Driving Back The Years

According to yet another one of those endless motoring surveys there are now more than seven million drivers over the age of sixty-five on the Britain’s roads. The number of drivers over the current pensionable age had reached 7,191,192 by November last year. This makes up nineteen per cent of all drivers with full driving licences.

The figures come from driving licence data published by the DVLA at year end. They also reveal that there are some 4,068,498 drivers over the age of seventy and well over a million are hanging onto their motoring independence well past the eighty year old milestone of life. It’s also great to report that 95 drivers are over 100 years old; essentially born around the start of the First World War and during the, if not birth, then the formative years of the car.

There’s a cloud hanging over 367,711 of the drivers over 65 because these old rogues have points on their licence. Even with this blot on their copybook it seems not to be holding them back because, in the drivers over seventy category, the figure is 195, 773 so penalised. It gets worse: three per cent of drivers over 80 have points!

Surprising it may be but it still compares favourably with middle-aged drivers. The age group most likely to have points on their licence is 42 year-olds – barely out of short trousers – where ten percent will have been nicked. That’s actually worse than young drivers for whom the figure is eight percent with points on their precious gleaming new licences.

This supports the research that shows that older drivers are in fact safer than many other drivers. Where older drivers certainly have slower reaction times, they use their experience on the road to compensate by driving at slower speeds on all occasions and allowing more space between them and other road users. Good practise, in fact.

As a nation we are living longer. In twenty years time one in ten people will be over 80 years old. Responding to an older population is a major issue for not just the government but also health and transport agencies. In other words many more people will require help with their mobility and acting now can ensure the right support networks and crucially the right transport network is available when it is time to hang up the car keys.