Over-80s back in driving seat

Prime Minister Helen Clark has vowed to scrap practical driving tests for over-80-year-olds if Labour is re-elected, despite Insurance Council figures showing "significant increase in accident frequency with age".

Helen Clark told Grey Power's annual conference in Rotorua last night the two-yearly driving test would go in the next three years, after the Government receives a final report from a review committee in June.

Medical certificates for over-80s will still be required every two years.

"The current regime is costly on older people, it is stressful and it is unfair," she said.

Insurance Council chief executive Chris Ryan said the organisation was "comfortable" with the axing of the tests, but had some "reservations" due to that age group's accident rate.

"Citizens over 80 have a much higher accident rate - not serious head-ons, but quite an increased percentage of minor accidents.

"We believe that the tests should be retained because while there's a test, it's more of an academic one than a practical one."

The Insurance Council had up-to-date figures for accident rates according to age, but the figures were considered "commercially sensitive" and would not be released for "a few weeks", Mr Ryan said.

Helen Clark said it was too soon to say exactly when the current system would end, because "considerable further work" would be needed to prepare for a replacement scheme.

In the meantime, the Government will introduce "conditional" licences from early next year allowing over-80s to sit "a slightly easier on-road test" on condition that they do not drive beyond their local area.

The current rule which allows them to drive only automatic cars will be abolished.

 

Grey Power president Graham Stairmand said the current system "scares the living daylights out of the elderly".

Many over-80s were used to driving in their local neighbourhoods, and could not cope when they had to go into inner-city Automobile Association (AA) offices to take a driving test every two years.

"A lot of people will be driving in unfamiliar conditions and heavy traffic which they never, ever drive in," he said.

"They are always petrified because if they fail on a minimal technicality they have lost their mobility."

But Mr Ryan said that although over-80s did not tend to drive great distances, they drove in high-density traffic situations, such as supermarket carparks and "built-up areas close to their homes".

According to insurance figures, under-25s were the most high-risk motorists, but 80-plus "is certainly the next most identifiable group of high-risk drivers".

However, Mr Ryan ruled out the possibility of accident-prone pensioners driving insurance costs up for everyone else. "We can get them through their premiums."

Mr Stairmand said the two-yearly test was unnecessary because drivers' licences can already be issued on conditions based on medical advice, such as not driving without glasses, not driving at night or in bad weather.

At present, medical certificates are compulsory at age 75 and the practical test after age 80.


Happy to see test ditched

Old soldier Theo Thomas, of Papakura, believes the two-yearly driving test for the over-80s is a waste of time that serves only to embarrass older drivers.

"I don't know why they brought that in, because it has belted a lot of us."

Mr Thomas, 79, has driven everything in his time, from a Valentine tank to his current Honda motorcar.

"I have a licence that I got overseas, during the war, in 1944," he says proudly.

He has yet to sit one of the tests (he will turn 80 in October), but insists that it will be a doddle when he does.

Mr Thomas rates his ability behind the wheel highly, and still takes his car for regular spins - to all sorts of destinations. "I do all sorts of driving, no problem at all."

Mr Thomas has no truck with those who say the testing makes the road safer for everyone.

"They make us feel as though we are some idiots who get to 80, or thereabouts, and we have had our day."