mentioned is compensation. While the criminal courts have been given increasing powers to award summary compensation, that's limited to straightforward cases and AFAIK, it's excluded in road accident cases. The very obvious reason is that the procedure for assessing the compo is complicated, especially when the effects may be long-term. Any compo will come from the driver's third party insurance, with any dispute being resolved through the civil courts.
Jail is not what we are after in these situations - just get people off the road if they cannot or will not drive safely and with consideration for others. If someone cannot see adequately then they are not eligible to drive, if that means eye tests for every driver every year then so be it ( I don’t have an optician business btw). We are far too lenient on who we allow to drive and again when they show themselves up by very serious trangressions. Some more severe punishment would need to be given for driving whiled banned or without a licence, but gain, not jail, community sentences, curfews, I don’t care what, and employment of hardship is no excuse to evade these sanctions, they can walk, cycle, get the bus or pay for taxis just don’t let them remain a danger to others. With proper and enforced sanctions driving standards will improve, period.
Maybe it's because I tend to ride weekdays after and before the rush hours and that in those hours more retired people are driving, but my perception is, that the close passers tend to be those that fall into the "elderly" bracket. As age creeps up on me I notice that things ain't what they used to be, and that I have slowed down (both my driving and cycling). Perhaps there is a need for a more practical approach to be taken as a driver reaches their seventies and eighties - a further short driving test? But then, passing a driving test is no guide to safe driving - look at the driving stats for 20 to 25 year olds. I hope I will be self aware enough to call quits on my driving and cycling (if not me, then my children will tell me).