The practical details of implementing this are important - is the eye test done at an ordinary optician/optometrist's shop? How are the results going to be submitted to DVLA, etc.? What protections will be in place to prevent people from shopping around for a dodgy optician (as people often do with cars and MOTs)?

I think this is a reasonable and practical step in the right direction. I accept that given the shortage of driving examiners it would be impossible to require re-testing of existing drivers in the foreseeable future, but as the article says, people already get eye tests frequently and often for free, so this is something that can be done without too much additional infrastructure.

A personal anecdote: my grandfather is in his 90s and is not at all fit to drive due to cataracts and various other issues, but he still does "short journeys" because it's convenient and he feels that it's necessary. The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by (though this is not at all universal). Most British towns and cities are very different from their US counterparts in this respect. My grandfather moved house relatively recently --in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age. The only thing that will stop him and others like him from putting people in danger is taking away his licence. He has been told by doctors, opticians and family members that he's not safe to drive, but in the absence of any enforcement he persists. I hope that this policy comes in before he or someone else gets hurt.

Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.

Unless I've botched the math and/or what the internet tells me about the size of the characters on a UK number plate is wrong this seems to be a bit overboard.

The internet is telling me that the characters are 79mm tall and 50mm wide (except for '1' and 'I') with a 14mm stroke.

My eyes right now are about 250mm from my monitor. Something that is 79mm tall and 20m away would have the same angular size as something 250mm away that is 79mm / 20m x 250mm = 0.9875mm tall.

If I set the size to 75% in Chrome that is the size of the numbers on this page in the timestamps and the submission points and comment counts. It is about 1/2 the size of the numbers in the text box that I'm writing this comment in.

I've just taken a photo of that and will include a link to it to show how small that is [1]. In that I'm holding a ruler next to the left side of the text. The "180" up where it says "180 points" is what you have to be able to read to pass the test. (If you can't see the photo because Imgur blocks your country just grab a ruler, hold it vertically 25cm in front of you, and the apparent size of the space between the mm marks is the size character you need to read).

I have no idea what road signs and markings are like in the UK, but in the US in ~50 years of driving I don't think I've ever needed to read anything anywhere near that small.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/NGuPdfF

I would like to see better tests. I have a pet theory that visual perception deficiencies along the lines of simultanagnosia are considerably more common among older people than is generally recognized, and people with these conditions may be able to easily read letters and numbers at a distance but be unable to drive safely due to inability to reliably detect obstacles.

Visual screening is fairly easy and every bit as quick, but it needs different tests. Something along the lines of an Ishihara plate but with colors that are perceptible even to color blind people might work. Or a visually busy image with instructions to identify one or two particular objects in the scene.

So I'm all for doing it, too many old people that shouldn't be on the road, but unsure how.

- Self driving vehicles are truly vs theoretically safer than humans or at least the average 70 year old.

- Self driving vehicles can be attained or reliably rented for an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fraction of a seniors monthly stipend or pension or disability. Reliably meaning no waiting line or shortages of rental self driving cars or vans.

> Nearly one in four car drivers killed in 2024 were aged 70 or older, according to government figures.

So, somewhat less than 25%. Let's guess 23% or whatever.

What are the age demographics? According to 2024 stats, 19.7% of the UK was aged 65 or older. 17% in the 0-14 age range.

Thus 65-year-olds and older make up 23.7% of the population older than 14.

It seems, roughly, as if the proportion of 70-year-olds and older might be more or less in line with their representation in the driving age population.

It's not the statistics we need, but close enough to defeat the alarmist idea of OMG, a whopping quarter (almost) fatalities are 70+; get the old buggers off the roads!