Opinion: When should we call time on our driver's licence?

My grandmother is visibly upset.

Arms crossed, she laments that she can no longer drive her car. “You all took it off me,” she crows to assembled family. Her licence, she means.

At 82, she’s still a spring chicken in some circles, but the serpent that is dementia has found a spot inside her head, coiling more tightly around her sense of self with each passing day. She can barely make a cup of tea, let alone safely drive a car. Even though she wants to.

It was in early adulthood that I gained a sense, vividly, of the responsibility we have to those too infirm to be driving safely – and the safety of those around them.

Almost 15 years ago to the day, I was sat in my 1986 Toyota MR2, perpendicular to some main road in the Blue Mountains, NSW, checking my head for blood as I heard the scream of a young woman somewhere outside.

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Literally seconds earlier, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ was distorting the speakers as I calmly motored to the Bathurst 12 Hour for work as a junior motorsport reporter.

I was on a long, gentle curve near Blackheath and recall seeing a Mitsubishi Verada coming straight at me from the opposite direction. Because it was a curve, I assumed it would turn, and the chilling visual of a car missiling towards me would subside.

Seconds later, it was clear it wasn’t turning, so I hopelessly attempted to swerve left as near 1600 kilograms of Mitsubishi slammed into my side, like a meteor.

“If he’d hit you in the door, you’d be at least critical,” said the gruff highway patrolman as he surveilled the aftermath. While to meet ADRs, my imported 1986 MR2 required the fitting of heavy side intrusion bars inside the doors – like metal cricket bats – they’d be about as effective as urinating on a bushfire. Luckily, I was hit just after the B-pillar.

The Verada, having punted my sub-1000kg MR2 out of the way as if a beach ball, ploughed head-first into an old Camry behind. “Your car just exploded out of the way,” said the young male driver of the Camry later. “Suddenly, there was a car having a head-on with us.”

Within seconds, three cars were written off. A chain-link fence immediately beside the road caught my spinning car like a baseball mitt. My heart was racing like someone had just injected a fat syringe of clear adrenaline right into it, but checking my legs, arms and head, I seemed to be okay.

No pain, no blood.

“I don’t know what happened. It’s never happened before; I just blacked out.”

I got out of my car, physically fine, but in obvious shock, and wandered to the old, crumpled Camry. Luckily the only harm to its occupants – including the passenger, the screaming girl – was also shock. Nobody, in the entire accident, was seriously hurt.

The Verada driver was an older gent, in his late 80s. Travelling around 90km/h, he didn’t brake at all (clearly preferring the ‘bowling ball’ technique of wiping off speed).

“I don’t know what happened,” he later explained on the phone, his voice gentle, kind and contrite. “It’s never happened before; I just blacked out.”
Of course, passing out behind the wheel is not a risk only for the old. And I’m not wishing for anyone to lose any freedom any sooner than they strictly need – or joy, if they love cars.

But while even the wisest of old owls can keep the mind pin-sharp, bodies and faculties are doomed to fail. As I learned myself when at, just 20, I came to form the not-particularly-controversial view that when the time comes, we should hand in our licences with grace and acceptance.

Or, if you’re a family, even take them off those who’ve not the awareness to know the time has come.

Not that my Nan put up too much of a fight.