MOTORING SAFETY

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 May 1936, Page 3

MOTORING SAFETY

TOO OLD TO PRIVE? [per press association.] CHRISTCHURCH, May 27. A suggestion that the time may have come for the fixing of a maximum as well as a minimum age for the drivers of motor vehicles, was made by Mr E. C. Levvey, Coroner, at an inquest at the Courthouse to-day into the death of Clifford Lindsay Thompson, aged one year. The child was killed when a car. driven by his grandfather, William Arthur Thompson, aged 72, of 173 Norwood Street, Beckenham, capsized over a railway embankment at Rakaia on April IS. “Before making my finding,” the Coroner said, “it seems to me necessary to pass some comment. This is the third or fourth case before me recently in which some person has sustained 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 I 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 a. minimum age as necessary for (iriving licenses, and, although it may be 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.”