Insurance will always check dvla if they are asked to pay out in case they have not been told, indeed the companies share your data in case you simply try to go elsewhere to get the insurance. I have had experience of people who have been to eye clinics, been told they should not be driving and carried on regardless and have been dobbed in to dvla by social services as you do not take risks when people might be hurt due to the fear of losing the ability to drive. Hw do you think we who have never been able to drive feel about it. Its not just the person, its us as well. There is, well not yet, a suitable self driving car we can use! Brian
I have Parkinson's, which is a notifiable condition for DVLA purposes.
They were notified by the consultant when it was diagnosed in 2010, and IIRC my GP was also contacted. I was then issued with a 3-year licence (the maximum allowed at that time), but after that, renewals have basically been self-certifying. (After two 3-year licences, the limits had changed, and they issued me a 5-year licence.)
There was recently a nasty case in the Highlands where someone had been told by his doctor to stop driving because of eyesight problems. he didn't and killed a pedestrian. Offender was jailed.
If we've learned nothing from PIP and ESA assessments, it's that doctors clearly aren't qualified to judge peoples abilities. They have really weird ideas like people with spinal damage can't walk. Luckily the crack assessors of ATOS and Capita are more highly skilled.
I'll elaborate. Both the doctor and the specialist had covered any impedance to driving. The specialist was the last person I've seen and on the assumption he told the DVLA the same as he told me then, namely that there was no issue driving, at a time when medical services are stretched, it seems a jobsworth approach to then approach my GP.
I am naturally sceptical and therefore see the worst in what I consider to be bureaucratic institutions.
The delay has prevented my taking a courtesy car due to the hassle of not being able to show a current driving licence.
And then there is the concern that the more people that are involved the higher the chance someone along the line will tick the wrong box. I recall having my first child, a daughter, in Australia and for various reasons, pre-internet days, it took a small relay of calls to advise the maternal grandparents who then sent a telegram congratulating us on our son!
How capable is a clerical officer at DVLA in assessing a sophisticated medical report on complex conditions?
No magic bullet. Better more relevant eyesight test. Only people capable of whether a medical condition is likely to lead to sudden deterioration in physical (or mental) ability to control a motor vehicle is best made by medical professional. Of course like the MOT it is only relevant at the time of examination. The "shit happens" principle should be born in mind.
I'd say they are perfectly capable of doing so given they have (a) standard criteria to apply to the reports plus (b) their own medical advisers to turn to if those reports are unclear.
You fail to mention that several specialist advisory panels advise the SoS on the criteria for deciding when people shouldn't drive. They bring to bear a wider and deeper knowledge of the odds of a driver being a risk to themself and others than one practitioner - and it is often a matter of statistical risk rather than individual assessment.
The system seems simultaneously arbitrary and toothless. Remember the bin lorry crash in Glasgow? Long history of blackouts and even *after* his devastating crash, the DVLA didn?t remove his licence.
Technically I think we?re there already. I think the legal and ethical issues are the biggest stumbling blocks now. Who is responsible in the even of a fatal accident say? Should an autonomous vehicle mow down a single pedestrian to avoid a worse accident?
If you have diabetes and are treating it with pills you have to inform DVLA but it has no impact on your licence it is simply noted. However, if you treating it with insulin then you are required to notify DVLA who in turn will contact your GP. Because it is easy to induce a hypo with injections they need to be aware and basically check with your GP for any instances you have hypo?d to the extent it has affected you physically and you only need to do that twice to lose your licence. In my case they issued me with a 3 year licence and removed one category which allowed me to drive vehicles over 3 ton gross although if I was prepared to undergo a medical examination I could have that category reinstated.
"Technically" there's no point in having a self driving facility where the human driver has to be alert to step in at a moment's notice. And the human's attention will wander or he will fall asleep or start doing something else. It's bad enough with normal cars on a motorway. I can see some value in a system that bleeps when you stray from the lane or get too close to the car in front. But the car shouldn't correct your steering or apply the brakes.
Put some limit on "go anywhere" and we could have a very safe system pretty quickly. The "limit" being stick to roads, lets be honest how often does a car in this country go off road? The vast majority never. Just bury a wire down the middle of each lane, the car follows the wire and chats merryliy away to other vehicles nearby saying where it's going, how fast etc and the cars simply collision avoid all by them selves. Those under human control, say in carparks, private driveways or otherise "off wire" can shout a warning to the others to keep away. B-)
The BIG mistake we are making is trying to get technology to emulate a human driving a car which is inredibly hard to do compared to a co-operative "follow the wire" system.
There wouldn't be "accidents" if the cars were properly in control. Trying to mix human drivers and machine drivers is always going to be a problem. The humans, are not absolutely predictable, they do stupid things, they make mistakes, they break the rules.
Yep, any system that throws it's hands up and dumps control back to a human is very dangerous.
In a modern car, there are a few that you still have to do more than just steer. Constantly making small throttle adjustments to maintain a steady speed is quite good at keeping you awake. I've had cruise for so long now I'm not sure I could do that anymore.
Agreed, the "you're nodding off" warning ought to be put in before any of the other toys are allowed to be fitted.
Those algos are already well tried and tested. Wifi for example has collision detection and random backoff. So both cars stop, and both set a random time. the first timer that times out moves off, broadcasting its intention to the other. You need to add a bit of inter-car data traffic, but that's ok, police would need that anyway to tell cars to get out of their way. Its remarkably similar to packet switched internet routing over shared channels. And could be optimised in the same way to spread traffic evenly across the available road system; So you get to a route fork, and the central traffic data computer tells your car which of all the possible routes to your destination is currently optimal, and off you go. So no satnav either, just key on the destination and sleep all the way.
Not heard anything more about the HGV "train" trials that were given permission on the M6 in Cumbria have got on. Note the M6 in Cumbria is probably the quietist bit of "major" motorway in the country bar a few fine weekends in the summer. Also junctions are at 20+ mile intervals.
Electronic coin toss between them deciding which has priority?
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