Drivers older than 70 will be forced to take eye tests every three years and banned if they fail, under new motoring law
The radical proposals could also see the the drink-drive limit in England in Wales lowered from 35mg of alcohol per 100ml of breath to 22mg per 100ml, as it is in Scotland.
The government's plans are expected to be published this autumn, with some insiders suggesting that the motoring shake-up could be as drastic as those brought in by Sir Tony Blair in 2008, when he announced the Road Safety Act.
It could bring stricter punishments for uninsured drivers as well as motorists whose passengers fail to wear a seatbelt, if they already have points on their license.
There could also be tests for medical conditions like dementia introduced to assess a person's fitness to drive.
It comes just months after a leading coroner wrote to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander to say that the UKs licensing rules were the 'laxest' in Europe.
Dr James Adeley, senior coroner for Lancashire, issued a prevention of future deaths report after finding that four people had been killed by drivers with poor vision.
An inquest in Preston heard Mary Cunningham, 79, Grace Foulds, 85, Anne Ferguson, 75, and Peter Westwell, 80, had all died in traffic collisions where the driver had defective eyesight.
Dr Adeley stated in his report: 'The four fatalities shared the same feature that the driver's sight was well below the standard required to drive a car.'
Tests for visual ability to drive have not changed since the 1930s – with the threshold remaining being able to read a registration plate from 20 metres away – or around 66ft.
Audi driver Glyn Jones, 68, ploughed into friends Mrs Cunningham and Mrs Foulds as they crossed a road in Southport on November 30, 2021.
He was unable to see due to a condition called severe 'bilateral keratoconus' but he ignored medical advice that his eyesight was too poor.
Mrs Ferguson was killed by van driver Vernon Law, 72, who had been to an optician a month before the crash in Rochdale in July 2023 and was told he had cataracts in both eyes. Following her death, her husband took his own life.
Pedestrian Mr Westwell was also struck and killed by a Honda Jazz driven by Neil Pemberton, 81, in Langho on March 17, 2022.
Pemberton made no attempt to brake and was speeding at 48mph in 30mph zone.
The inquest heard Pemberton had a long history of severe bilateral eye disease and was twice warned he should not drive before he began to inform optometrists he was a non-driver. He repeatedly failed to self-report his condition.
In his prevention of future deaths notice, Dr Adeley told the Department of Transport (DfT): 'In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths could occur unless action is taken.'
A government source told The Times that the latest initiatives were being brought in because ministers felt they had a 'responsibility' to start reduce instances of similar traffic accidents.
They said: 'It cannot be right that one person is killed or seriously injured on our roads every 18 minutes. Just think of the impact on those people and their families. We cannot sit by and simply do nothing.'
The move has been praised by motoring chiefs across the country, with AA president Edmund King telling the newspaper that the plans were 'long overdue'.
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Sky News
31 minutes ago
- Sky News
What does the data tell us about road traffic accidents?
Under "tougher" plans to tackle road deaths and injuries in England and Wales, the government has announced measures to make over-70s take compulsory eye tests every three years or lose their licence. But are they really needed? Drivers over the age of 70 already self-report their medical fitness to drive every three years, and British roads are safer now than they've ever been. In 2023, the latest year for which the Department for Transport has published data, the casualty rate on British roads fell to 398 per billion vehicle miles. It's the first time that figure has been under 400, and has halved since just 2006. In 1960, the casualty rate was 10 times higher than it is now. The total number of people killed on the UK's roads also reached a record low in 2023, other than the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021. There were 1,624 people killed in total, just under half of which were in cars. This figure has plateaued somewhat since 2010, however, after rapid improvements between 2006 and 2010. There was a similar plateau between 1994 and 2006 before the last significant piece of road safety legislation was introduced. The 2006 Road Safety Act introduced higher fines and more points for the most severe speeding offences, as well as greatly expanding the use of speed awareness courses. It was also the first year people could get points on their licence for using their phone. In the four years that followed, there was a 40% decrease in deaths among road users. In the 13 years since then, it's fallen just 12%. There had been a slight rise in deaths among older drivers for a few years between 2014 and 2019, but that has started to fall again now. There are now fewer deaths among over-70s compared with either the under-30s, people aged 30-49, or those between 50 and 69. In 2019, there were a similar number of deaths among people of each of these age cohorts. Academic studies have previously found that older people are also more likely to develop symptoms of depression, be admitted to care facilities, and even have a higher mortality rate, once they stop driving. The academics found that those links remained even after adjusting for other factors like baseline health and cognitive ability. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: "It is certainly good for our eye health as we age to have a regular eye test - every two years the NHS advises - but this doesn't automatically mean that a compulsory eye test at age 70 is appropriate. People can develop eye problems at any age so why confine such an approach only to those aged 70 and not to younger drivers too? "From the data we have seen, there is no reason to suppose that eye problems lie behind a significant proportion of accidents. While there may be a case for introducing a regular mandatory eye test for drivers of all ages, it is not clear that this would have a big impact on the numbers of serious accidents involving older drivers." Are younger drivers a danger to themselves? Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association, said that the government's strategy is "much overdue", while pointing to the figures showing that the number of road deaths have plateaued since 2010. He said that making vision checks compulsory for older drivers was a "practical step that can make a real difference", but added that failing to introduce a six-month limit on new drivers transporting passengers of a similar age is "a major oversight". A limit like this has been active in parts of Australia since 2007. Research by road safety charity Brake says that, in the UK, around one in five drivers crash within a year of passing their test. The Department for Transport data also shows that younger people are also significantly more likely to die as passengers compared to people in other age groups. There has also been a suggestion that younger drivers are more likely to die as a result of not wearing seatbelts. More than a third of 17-29-year-olds who die on the roads didn't have their seatbelts on. But the same is true of 30-59 year olds. There is a significant difference between men and women however - 31% of men who died did so without wearing a seatbelt, compared with just 11% of women. That also means that 89% of women who died on the roads did so despite wearing a seatbelt, perhaps adding to evidence that suggests that seatbelts offer better protection to adult men. Drink driving Since 2014, Scotland has had a lower drink drive limit than the rest of the UK. The government's new proposals would reduce the drink-drive limit in England and Wales to the same level as in Scotland - 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, instead of the current level of 80mg of alcohol. For an average-sized man, that means they would be over the limit after one pint of beer, instead of after two. In diverging from the other nations in the UK, the new standards in Scotland aligned with most of Europe. It seems to have had some impact. The number of collisions involving drink drivers has fallen by more than 40% in Scotland since it was introduced, compared with 20% in England over the same time period, and 38% in Wales. The improvement is less pronounced when it comes to the most serious drink-driving road accidents, though. They are down just 7% since 2014. Where are the safest, and most dangerous, places to drive? The Isle of Wight has the highest current fatality rate, after accounting for how much driving people do. There were 18 deaths per billion vehicle miles on the island in 2023. Next was Blackpool, with 16. The central London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Lambeth were the only other local authorities with a rate higher than 10. At the other end of the scale, Stockport (Greater Manchester), Thurrock (Essex) and Nottingham each had fewer than one death per billion vehicle miles. When it comes to accidents that included not just deaths but also serious injuries, London has the worst record. Drivers in Westminster were most likely to end up in a serious collision, but the nine most dangerous local authorities in Great Britain were all London boroughs. Bradford completed the bottom 10. Bath and North East Somerset was the safest area, although three Welsh areas - Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and Cardiff - joined South Gloucestershire in the top five. Scottish drivers were among the most likely to avoid being in crashes altogether. Eight of the 10 local authorities with the lowest overall collision rate were north of the border, although Rutland in the East Midlands had the lowest overall rate. The top 20 areas with the most collisions per mile driven were all in London. How does driving in the UK compare with other countries? The UK is one of the safest places to drive in Europe. Only Norway and Sweden had a lower rate of road deaths per head of population in 2023 than the UK's 25 deaths per million people. The figures in places like Italy, Greece and Portugal were more than twice as high. There aren't any directly comparable figures for 2023 for the US, but in 2022 their death rate from driving was five times as high as the UK, and 50% higher than the worst performing European country - Bulgaria. The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Scammers offering fake compensation for car loans
A planned compensation scheme for millions of people who were mis-sold car loans has been leapt upon by fraudsters, the City regulator has warned. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said scammers were calling people and offering 'fake compensation in exchange for personal details such as their name, address, date of birth and bank information'. Millions of consumers who bought cars with motor finance could be entitled to payouts of almost £950 after the regulator said this month that it would consult on creating a redress scheme that could cost lenders between £9 billion and £18 billion, a figure substantially lower than had been feared by the motor finance industry, but which would still represent one of the largest UK compensation exercises. The regulator noted that the redress scheme was not yet in place and that lenders were not contacting customers yet. It said that people receiving calls about compensation should hang up. In 2021 the FCA banned car dealers from adjusting the rate of interest they offered to buyers in return for higher commission from car finance firms. It had wanted to start a compensation scheme but put this on hold while cases brought by individuals went through the courts. Eventually the Court of Appeal backed consumers, prompting speculation that the industry was facing a bill of up to £40 billion. The Supreme Court overturned central elements of the earlier judgment, however, in a victory for the motor finance industry. The authority is consulting on a compensation scheme in the context of the Supreme Court judgment. The regulator's guidance that payouts are likely to be less than £950 per car finance loan and that they do not need to use a claims management company has been a blow to the claims industry, which had told people that claims could be in the order of £4,000. • The obscure firms behind frenzy in car loan claims Members of the House of Lords have urged the FCA to further reduce the scope of compensation by rethinking its plan for the redress scheme to cover loans written as far back as 2007. The House of Lords financial regulation committee has said that a 'more appropriate' timeframe for the scheme could align with a six-year deadline for claims to be brought before a civil court. Nisha Arora, director of special projects at the FCA, said: 'We're aware of scammers calling people and posing as car finance lenders, offering fake compensation and asking for personal details. There is no compensation scheme in place yet. If anyone receives a call like this, hang up immediately and do not share any information.'
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Eye tests for ageing drivers will do far more than make roads safer
Proposals to introduce compulsory eye tests for older drivers have caused quite a stir among Times readers. As I write there are more than 2,200 comments below the article reflecting a spectrum of opinion ranging from 'it's a no-brainer' to 'this is overt ageism'. I am all for the move, not just because it should make our roads safer but because there are potential medical benefits too. There are already strict rules regarding eyesight and driving (see below), but these are both poorly enforced and widely ignored. There is no requirement for most drivers to have their eyesight checked after they take their driving test, when they will be asked to read a number plate 20m away. And this is rarely checked again, with older people who have to renew from the age of 70 simply declaring that they can still pass the number plate test. • Drivers over 70 who fail eye tests face ban in road safety overhaul Estimates vary as to just how many drivers can't see well enough to meet the legal requirements, but a recent roadside survey carried out by police forces across England, Scotland and Wales involving the testing of 900 motorists found that 1 in 45 of them failed the number plate test, suggesting there are close to one million people on our roads who cannot see well enough to drive safely. And, because eye health deteriorates with age, most of them will be older people (the average age of those who failed in the survey was 69). • Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing The sort of gradual loss that occurs in some eye conditions, such as glaucoma or cataracts, can be surprisingly easy to miss, and failing the test would have come as a surprise to some. However, I suspect others would have known that their vision was marginal, not least those who required glasses or contact lenses to reach the DVLA standard, but were driving without them. Not wearing your specs when you need them to drive is little different to jumping behind the wheel after drinking too much alcohol and, in my opinion, should be treated just as harshly. However, it's not all about road safety. Regular eye tests not only help you optimise your vision for everyday life but they can also detect worrying health problems before they would otherwise come to light. Some of these are rare, like the patient of mine whose optometrist spotted an early melanoma on her retina, but others are really quite common and can be broadly divided into eye conditions that can lead to visual loss, and changes that reflect problems elsewhere in your body. Eye problems that can have an insidious onset and are often only picked up in routine eye checks include early cataracts (clouding of the lenses), macular degeneration (retinal damage that can lead to loss of central vision) and, perhaps most worrying of all for drivers, glaucoma, as it is common, easily missed and can lead to irreversible visual loss. It is a leading cause of blindness in the UK. The term glaucoma embraces a number of conditions that are typically associated with raised pressure within the eyeball and damage to the delicate optic nerve that takes signals from the retina to the brain. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, as many as 1 in 20 people over 40 in the UK will have abnormally high pressure in their eyes, normally only detectable by measurements during an eye test. Most won't go on to develop glaucoma, but in those that do, the earlier treatment (like pressure-lowering eye drops) is started, the greater the chance of preserving vision. • Read more advice from Dr Mark Porter The back of the eye allows direct visualisation of both nerves and tiny blood vessels, and changes in the appearance of either can give clues to more distant problems including high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, diabetes (type 1 and 2) and even brain tumours. So regular eye checks — for everyone, not just older drivers — could improve road safety, help to prevent and treat some common types of visual loss, and pick up silent threats to your health. And they are often free. Eligibility varies slightly depending on where you live, but as a rough guide adults should be eligible for a free check if over 60 (40 if you have a close relative with glaucoma) or you have existing visual impairment (registered partially sighted or blind), diabetes or glaucoma. Two-yearly tests are free for all adults in Scotland. I had my last check a few months ago and all was fine. However, while my long-range vision is good, my near vision is getting worse. Or to put it another way, the road ahead of me may be crystal clear, but my dash is starting to become blurred. And if I was to use my readers to get a clear view of the dash, the road ahead would be fuzzy. All easily fixed with varifocals, albeit not free of charge … • You must be able to read (with glasses or contact lenses, if necessary) a current standard car number plate from 20m.• You must meet the minimum eyesight standard for driving by having a visual acuity of at least 6/12 — that is being able to read the 5th line down on a standard Snellen eye chart test (normal vision 6/6 or '20/20' would be the 7th line down) — again, with glasses or contact lenses if necessary, using both eyes together or, if you have sight in one eye only, in that eye.• You must also have an adequate field of vision — your optometrist can tell you more about this and do a test.
