Health screenings affect elderly drivers

MANDATORY health screening of older people before renewing their driving licence can cause higher death rates among the elderly, a doctor has claimed.

Dr Desmond O’Neill said depriving old people of what was often their only mode of transport affected both their physical and mental wellbeing.

“It can leave them cut-off, isolated, deprived of social interaction and depressed. It also represents a loss of control in their lives,” he said.

Mobility was a link to independence, freedom of movement, social activity and choice, Dr O’Neill said.

An OECD report on ageing and transport, which Dr O’Neill participated in, found the ability to travel was as important to older people as to other age groups. It also dismissed the common perception that elderly people are poor drivers. According to the study, they have fewer reported crashes per capita or per number of drivers. The most important safety concern is their frailty and consequent vulnerability to personal injury or death in a crash.

The report also found older people who suffer from health-related limitations must often cease walking or using public transport before they cease driving. Dr O’Neill said if elderly people were being forced off the road because of medical screening, then the Government should be making an alternative means of transport available to them.