Oldies like me have to face facts: we need repeat driving tests ...Middle East

I have just turned 76, and am still learning what being old means. I could have retired at 60, but chose not to. Being able to work at my age is an immense privilege, but I have learnt to accept that I am not as quick and agile as I was in my sixties.

I still love to dance, argue, write and socialise but each year brings new infirmities and accompanying misery and peevishness. I can’t dash about like I once did or pack too much into a day. I take tablets, have frequent medical checkups, deal with daily aches and pains and move carefully. After I fell and broke my right arm getting on to a Tube a few years ago, I am terrified of another fall.

None of this is easy. But one carries on, fearing the worst and hoping for the best. Time and the ageing process cannot be slowed down, stopped or wished away. One has to accept that and adjust, and do what’s right for us and for society. Pensioners’ entitlements cannot be unconditional.

So government plans to tighten driving rules and impose mandatory eye tests for the over-seventies totally makes sense to me. Currently, I don’t take the car out at night, and am driving more cautiously because my responses are slower and I worry more than I did about other street users and myself.

Mandatory eye tests are, again, an essential safety measure, not part of a war on the old. Last autumn, at a pedestrian crossing, I could have run a young woman over because it was raining and I didn’t see her until she was halfway across. Three months later, I had an eye test, and the optician found my long vision was not as good as before and issued a new prescription.

This must be happening to countless other older Britons. Last year, 12 per cent of casualties in road collisions came from collisions involving older drivers, and 24 per cent of all drivers killed were over 70. On this, the state is doing what’s right and essential. We should be thankful for that.

Personally, I’d go even further than just asking older drivers to take eye tests. Sitting another driving test would be nerve-shredding, but passing it would re-establish my road awareness and give me renewed confidence.

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And yet, many boomers have got frightfully cross about the eminently sensible proposals on the table. My generation does get frightfully cross about any policy that changes any of our entitlements or affects the way we want to live and act. It is a combination of pride (or vanity), stubbornness and selfishness. Pensioners having teenage tantrums is unseemly and depressing.

Unlike the physical stiffness which often comes with age, mental and emotional rigidity are avoidable. Most oldies today understand the importance of physical flexibility, but too many cling to their views and develop age-related pig-headedness. Means-tested fuel payments, free transport, downsizing, indeed any suggestion that we should do more for the young gets them raging on the airwaves and newspapers.

Mandatory eye tests and driving tests will be further provocation. Grey outrage will erupt. The policies may be dropped. And, at the end of it all, pensioners will be the biggest losers.

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