Elderly will fight to keep driving licences

A UNIVERSITY study has shown elderly motorists are too confident in their driving abilities and will not voluntarily forfeit their licenses.

In most other states senior drivers are required to sit a practical driving test once they reach a certain age, but in Queensland only a medical is needed for people in their 80s or 90s to drive.

Queensland drivers are left to voluntarily give up their licence when they feel they are too old.

The Queensland University of Technology studied the ability and driving confidence of a group of 98 women and men whose ages ranged between 65-85 years.

Professor Karen Sullivan said the results of the study clearly revealed elderly individuals’ driving abilities weren’t as good as they proclaimed them to be.

She said it showed older drivers are not necessarily proficient judges of their own driving abilities and would not readily give up their driving privileges.

The study comes in the wake of Southport MP Peter Lawlor’s call for elderly drivers to undergo annual testing to keep their licences after an 88-year-old driver hit his daughter in an underground Brisbane car park.

Mr Lawlor told parliament this week his daughter, Ali France, 38, begged the elderly driver who lost control of his car on May 11 to reverse off her, but he was frozen in shock.

She had managed to push her stroller carrying her four-year-old son to safety before she was pinned beneath two cars.

”Ali bears no animosity to the gentleman, but she says to me ‘dad he should not have been driving’,” Mr Lawlor said.

”In other jurisdictions after the age of 75 it is necessary to annually obtain a doctor’s certificate and undergo a driving test.

”With our ageing population it should be implemented not only in Queensland, but also through-out Australia.”

The young mother-of-two spent three weeks in the intensive care unit.

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