00:01so once you're sort of driving at sort of say 30 or 40 miles an hour it's a sort of
00:06a it's a
00:07projectile and if you're not fully in control and you don't react quickly enough the consequences
00:12can be catastrophic a third of people surveyed in the uk say that drivers over 80 should not be
00:18on the roads concerns sent out on eyesight and other age-related health issues with recent
00:24proposals aiming to introduce stricter checks for those over 70. An outright ban seems somewhat
00:31draconian because there may be people who are sort of perfectly fine and pass the tests
00:37but of course what tests may they be and I fully recognize that if you start testing sort of
00:44thousands well hundreds of thousands potentially millions of people what every year every couple
00:50of years that's going to sort of clog up the system and it's going to add to the expense
00:54so we do need to have a sort of very careful think about this thing and decide what we really
00:59want
01:00blanket bans work in one way but of course as I say they do encroach on people's sort of civil
01:07liberties
01:07and their belief that they can do what they wish but of course we as we know we do what
01:12we wish
01:12as long as it's not with consequence to others I was looking at a statistic earlier on which talks
01:18about the fact that the number of people sort of 65 to 79 so we're talking just on the cusp
01:24of the
01:24sort of the over 80s it's going to sort of go up by a third to over 10 million in
01:29the next 40 years
01:30so this problem is not going to go away. Research from choosemycar.com revealed that 38 percent of
01:38people believe those over 80 should be banned from driving. The concern is strongest among younger
01:44generations with over half of 18 to 29 year olds supporting stricter rules currently over 70s in
01:51the UK must renew their licenses every three years and self-declare their health and eyesight data from
01:59the department for transport shows 42 percent of incidents involving drivers over 70 are linked to
02:05vision problems the new measures including mandatory eye tests would align the UK with other European countries
02:13and I know from personal circumstances my dad when he got to over 70 I mean he felt less sure
02:20and I
02:21know it was a very difficult thing for him to do in terms of giving up his license because of
02:25course he
02:26recognized that he may be a potential danger. Interestingly enough it was mainly younger people in the survey
02:36and like Millennials and Gen Z's who wanted over 80s off the roads but as you might have seen in
02:43the news
02:45there was some research done that found 20 percent of newly qualified drivers are likely to have a crash in
02:51their
02:51first year so what does this information tell us? No I mean it's a really difficult one and yeah so
02:57as a new
02:58qualified driver and I sort of see people go around with the sort of the green plates suggesting that they
03:03are newly
03:04qualified you give them sort of a bit of space like you do to a learner driver you know do
03:09I sort of
03:10suggesting as I think about this that maybe we should have sort of an over 80s plate and people sort
03:15of
03:15give them a bit of extra space but there's no doubt about it that you know and I've been at
03:20junctions
03:20where sort of somebody doesn't pull off quickly enough and that causes sort of aggression and people
03:24sort of and there's yeah there's no doubt about it when you sort of feel like you're being delayed
03:28it may cause you to try and overtake and do dangerous things so we need to sort of get a
03:34better understanding and appreciation of how we all sort of work together. As new rules are set to
03:40require eyesight tests for over 70s the debate over driving for people over 80 continues. Authorities
03:48say the changes aim to balance road safety with independence for older drivers. The public response
03:54highlights ongoing concerns while further measures are expected to ensure all motor workers remain safe
04:00on UK roads. I don't think there's a sort of an easier way to deal with this one apart from
04:07the fact
04:08that sort of we must recognize that as a society we have to understand each other's needs.
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