AGE LIMIT FOR DRIVING

Evening Star, Issue 22350, 28 May 1936, Page 10

AGE LIMIT FOR DRIVING

CORONER’S SUGGESTION NERVE REACTION RETARDED IN OLD (Per United Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, May 27. A suggestion that the time may have to come for fixing the maximum as well as the minimum age for the drivers of motor vehicles was made by Mr E. C. Levvey, coroner, at the inquest at the courthouse to-day into the death of Clifford Lindsay Thompson, aged one year. Tiie child was killed when a car driven by his grandfather, William Arthur, Thompson, aged 72, or 173 Norwood street, Beckenham, capsized over the railway embankment at Rakaia on April 18. “ Before making my finding,” the coroner said, “it seems to me necessary to pass some comment. This is the third or the fourth case before me recently in which some person has suffered serious injury, damage has been done to a car or death has been caused with a driver at the wheel who has unfortunately or fortunately attained the ripe age of more than 70 years. I have spoken to the principal medical authorities in Christchurch, and the result is that 1 have come to the conclusion that when people attain a certain age the nerve reflexes are not sufficiently acute in crises or emergencies. The ability to act with success is inevitably lacking. Legislation has stipulated the minimum age necessary for driving licenses, and although it may he hard on some of us the time may be approaching when the authorities will find it necessary to appoint a limit at the other end also.”