I had finished work, so quickly parked up at a local Waitrose to get a few bits as I knew traffic would be bad near Tesco. I parked up and as I walked to the entrance I heard a screech and saw an old Volvo go flying forward down a drainage ditch (about a 10 foot deep slope). I ran over as did a few other people and helped the couple out of the car, engine still going and still in gear revving away...
The gent driving the car was about 85 years old as was his wife, so an ambulance was called to to be sure. The car was pulled out by an AA man on his dinner break and lets just say it will be going to the breakers. Fortunately both the occupants still had their seatbelts on and were fine except a few bruises (taken to hospital to be sure by the ambulance crew). When speaking to the driver, he said that he had parked up, sneezed, blacked out for a second and hit the accelerator launching the car forward.
I had two major concerns, one was the fact he and his wife thought it was a simple accident and didn't see much more to it. The second was the fact that if a sneeze was enough to cause this poor guy to black out, how serious of an accident could he cause on a motorway at rush hour? I'm not for removing everyone's driving license at a certain age as everyone is different, but should there be much more stringent tests needed to retain a license past a certain age? Had a young kid (or anyone) been passing in front of this car at the time, they would probably have been crushed to death.
Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt
So what do you think about driving past a certain age? My dad, even though still fairly young (late 50's) says that when the day comes he doesn't feel comfortable driving any more, he will stop. Some people I fear aren't so forward thinking.