Examination On Over-70 Drivers 'Waste Of Time’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32098, 20 September 1969, Page 14

Examination On Over-70 Drivers ' Waste Of Time’

(N.Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, Sept. 19. An Auckland doctor believes it is a waste of time to have medical examinations for driven who are over 70. “Conditions that can cause death or incapacity at the wheel are difficult or impossible to detect,” said Dr R. B. Tennent, of Ngatea, in the latest “New Zealand Medical Journal.” “Many doctors must have had the experience of passing a seemingly fit man for a driver’s licence examination, and having him expire soon after of coronary disease,” he said. Dr Tennent has just completed a survey of 100 road accidents which have occurred in his area in the last three years. ■"rhe annual driving test for the over 70s is valuable to exclude the enfeebled driver with poor reflexes, but does it call for a medical certificate?” he asked. Figures seemed to show

that, in his area, vintage drivers seldom became involved in road accidents, and that their rate of travel was often their best insurance.

The survey by Dr Tennent confirms a high incidence of accidents to teen-age drivers. In the 96 accidents which involved drivers, 34 were teen-agers, 57 were adults and five were over 70. With the teen-age drivers, alcohol did not seem to be a big factor, being the cause' of only two accidents and contributing to another. “It is their bad driving and general in experience that seem to be the crux of the problem,” Dr Tennent said. “Their elders have a much worst record for alcohol, which was responsible as the sole factor for 25 per cent of the accidents to adult drivers, and contributed to half the accidents which had a multiplicity of causes. “Bad driving, in the shape of speed and inattention, figures in over half the accidents.”