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After what seems like months of continued calls from optical specialists, motoring organisations and insurance firms, Specsavers are the latest optician to lend their voice to growing concerns regarding the current eye test examinations required to be undertaken by UK motorists. The call follows the sad and tragic news regarding the death of a teenage student in Colchester, when run over by a pensioner, who also died of his injuries following the motoring accident. The terrible incident is even more shocking and heartbreaking as the driving pensioner had just three days previous been stopped by a police officer and failed a road side vision test. The driver was advised to drive home and cease driving while the DVLA dealt with his licence, a warning that was unfortunately not heeded, leading to such awful consequences.
Currently, driving tests are quite stringent. Eye tests for driving, not quite so. The fact that retesting of a drivers skills AND sight is not regular is something many believe needs to change, simply because with age, the inevitable and unavoidable deterioration of health and bodily efficiency also occurs. Many insurance firms have already campaigned for the introduction of more regular eye tests as well as having trained and skilled opticians conduct eye tests on potential drivers to ensure their safety as much as the general public's. Statistics such as the fact that 62% of drivers with eye sight labeled as 'poor' are more likely to simply veer or stray out of their own driving lane, in many cases leading to accidents which could have been avoided and in other cases, the tragic loss of life.
Shocking photographs of the moments leading up to the incident show a clearly visually incapable Mr Horsfall, the driving pensioner, veer out of his driving lane, up and on to the pavement, narrowly missing an on coming pedestrian, before clipping the front of the building to his right. The tragic circumstances of what followed next, is all the more saddening as it could so easily have been avoided had Mr Horsfall not taken the decision to refuse to surrender his licence when he failed his sight test with police officers just days before hand. As it currently stands, the police had no right to seize the mans licence, instead issuing paperwork to the DVLA for them to proceed while recommending that he cease driving. Had Mr Horsfall been subject to new laws and regulations that many governing bodies want to see introduced in the UK regarding driving visual testing, both he and the unfortunate 16 year old Cassie McCord may still be alive.