By AUDREY YOUNG
No elderly driver has been granted a conditional drivers' licence since new driving laws took effect in May 1999.
Drivers over the age of 80 have to prove their fitness to drive by sitting a fresh test every two years. Most pass. In fact 78 per cent have.
If
they flunk it, they may apply for a conditional licence to drive with special restrictions.
But all the 447 applications for conditional licences have been turned down - for convincing reasons, as Parliament's transport select committee heard yesterday.
During their driving tests:
* 246 failed to give way.
* 90 failed to stop.
* 95 had excessive speed.
* 61 were involved in a collision or near collision.
* 76 drove on the wrong side of the road.
* 34 were involved in a dangerous manoeuvre.
* 113 used lanes incorrectly.
* 15 failed to stop for pedestrians.
* 16 failed to stop at a red light.
Some drivers fell into more than one of the above categories.
"We are talking situations where they are unsafe to be on the road," said the director of the Land Transport Safety Authority, David Wright.
But he said the pass rate for the elderly driving test was "pretty high".
Of the 53,514 older drivers who had taken the test since 1999, 78 per cent had passed - and 71.7 per cent passed on their first attempt.
Taranaki-King Country MP Shane Ardern described the disappointment of one of his constituents, an elderly Opunake woman who had been driving the same Singer Gazelle since she bought it in 1964.
She hardly drove it anywhere, but had to drive 20km to Hawera to sit the test and was failed, twice. He had made inquiries to the LTSA and was told she failed "because her gear changing lacked decisiveness".
She wanted her licence only to go to church and bowls but was now dependent on friends.
