London - My nephew still sounded shocked as we spoke on the phone earlier this week. “It’s all right. Really! We’re all OK,” he said. “We walked away from it. But both cars were a write-off.”
Andy had been driving his wife and family to visit friends on Monday when he was suddenly confronted by a white car approaching him head-on at high speed on the wrong side of the road.
He spun the steering wheel, but the cars hit and crashed. The other car lost two wheels, and the driver was hurt and taken to hospital by ambulance.
“It was caused by someone of at least 85,” my nephew said. “He drove onto the other carriageway and the white car was avoiding him. The elderly chap’s car didn’t even have a scratch.”
I have been campaigning about the dangers of elderly drivers for some years now. I have written about it, given interviews and taken part in radio and TV programmes.
I have met and talked to and cried with parents whose children have been killed by the casual incompetence of an elderly driver.
But I have never been quite so close to losing much-loved members of my own family.
Andy and his wife have four sons and were at my daughter’s wedding on Saturday. It is unbearable to think of what might have been if the outcome of that crash on Monday evening had been worse.
AN UNPOPULAR SUGGESTION
It is unpopular to suggest that some old people should be driven off the road. I get hate mail sometimes attacking me for being an interfering busybody who wants to deprive others of their human rights.
And, of course, it is all the more difficult if one of your elderly parents is the person you do not think is safe behind the wheel any more.
How must it feel to hear your own child tell you that you are losing your independence for ever?
This thorny issue has arisen again because ITV screened a documentary last night, 100-Year-Old Drivers Ride Again, which featured a series of very elderly motorists.
One of them was 103-year-old former England cricketer Eileen Ash, who still chugs around in her Mini and enjoys a busy social life. And she is not alone in being a centenarian behind the wheel: there are thought to be 230 drivers in Britain over the age of 100.
They are part of a trend for people - who are living longer - driving far into old age.
It is thought there are six million over-70s who hold a UK driving licence.
Of course, you sometimes hear stories of elderly drivers going the wrong way on a motorway or dual carriageway, though the Department for Transport says there is no evidence older drivers are more likely to cause an accident.
It has no plans to restrict licences or mandate extra training on the basis of age.
COMPETENCE TESTING NEEDED
At the moment, motorists over 70 must declare they are fit every three years, but they do not have to take a driving or medical exam.
Frankly, I think that’s ludicrous, not least because I have experience of an older driver in the family - my father, to be precise - causing me grave concern.
So much so that I turned my dad into the DVLA as an incompetent driver who should be deprived of what I regarded as his licence to kill.
He was 90 when I tried to stop him driving. He’d been behind the wheel since his early 20s, having been taught by my mother when they met.
Neither had ever taken a driving test, because it was not introduced until 1934.
Dad was always a frightful driver, and frightening with it. He was a naval officer and used to bossing people around, and I suspect that it made him imperious in a car. He ignored speed limits and regarded other vehicles as a challenge to be overtaken.
As children we cowered in the back, only occasionally shouting ‘“No! No! Not now!” as he revved up, turning his own frame left and right with the angle of the wheel.
When stopped once for speeding in a residential area, he told the policeman (“He didn’t even look old enough to be driving himself!”) that he should be out catching “real criminals” not interfering with honest citizens in a hurry.
I was determined my father should never drive my children. By and large, this was easy enough to avoid and he was really quite old before he noticed - but when he did, he was furious. Did I not realise he had driven the equivalent of twice around the world?
In later years, he joined something called the Veteran Motorists’ Club. They sent him a badge every year, proclaiming the number of years he had been driving without an accident. It was affixed to the front bumper and burnished until it shone like his own bald head.
What about the time he demolished a lamp-post? That was no accident, he said, looking puzzled. Nobody else was involved.
Well, what about all of his neighbours’ vehicles in the car park — didn’t he hit five of them? No, that wasn’t an accident, either — he just forgot that he had an automatic car, and everyone had been very understanding.
RATTING ON DAD
But my brother and I were becoming increasingly worried as the years took their toll. He might kill an innocent person, and that could include our long-suffering mother.
We decided we would turn him in, that I would do the deed and that I would deny having done so if he asked.
I picked up the phone to the DVLA. You give them the details of the driver and you tell them who you are.
They undertake not to pass on your identity and they then write to the culprit.
When my dad received their letter, there was, predictably, a terrible fuss.
Was it me? No, of course not, Dad! I was very ashamed that he believed me.
My mother was more sceptical. “I hope you are telling the truth,” she said, worriedly. “It will be very difficult for him, you know, if they stop him driving.”
EXASPERATED
“They” did not, however. He was obliged to report to the GP. He had to wait for ages. I imagine the GP was busy and as exasperated as my father.
“Do you want to go on driving?” the doctor asked.
“Of course I bloody do!” my father expostulated, and the doctor signed the form. He did not even give my father an eye test.
At 90, my father habitually sat about 3ft from the TV screen to watch the cricket or tennis in case he missed something, because he couldn’t see.
He could no sooner have read a number plate at 25 yards than he could master the internet. But he got another three years on his licence.
I do understand that there are some elderly drivers who are competent.
My mother was. She was slightly younger than my father and stopped driving at night when she was 90 and sold her car, with no regrets, at 93.
When I complained to the DVLA that my father had been re-licensed, they said that to do otherwise would have been to interfere with his human rights.
So just when the elderly reach the age when they don’t know it’s Thursday, can’t remember if they have taken their pills or the name of their latest grandchild, they are allowed to assess if they are fit to drive a vehicle at high speed and at risk to the general public.
It could all be easily sorted by obliging everyone over 70 to be tested for their eyesight, their driving skills and their capacity to respond to emergencies on the road.
And those rules should be introduced swiftly, to help prevent deaths on the roads.
I tremble still at the thought of how the happiness of our family wedding could so easily have been overtaken by horror.
Two days before my father died, he drove my mother 200 miles (320km) home from his 93rd birthday party.
You can be glad that you were not in Kent, Sussex or Hampshire on that day.
Daily Mail