Emma Soames I’ve changed my mind since a particularly po-faced edition of Traffic Cops featured footage of several quite serious incidents caused by the erratic driving of older people in Sussex – though it could have been anywhere.
I toured the radio and TV stations defending the status quo of self-certification: however, in the course of doing so, I came to believe that testing at 70 probably should be introduced.
The cars we drive and the roads we drive on have changed radically since the Fifties and Sixties, when many of us endured the rite of passage that is a driving test. And our eyesight, mobility and reflexes do not exactly improve with age, do they?
Driving is like sex – we all think we’re good at it. But in the case of the former, a refresher course and a test would only sharpen our skills and should make it possible to continue driving safely for longer.
I know we think that lack of skill behind the wheel applies only to other people, but there does come a time when we should hang up our car keys, when to continue to drive does become dangerous. Happily, this time comes for most of us many years after the age of 70, but in fact it is not an inalienable right to drive, as I think many of us consider it. Looking at my car, battle-scarred by London life – those dents are never my fault – I think I may sign up for a refresher driving course.
If a test were introduced, it shouldn’t be identical to the one imposed on first-timers. It should assume we know the ropes, that we have many years of driving under our belts. And it should present an opportunity for improvement and confirmation that we know the current rules of the road, rather than for failure.
When I took my driving test, I remember being so relieved to have passed – not only for the sweet taste of real freedom that a driving test brings, but also that it was such an ordeal I couldn’t have faced having to sit it again. But this I shall probably have to do, and I’d like it packaged differently.
Chronological age is becoming more and more irrelevant. Some people are extraordinarily fit and vital until well into their late eighties, while others, less lucky in their genes and the hand that life has dealt them, become truly old much sooner than that. And as a result of medical advances, more of us fall into the first division.
Our actual age is becoming an irrelevant and sometimes misleading number. We are simply either in our Third Age or our Fourth Age. It is that which is really more important than chronological precision. In our Third Age, we continue to perform well, to be completely independent and capable of operating at pretty much full power. It is in our Fourth Age when things go wrong, and bits of us fail, that we need help. In our Fourth Age our physical frailties dictate how and perhaps where we live – although I believe that the canny pre-empt this by downsizing while they still have the verve and energy to do so.
When economists and politicians look at the demographics and go pale at the numbers, a simple equation is worth remembering. In our Fourth Age, we need every benefit the State can afford to bestow on us. In our Third Age it may be uncomfortable not to have free bus passes and winter fuel payments, but they are not, for most, a matter of survival. I don’t wish to argue against universal benefits, but given the state of the nation and the huge, ever-growing number of baby boomers now in their sixties, the needs of Third Agers are less acute.
If something has to give, it is among us "young old" that the give must be found. So raising the threshold for age-related benefits may be the only way to sustain an elderly population in a civilised and compassionate way.
I am rather looking forward to my Fourth Age, thanks to a new book, Crazy Age, Thoughts on Being Old, in which Jane Miller describes how her desire to shop, particularly for clothes, has been all but extinguished. I and my credit card could do with a dose of this shopping anorexia. My appetite for new clothes is undiminished. I evidently have some miles to clock up before achieving the Buddhist state of one on, one in the wash. In my wardrobe it’s one on, two in the wash, three I cannot find and yet another on my Net-A-Porter wish list.