Proposed changes to Driving Laws: A Quick Reaction – politicalbetting.com
Proposed changes to Driving Laws: A Quick Reaction – politicalbetting.com
We have a new set of proposals for changes to UK motoring law in the press yesterday, prominently around eyesight for the elderly, and a slightly lower drink driving limit. It is actually more comprehensive than that, and is being framed by the Government as a “Road Safety Strategy”. This piece is some initial reflections – a “quick take”, so not as heavily referenced as I would like.
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Since this piece was written, I'm seeing some unclear press coverage about people over 70 being "required" to take 3-yearly "driving tests" *. I'm not clear what they mean by this. The language around "driving bans" seems inflammatory for what is in reality a loss of entitlement to a privilege, due to a medical condition.
As I see it, eye tests for imo over-70s or over-75s are an obvious step, which should be fairly straightforward to resource. Full driving tests would be problematic, I think - the number of people waiting for driving tests has been reducing, but is still high.
One controversy I can see arising is when eg a glaucoma is diagnosed, there not being enough time to have an operation done before a person reaches the threshold age. OTOH current medical conditions require reporting, and you will not I think be allowed to drive indefinitely "in the interim". So that is consistent. Perhaps sensible people will have an eye test one or two years early.
Looking at political reactions, some of these proposals seem to have wide support across parties. That, in 2025, is a surprise.
Separately, I'm in favour of some kind of continuing education at the point of 10-yearly renewal of license for all of us who drive - to make sure that for example someone like who passed my test in the 1980s cannot go without CDE (continuing driver education) for 20 or 30 or 40 years. Something like this an important intervention to institutionalise the idea that driving a motor vehicle is a skill that requires continuing effort and learning.
Here is a link to the 2023 Call for evidence – Driver licensing for people with medical conditions, which includes international comparisons. I'm sure I have seen a response, but I can't track it down.
https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/driver-licensing-for-people-with-medical-conditions-call-for-evidence/call-for-evidence-driver-licensing-for-people-with-medical-conditions
F1: it's the moment that some of you have been moderately interested in, the summer break podcast, looking at the standings, and how my (many) predictions are stacking up.
Pretty mixed bag, as you might expect.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far/id1786574257?i=1000721615084
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Y5N3fZHmlTc2oL0rcM8MQ
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/d41277cc-9814-4ec8-9a08-e44fa6394e1f/undercutters---f1-podcast-summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/08/summer-break-standings-and-season.html
I agree with the new eye test measure. As for more police funding, they'd have to at least pretend to fund that and find some other sins to financially punish first.
Was involved in a change in motoring laws for 10 years about 10 years ago. Gave up when the law was changed. Some campaigners have continued for the last 10 years as the implementation of the change was piecemeal and they continue to see breaches of the law unpunished. Changing laws mean nothing unless there is the financing of the police and the courts.
On a tangential subject, family member headed HR for a medium sized organisation (2000 employees). Drinking and being drunk when on duty was not much of an issue but drugs were. Social drug taking was far more prevalent among the young than drinking.
https://x.com/jaheale/status/1954853042160820621?s=61
Not requiring a blood test to nail these feckers is a good step.
Not plateaued but rather troughed.
Like most things road deaths follow the law of diminishing returns.
We have research going back years that perception is significantly impaired by far lower levels of alcohol, which is one reason why I would argue that a 2/3 reduction in blood alcohol level is a no-brainer, 4/5 is very justifiable, and an effective zero level is defensible.
Countered by drivers who have had a drink concentrating more on their driving - this factor would rapidly diminish for drivers who have had multiple drinks.
As for tightening up the alcohol level for DD again, difficult to argue, but it would curtail rural activities to a great degree and I suppose it's just a question of whether that is an acceptable price to pay. Difficult to see why it shouldn't be but it is a constituency that should be acknowledged.
https://bsky.app/profile/raisinghellions.bsky.social/post/3lw5v34leck2f
@cjzero.bsky.social
Imagine getting in front of a judge and admitting 6 dudes had to chase this guy for several blocks to arrest him because he hit you with a sandwich and you called the crime scene techs
https://bsky.app/profile/cjzero.bsky.social/post/3lw6k5ls3ru2t
Eye tests for drivers I would have made mandatory at 80 rather than 70 though
Then again she did say that drink driving is a minor issue and we should be focussing on drug driving which is the elephant in the room.
Ban them both.
Edit: before the smoking ban, I was in a local pub with my gf one afternoon. A couple of ladies were at a table next to us, and one was holding her cigarette out over the pram. Where the ash was falling into the pram and onto the baby...
Our conversation was sparked by this from last year.
South Yorkshire Police sack officer following drink driving conviction
A serving South Yorkshire Police constable who received a conviction for drink drinking has now been sacked by the force.
Police Constable Abbie Plummer was dismissed from the force without notice at the conclusion of her accelerated misconduct hearing on November 29, 2024.
Documents published by South Yorkshire Police state Plummer’s conduct amounts to a breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour in respect of discreditable conduct.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/south-yorkshire-police-sack-officer-following-her-conviction-for-drink-driving-4901953
The actual numbers, given as percentages of alcohol in blood are:
EWNI limit: 0.08%. Proposal is 0.05% - my "1/3 less.
Scotland & most of Western Europe / SE Europe limit: 0.05%.
Scandinavia and Eastern Europe limit: 0.02% or 0.03%
(The Eastern limits are perhaps lower since they had a Communist Era experience of alcoholism, and that they set their basic approaches post-1992 rather than earlier as in Western Europe.)
My photo:
https://www.breathalyzer.co.uk/drive-limits/
Good morning, everybody.
What's interesting is the consensus on most of PB - quite a contrast to the equivalent folk, the largely middle-aged, male, fairly well off drivers of the day in 1967 who were in considerable part outraged.
Quite a shift in social attitudes [edited].
The one crash I almost caused when I was young and stupid was because I was tired. And I've never driven while exhausted since.
Anecdata: my mid-70s chauffeur yesterday could read a number plate more than the statutory 20m away. He was wearing anti-glare glasses as recommended by this very pb iirc, and glare might be another problem now with brighter and higher LED lights.
I'd actually be more worried about screen-induced vision impairment in younger drivers. It is notable that even schoolchildren are more likely to need glasses now that football is a video game and not running round outside with a ball and jumpers for goalposts. The number of minor scrapes and dents on show in Sainsbury's car park suggests a problem with the under-60s either not seeing or lacking spatial awareness.
Even if you have good eyesight there is value in having a regular test as they can pick up medical conditions such as glaucoma
But with drug taking there is a double effect; those who take drugs are already committing a crime. Committing another is easier when you are in a culture of impunity and illegality. There is nothing like the 60 years of cultural accretion there is about drink driving.
I live in an area of fairly high road deaths in a community where we know each other. A very high proportion involve young male drivers. Bravado and inexperience provide the materials, usually not drink and drugs. In the novels of Trollope the same is true about young entitled men, but it is with horses. I imagine Attila's troops suffered casualties in the same way. I very much doubt if this is stoppable.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/smoking-in-vehicles
I try to be polite and let people out at junctions but have given up letting Jazz drivers out as inevitably, after pulling out dangerously in the first place into the traffic, they then drive at 5mph, weaving and having a good old face to face chat with their passenger.
Ban them. Now.
Using a phone, watching TV, or reading a book while driving are probably all more distracting than smoking (depending a bit on what you're doing with the phone).
I have no idea what the actual cost numbers are. There are very roughly 30-35k police vehicles, and each would perhaps be driven by several cops each 24 hour period (?). 100% coverage would be 10s of millions of tests per annum.
The people in the flat above me have always smoked (I've been here 20 years and they were here when I came). The smoke leaking down never bothered me at all. Around the time of Covid they switched to vaping. The fumes from that seem never to disperse fully, and it has destroyed both my sense of taste and smell. It's also gradually working its way deeper down into my lungs.
Disclaimer: I have never ever taken even so much as one puff of a cigarette.
Meanwhile we have a rather more lax attitude to speeding - does anyone ever get banned for doing 85mph on a motorway for example ?
We need general not specific laws otherwise we won't catch the people eating bowls of cereal for their breakfast. This was 2017.
https://youtu.be/ZJdMDGvHYSI?t=27
Thinking back to my own personal experience, there were a number of near misses as a passenger being driven by friends late at night.
Apparently the govt doesn't want to go there because of carers and other edge cases, but it seems to me it should be possible to develop some kind of targeted law to address that.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fmPHwLf7E7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg
What's in your mouthwash, Pulp?
Sunderland to object over council’s housing plans at Stadium of Light
600 apartments and houses would be built behind stand
Former club chair calls proposed development ‘shameful’
Sunderland are preparing a formal objection over council plans to build housing within 23 metres of the Stadium of Light. The club fear the scheme would leave the stadium landlocked, preventing any future capacity increase.
Sunderland city council is expected to submit plans this week for 600 apartments and townhouses to be built behind the South Stand of the 49,000-seat stadium, on a former industrial estate.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/aug/12/sunderland-object-council-plan-development-stadium-of-light-football
Not as funny as Everton's recent advice on how to get to their stadium though.
That could be a lot more useful than a suspended sentence.
An intelligent and thoughful piece, @MattW , for which many thanks. We seem not to have so many forum members willing to contribute pieces as used to be the case - a step backward. Perhapd we should insist anyone who has written more than 30,000 contributions has to write a lead article.
Anyway, the changes, as is so often the case with this Government, are an improvement on what we have but don't go far enough. An ageing population combined with a car culture (a lot of people would struggle to get on and off buses though the modern bus is much more adapted to those with physical challenges) and car dependency means the car remains the staple means of personal transport in many parts of suburban and rural Britain and that's where the older people are.
An adequate public transport systyem for suburban and rural areas is impossible currently so the car and all that goes with it will be with us for decades to come.
I never knowingly drink alcohol and drive - never have. I'd be perfectly happy with a zero limit but the main problems these days are drug drivers and those who think their mobile is more important - I saw the Met reap a fine harvest of texting drivers on the Barking Road last week. Why the notion of a hands free kit is beyond so many people (just as ear phones seem to be on public transport) is a mystery. Cars are basically mobile mobiles these days - many have GPS, I have Mrs Stodge and a map.
For all that, transport can't be just about cars but a holistic approach that has clear aims around sustainability and availability rather than profit which is where we've been for far too long.
Just see how people laughed/joked at Jim Hacker being caught drink driving in the mid 1980s, a decade later, no show would have used that plot as he would have been condemned rather than seen as a joke.
If I couldn't drink any alcohol for 36 hours before I drive then I would be effectively stopped either from consuming any alcohol or driving ever again.
So a rather bizarre socioeconomic structure would develop with the country divided into those who drink alcohol and those who drive.
We can discuss whether that would be a good thing but it would certainly be disruptive in implementing it.
2. That's what the confirmatory blood testing is for.
A mixture of fast cars, speed cameras, and the joys of being the only driver in a long distance relationship, contributed to my downfall.
Yet another contribution to making employment uneconomic for the young.
Useful roundup of the issues.
There are several routes to sealing your ceiling (Puff the Magic Dragon and his ceiling was excluded, as is Little Jackie Paper) and/or walls. One cheap one might be a crack filling paint, or to do it with a product such as "damp seal" designed to keep moisture out for the undercoat, which may reduce vape emissions.
There are also "air purifying paints", about which I know little but they may help.
Or is it some unalienable right to do 85mph on motorways ?
Personally I'd increase the limit to 80mph and enforce it.
This always struck me as a good use of resources. It got potentially dangerous drivers off the road, it was self selecting because they had had an accident where they were apparently at fault and the full weight of the law was almost never applied. I am not sure reaction tests will be quite as efficacious.
I'm not sure where we are with stats collection.
In the age before satnavs I was lost and trying to read the road signs.
The question I have is this - how many accidents/breath test stops involve people who have alcohol taken but are below or just around the limit? It's been my understanding that this is pretty much a non-problem - drink driving is almost always the half-a-bottle of whisky types, from the stats, IIRC.
Further, that drug driving is a far bigger problem. Both with illegal and legal medications. In classic Process State behaviour, the problem was ignored for years, because of difficultly of testing.
Also Social Media Driving. Some the behaviours have to be seen to be believed.
Whatever the limit is there will be demands for it to be reduced - we live in a society where banning and restricting is popular.
But the law of diminishing returns applies.
Before changes are made to things what are the expected consequences and the unexpected knock on effects.
What we are seeing is an intersection of legalism and accession to the words of “Human Rights” with a very authoritarian attitude.
To such people the idea of threatening deadly force to protect a military installation would be a “Human Rights” violation. But proscribing an organisation as terrorist is to say that The Forms Must Be Obeyed*. And therefore isn’t a “Human Rights” violation.
At the very beginning of New Labour, they used obscure Royal Parks laws from medieval times to arrest people politely holding up signs saying “Remember Tibet”, on the occasion of the Chinese President visiting.
Later, people wearing T-Shirts saying “Bollocks to Blair” were threatened with arrest.
A range of utterly peaceful protest organisation were heavily infiltrated by the police. At the same time the Death To The West crowd were escalating toward 7/7 unhindered. These infiltrations were carried out illegally and resulted in the police themselves committing various offences. The subsequent court cases are still working through the courts.
An example - Fathers For Justice. Due to the pendulum in family courts swing too far, courts were refusing to enforce judgements on the mothers in such cases, but were enforcing them on the men. The theory being that the women were now Single Mothers and deserved protection. So divorced men saw a situation where they were paying child support etc to the point of literally having no money left - and then being denied the court proscribed visitation to their children.
FFJ was about demanding that court orders be enforced. Their protests consisted of people dressing up in silly costumes and climbing up on things. Not even damage. In the end, a police infiltrator tried to turn the organisation violent - the actual protestors disbanded in horror at the idea.
I think we have a confluence of a kind of morally bankrupt legalism and an ingrained belief that all protest against a “left wing” government is illegitimate.
At the time of the Tibet/Royal Parks thing I coined the term The Lawyers Syllogism
1) the laws says that something is legal
2) therefore it must be done
3) any opposition to doing it is an attack on the law and immoral.
(Apologies to the writers of Yes Minister)
I came up with that, after speaking to some lawyers on the edges of that decision. They offered a justification for the governments actions that was nearly exactly the above.
*in the series Dune, the phrase The Forms Must Be Obeyed is placed at the front of each law. Which laws are a system of deliberate feudalism - the people are literally serfs. For their own good, apparently
I've cut down my driving to away games. Driven back from the North West after midweek games in the past. But age has caught up with me and I can't do it any more.
I stopped, got out and balled them all out - obviously I got torrents of abuse - remembered the guy’s number plate and called the police. They asked if I had any evidence, I pointed out I wasn’t going to be filming them when driving when I’m complaining about them filming whilst driving but maybe, just maybe, when you check his plate then check his socials you will have all the evidence needed.
I wasn’t angry about my safety as they would have died and I would have had minor car damage but they could easily have caused a horrific situation for the sake of getting good bantz films of them driving along on their bikes.
Come to think of it, I suspect that the 1967 80 limit was partly driven by the sensitivity of the then available kit (coloured crystals).
The resignation of Harold Wilson | Labour Party | This Week | 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgbWpcdEBB0&t=1022s
A young Dimbleby, a young Brian Walden MP, posh lefty (and alleged alcoholic) Judith Hart, and a journalist smoking a pipe.
Whether I should look at the fuel efficiency reading so much is arguable..
Layered security costs, of course. But as the old Wing Commander notes, it provides a good compromise between security and freedom of protest etc.
The obvious way to have dealt with PA would be to make sure those fools committing criminal damage get long prison sentences - as they deserve - while preserving the right for plainly peaceful voters to protest.
Making the carrying of a placard, in this context, a terrorist offence is ridiculous overkill.
Whether this is due to changing attitudes to "class" I don't know - James Bond could gamble thousands on roulette or baccarat in a posh West End Club (a woman could gamble as well then, which was interesting in the context of the times) and look suave and sophisticated in so doing but on-street betting shops had to look as uninviting as possible.
"Liberalisation" (it wasn't really) changed that in the 80s as did technological advances. You could watch the racing on a screen, you paid no tax and the betting shop became a friendlier, more inviting place where you could have a coffee or soft drink.
Unfortunately, the bookies, as they always do, got greedy. More shops led to a backlash, the coming of FOBTs changed the clientele and atmosphere of the shops as did longer hours evening and with online accounts and digital access to specialist horseracing channels, the punter could watch Ayr, Leicester or Newton Abbot from his or her armchair and bet online.
Public attitudes to gambling have changed again with the availability of online gaming and the visability of FOBTs and slot machines in many High Streets. We have three of these mini-casinos and seven or eight bookies in East Ham High Street. I've no evidence but suspect the casinos are fronts for money laundering (as on-course bookies once were) while I also suspect some of our shoplifters will have addiction problems including gambling.
Even with all that, the local Roma often set up a "find the lady" game outside the tube station (with easily identifiable lookouts) and try to lure in the mugs to part with their cash (a few blokes used to do that at Sandown after racing until they were chased out of the car park by the staff). It's strange because where they stand in the evening is populated in the morning by the Jehovah's Witnesses so God and Mammon in close proximity.
I've never had any which, even though I try not to break the limit, is surprising on a bad luck / accidental basis.
I recall a judge’s memoir in which he describe a young offender who wasn’t phased by being prosecuted for arson. So, in his summing up, the judge made reference to the ancient law about the Queens Dockyards (it was a dockyard building that had been attacked), which was still on the books. Apparently the young man nearly collapsed at that point.
“Modernisation” of the law has apparently made treason unprosecutable.
Opposite the RMAS main entrance is a clump of trees and once, famously if perhaps apocryphally, one cadet, having come off a particularly gruelling exercise, jumped into his car, drove out of the main gates and fell asleep, thereby hitting the trees opposite the entrance.
Only place you'll find a traffic cop with radar gun is at the bottom of a long hill in a park trying to catch cyclists. If you want to drive a massive construction lorry at 40 on a 20 past a school they don't mind.
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/shocking-cctv-shows-cyclist-fly-14412224