The Sunflower Conversations

On the Road series - Older Drivers Forum

October 24, 2021 Hidden Disabilities Sunflower
The Sunflower Conversations
On the Road series - Older Drivers Forum
Show Notes Transcript

Older Drivers Forum
A national forum made up of a group of organisations that support the older motorist to drive safely for longer. They welcome drivers via their website to be informed and be kept up to date with the latest motoring advice.

Aiming to reduce the number of deaths on the road, they offer superb advice to the older motorist. Their most recent campaign covered eyesight, renewing your licence, dementia, dash cams, electric vehicles and more.

We hear about Driver Refresher courses, which are highly recommended to brush up on skills, build confidence and Driving Mobility refreshers for people that have medical conditions.

Organisations discussed in this podcast:



Hosted by Chantal Boyle, Hidden Disabilities Sunflower.

Want to share your story? email conversations@hiddendisabilitiesstore.com

Visit the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower website.

Chantal Boyle:
Joining me this morning is Rob Heard from the Older Drivers Forum. Welcome, Rob. Can I start by asking you, can you tell me what the Older Drivers Forum is?

Rob Heard:
Yeah. The Older Drivers Forum is an organization. It's a nonprofit making organization made up of experts in road safety, health, and various different things, all of who come together regularly to try and find ways to help and support the mature motorists to carry on driving safely for longer.

Chantal Boyle:
Can you tell me why it was set up and when?

Rob Heard:
It got set up in 2013. I set it up because, at that time, I was a serving police officer for Hampshire Police. I was working in our serious collision unit. Unfortunately, I dealt with a terrible collision, which involved an 89-year-old driving the wrong way up a dual carriageway. He'd obviously got a bit confused. He ended up having a collision with a 28-year-old. Then, unfortunately, the 28-year-old lost his life as a result of the collision. Our investigation showed that the older gentleman was a retired GP, and he was blind in one eye, below the legal limit in the other, and really should never have been on the road. That made us realize that, actually, there's a lot of people thinking that they're perfectly fit and healthy to be on the road when sometimes they're not.

Rob Heard:
I ended up writing a bit of a research document about older drivers and what we, the police, could do at that time about helping and supporting them. That's where we came up with creating the Older Drivers Forum. Since my retirement, I've now carried on that organization because we've seen how much it helps and supports people. It's not about taking people off the road. It's about giving them all the support to carry on driving safely for longer, but also gives them hint and tips about when is the right time to retire from driving because we're all going to have to retire at some point. We rolled it out to several other areas across the country. From there, we really identified that actually it was so successful that now we've rolled it out as a UK version.

Rob Heard:
Really, we're engaging with people all the way across the UK, giving them and support. We get around about 10 to 12 emails a day from people asking advice. We've got lots of instructional videos, lots of advice. You even can get the links to renew your license and look at medical conditions. We're there really as a one-stop shop to give you the advice and signpost you to the right people to help you.

Chantal Boyle:
Who makes up the forum? Who else is involved in that with you?

Rob Heard:
Well, we've got people from the police. We've got people from the fire, people from medical backgrounds. We've got experts in stats so that we know that we're doing the right thing with the right people. We've got older people themselves helping us in it. We've got people from various different organizations, really, just who have an interest in helping and supporting older drivers. But we're not about promoting businesses for people. What we're about is actually just trying to give people directions of what is available out there so that they can get their help and support. Because before, really, there was nothing there to help and support people. We really thought that there was something lacking.

Chantal Boyle:
Can you explain to me a little bit about Fit for the Road?

Rob Heard:
Yeah. Fit for Road really was a week campaign that we ran around in September. Now, we ran it in coincidence with Project Edward. Project Edward stands for every day without a road death. It's a national road safety organization trying to raise awareness of two people about how we can reduce the number of deaths on our roads. Because actually, unfortunately, we're having five people a day, on average, in the UK, killed on our roads, which is, when you look at them, when you look at murders and various homicides, you're looking at one and a half people the day killed. If we were having that amount of murders every day, people would be going, "This is terrible. We've got to do something." But for some reason, people are accepting that deaths on the road are almost acceptable. It's really down to a responsibility to all of us to do something.

Rob Heard:
Now, the theme for Project Edward this year was Fit for the Road. What we decided to do is run a week of webinars on one campaign, really just looking, and helping, and supporting older drivers on a plethora of different subjects from renewing your license, the risks faced by older drivers, what driver appraisals were available, eyesight. We even looked at things like dementia. We looked at dash cams. We actually had a really useful webinar on electric vehicles because, often, we've been all pushed to move towards electric vehicles in the future. It's quite a daunting thing for the best of us to understand it, so we ran a whole webinar on that.

Rob Heard:
If anybody's actually interested in electric vehicles, I have to say this isn't just about being focused for the older person. It's a very youthful webinar about everything there is to do with electric vehicles and the advanced technologies that are now fitted to cars, which many of us haven't got a clue about how they work. I have to say, even though being an ex-traffic officer myself, I learned a lot from just listening to that webinar. I think there's lots of useful help and some advice for people.

Chantal Boyle:
Are your all webinars... Are they all recorded?

Rob Heard:
Yeah, they were all recorded. They're all up on our website. If people visit our website, OlderDriversForum.com, and they basically go to the front page, you'll have a link to webinars, or you'll see under the events page, which says webinars, just click on that, and all the webinars are listed on there. You can watch them at your own interest or time.

Chantal Boyle:
I think with the recent... I don't know if you would call it a crisis. But with the fuel availability, I think many, many drivers are thinking, "Right. I need to start seriously thinking about an electric vehicle."

Rob Heard:
Yeah, I think it is going to be something that affects all of us. I mean, unfortunately, I'm a bit of a petrolhead myself. I like my cars and motorbikes. I like the old combustion engine. But I can really see a benefit of the electric vehicles in the future. I will miss the other stuff, as well, because I like that lovely sound of a big old V8 and things like that. But I think, yes, we need to look after our planet, so everything in moderation.

Chantal Boyle:
I think that's one of the things that, particularly, where I'm working, in Central London, there were a lot of UPS delivery vans. I think they're electric, and they're silent. That was something that is actually very dangerous, isn't it? Because it's one of your main senses, and if you don't hear the vehicle coming, that's incredibly dangerous.

Rob Heard:
Yeah. Certainly, as we get older, sometimes it's well known that those faculties, some of our senses, our eyes sight, sometimes our hearing depreciates. Therefore, it's really difficult for a older person maybe who coming up to cross the road as a pedestrian, looking for those gaps, looking for things, maybe not realizing that there's a vehicle just about to pull out because, quite often, we'll see a car or van parked next to us. We'll be able to hear the engine running. We expect it to pull out. But unfortunately, an electric vehicle can just suddenly start moving. Technology has taken over a lot. We talk about electric vehicles and the adaptive vehicles and the automatic stuff that can help us, but that has all helped. We've seen a decrease over many years of fatalities. But now, they've plateaued.

Rob Heard:
Now, the only way that we're going to change it in the future is by each one of us making that conscious decision to change our behavior and seek help. That's really where [inaudible 00:07:26], with the Older Drivers Forum, is identifying two people to the point that don't become complacent about your abilities because we can all say that... You know what I mean? I'm a retired police officer. Two years ago, I retired. I used to be a class-one motorcyclist, a class-one car driver, so the highest qualifications you can get. Now, am I still that now? Well, I'm not because I'm not having that regular refresher like I did in the police every year. Therefore, my abilities drop off.

Rob Heard:
We get a lot of people who say, "Well, I used to drive 50,000 miles a year. I'm an expert driver. I think what you're doing is great, but it's not for me." Unfortunately, our research shows that they're actually the highest risk because they're the risk-takers because they are driving beyond their abilities. They're very much complacent about their abilities. What we're saying to people is don't be complacent. All of us have to carry on brushing up our skills as we're going on driving. It's a responsibility. A car is a lethal weapon.

Chantal Boyle:
You mentioned about faculties as in your senses, your eyesight, and your hearing. Are they the main cause of difficulty for drivers, or are there others?

Rob Heard:
I mean, obviously, those are medical issues that can affect people, really, as we get on. But I think, on top of that, we also have the problems to do with things like lack of concentration and distraction. A moment's inattention can be the difference between life and death at times. Those are our biggest things; is really distractions are our big problem, lack of concentration, not thinking about the road, not abiding by the speed limits, drink and drug driving, still not wearing seat belts, all these things are the things that are actually causing problems.

Chantal Boyle:
And for older drivers in particular?

Rob Heard:
The biggest risk for older drivers is actually turning right out of side road across traffic. T-junctions or crossroads are the highest risk for older drivers. Around about 70% of all collisions for older drivers occur at those junctions. Now, some of that is because their reactions are a little bit slower. They're a bit slower at looking at things. They're looking left and right. But by the time they pull out, they're a bit more delayed. Therefore, more vehicles have suddenly appeared and come towards them, or maybe they haven't looked as well because of eyesight issues or lack of mobility in their neck. That's where the biggest problems come. But that doesn't mean people need to stop. It's just needing to be aware.

Rob Heard:
There is techniques that people can train. That's where I'd always recommend getting a driving instructor to take you out, brush up on your skills, and just give you some pointers about how to carry on being safe. Because if people just say, "I'm fine, "and carry on, then, like I said to you, they will be a higher risk. They can reduce that risk massively by having a driving appraisal regularly every two or three years to brush up on their skills.

Chantal Boyle:
You are listening to the Sunflower Conversation with Chantal. To share your story and find out more information, details are in the show notes.

Chantal Boyle:
In practical terms then, the advice that you would advise is to speak to a driving instructor. To get these refresher, are there specific courses for older drivers or-

Rob Heard:
I mean, obviously, we're not looking at young drivers, where young drivers have teaching to pass a test at the end of the day. What we're looking at is that there are driver refreshers/driver appraisals. Now, various different organizations run them across the country. Councils, local driving organizations run them. On our website, we have a list of them. Actually, there's always one available to someone anywhere in the whole of the country. If people visited our website and went to the page courses, they could be linked to the various Locate Where You Live. Basically, it will give you a list of different ones.

Rob Heard:
What we say, there's different ones. There's ones which are just confidence building, where they will come to your home address and take you out in your car and carry out a confidential appraisal of your driving. Really, that's a great way just to brush up on your skills. Then, there's ones where someone may have an underlying medical condition that may affect their ability to drive. Those people, we'd recommend going along to the national organization called Driving Mobility. They carry out an assessment to using driving instructors but also occupational therapists. They're very good at fitting adaptions to people's vehicles, identifying the needs and how they can help that person to carry on driving better. Those are the two organizations that we'd recommend or two types of appraisals or assessments that we'd recommend to people.

Chantal Boyle:
The second one was called Driver's Mobility?

Rob Heard:
Driving Mobility it's called. Yes.

Chantal Boyle:
Driving Mobility.

Rob Heard:
There's a link on our website to them, as well, or you can just go into your search engine and put Driving Mobility. Just put in your postcode where you live, and it will come up with the nearest center to where you are. You can just phone them. You can voluntarily book an appointment with them, really. They'll talk you through whether they feel you are necessary for them, or they may signpost you to someone else.

Rob Heard:
We have lots of wear and tear problems as we get older. Lots of little things start niggling us and causing us problems. It's a shame, really. When you come to 70 and have to renew your license, it's a tick-box system at the moment. It's a self-certification system. We're saying is that's a really good opportunity, when you come to the age of 70, to renew your license. Don't just tick those boxes.

Rob Heard:
Think, "If one of them will ask, 'Are you safe to drive?' Well, you know what? Let's go away. Let me get myself a driving appraisal and see if I can. Then, I can confidently tick that box to say I'm fit and healthy." Likewise, it says, "Can you read a number plate at 20 meters?" Well, firstly, how far is 20 meters? How many people actually read that? What does it really test? It just tests this. As we get older, we start to lose what we call our peripheral vision, which, again, may be a reason why older drivers struggle at junctions because they're missing that what's happening coming in from the side. What we'd always recommend is, go and have a regular eyesight test because not only is it good for making sure that you can see the hazards ahead, it also can, quite often, pick up underlying medical conditions at an early stage and allow them to be sorted before they become serious problem with you. It's not always eyesight. They can pick up many other conditions as well.

Chantal Boyle:
I think that's really interesting because eyesight is a gradual loss. Your brain adjusts to the gradual loss, doesn't it? Unless you are getting it regularly tested, you may end up in a situation where, actually, you could see that. Now, you can't. But it's just been so gradual.

Rob Heard:
I started wearing glasses for exactly that. I mean, I was out with a colleague. We were looking for an address, and he says, "Oh, where that road says there, we'll turn left down such-and-such a road." I went, "Such-and-such a road." He can read that. I was thinking, "Huh?" I tried a few more, and I thought, "Think I better go and get my sight check." Now, I could read 20 meters. I could read past the legal limit. But you know what? I couldn't quite see that more. I wanted perfect vision. I know that's why I always wear glasses now. I'm getting older. Therefore, my sight is failing a bit anyway. But certainly, I wanted that perfect vision, certainly, for driving because I want to be able to see that child about to step out behind a car. I want to be able to see that car that's just hidden behind the bushes and coming out. I want to see those hazards because if we see them early, we can react to them early.

Chantal Boyle:
Do you think that self-certification at 70 is the right approach?

Rob Heard:
I don't think it's the right approach for eyesight. I think, at the moment, I think that's wrong. In fact, it's something I'm trying to work with the government at the moment. I've written a paper on it. I'm actually sitting on a national task force where we are trying to show that we actually feel compulsory eyesight testing is an important thing. I think it's important for older people. But I think it's also important for all ages because think about it. When was the last time anybody legally has to have their eyesight tested? Well, it's at your driving test. The only time, in your whole driving career, anybody legally checks your eyesight is when you go to your driving test, and they ask you to read a number plate. Other than that, there's no other legal requirements.

Rob Heard:
Now that's shocking, isn't it, really, when eyes are so important to seeing? It leads me back to where that older driver, who killed the 28-year-old, he had an eyesight condition. He was a retired GP, but he thought he was fit and healthy to drive. It just shows you that there's a real need for us to be forced to go and have a regular eyesight test, especially at license renewal. For me, personally, I think you should do one every 10 years when you renew your photo ID on your license and certainly at 70, and every year you renew your license after that.

Chantal Boyle:
Well, good luck with that campaign. I hope that that's successful because that will definitely reduce accidents on the road. What do you think about the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower role?

Rob Heard:
I wasn't aware of it until recently when I met yourself through Highways England Forum. Actually, when I listened to it, I thought, "Why haven't I heard about this? This is a fantastic organization at the end of the day." Many of us suffer from hidden disabilities, whether anxiety or maybe just something that we don't... None of us really often want to tell people about it. What a great way of actually showing an identification to someone! Those who need to know see that visible sign and, actually, can have respect for people and actually treat them with respect.

Rob Heard:
Now, me, as a traffic officer... Highways England call them traffic officers. I still call myself as a traffic officer or roads policing officer when I was. That would've been a great thing for me as well because, quite often, we would come across people that we would stop or come across them at a collision or an incident. There may be something going on which we don't know about. We are thinking, "Come on; want you to do this; want you to do that." Actually, seeing that sign will make you think, "Aha, I need to have a quick chat with that person." I need to say to them, "Is there anything I can see? A Sunflower sign on your vehicle? Is there anything I can help, especially to help you?" Because it's all about respect and care for people, really, at the end of the day. That's where I think this is a really brilliant campaign. I really hope as many people take up using the sunflower as possible.

Chantal Boyle:
You are listening to the Sunflower Conversations with Chantal. To share your story, details are in the show notes.

Chantal Boyle:
Rob's talking about On the Road with the National Highways and the Sunflower, which is a new initiative/a joint initiative between National Highways, formally Highways England, to supply a free sunflower for drivers to put on the rear of their vehicle, so if they're involved in an incident of any type on a motorway or major A-road that, when the traffic officers arrive on the scene, they're already armed with the fact that somebody inside has a disability.

Rob Heard:
I mean, I had an occasion myself once where I attended a crash. I was trying to get people to move and various cars to get around because it's often when you first turn up chaos in these situations. You're going up to people, and you're sometimes being quite abrupt because you're wanting to make the scene safe and move people around.

Rob Heard:
Actually, there was this one person just looking at me. I was just thinking, "Come on. Move! Move! Why are you doing this? What's going on? I was starting to get concerned about them, thinking, 'This is strange. They're just deliberately ignoring me.'" Then, I realized they were deaf. They couldn't understand a word I was saying. I was too busy going like this and talking to them through the radio, and this, that, and the other. They couldn't see me. They were trying to lip-read me. I was just coming out confused. The person went something like this. Then, I suddenly went, "Ding," light bulb in my head went. I thought, "You're deaf." I said, "Can you lip read?" And they went, "Yes." I just slowly... not slowly. It's wrong to say. You don't slow down. You speak normally. But I made it clear, and I looked at them. I think that made such a difference.

Rob Heard:
Now, I felt embarrassed after that. Then, I went away. We can't take people just the way we look at people because all of us have underlying issues that affect us. Therefore, I think if we can just raise that little awareness to people at an early stage so that when I turn up and see that little sunflower on the back of your vehicle, it is going to make that light bulb for me go click. If you have got something, I really would urge people to get the sticker and stick it on the back of your vehicle because I think it would help you.

Chantal Boyle:
How often should drivers revise the Highway Code, and how do you even go about that? I've got to be honest, the last time I looked at it was when I was 17, which is when I passed my test.

Rob Heard:
Well, interestingly... And this is the thing I always say to many people because many people say I haven't looked at the Highway Code for years. I said, "Well, have you renewed your license in the last 10 years?"

Rob Heard:
"Oh, yes, of course, I do because it's all photo now."

Rob Heard:
I said, "So when you sign your driving license... Did you sign your license?" They said, "Oh, yes, signed my driving license." I said, "Okay. You've made a false decoration then." And they said, "What?" I said, "When you sign your driving license, what you're actually signing is that you've read the Highway Code, and you fully understand it." And they went, "Oh." Because quite often, as a police officer, we'd catch people speeding. We'd catch people doing things. And they went, "I didn't know that." Well, it's in the Highway Code.

Rob Heard:
It is a really important thing. Like I said to you, a car is a literal weapon. We need to have all our tools together to understand how to be safe on the road. Actually, you know what? Pick up the Highway Code. Have a read of it. Now, it's about to come out. It's just been revised. It's coming out, I think, in October/November time and with a revised version, very much [inaudible 00:21:14] looking at cyclists and looking out to motorcyclists and pedestrians and horse riders. It's very much about that. Those are important factors that we need to be aware of and, also, looking at smart motorways because, obviously, those are new motorways that are out and about. We're working with National Highways. Therefore, it's important people understand what smart motorways and red crosses mean. Now, that's all explained in the Highway Code. Gov.uk is a good start. That has a lot of links to the Highway Code on there and all the different subjects that people can go from there. It's certainly worthwhile looking at the way code for people.

Chantal Boyle:
Finally, how do people find out more about the Older Drivers Forum? How do they join your webinars?

Rob Heard:
The most important thing is to have a look at our website, really at the end of the day. It's OlderDriversForum.com. You can either put in that www.OlderDriversForum.com, or you can basically put in your search engine older drivers or Older Drivers Forum, and you'll come up with us on the webpage. Then, just visit.

Rob Heard:
What I'd really suggest to people is explore the website a bit. We've got a page called Advice. If you drop down from that, there's lots of stuff on there from renewing your driving license to eyesight, medical conditions because there are 183 notifiable medical conditions to the DVLA. When you come to renew your license, you're only asked about four or five of them. But there's another 179 of them that, actually, I perhaps should have told the DVLA about, but people haven't. Around about 60% conditions are notified to the DVLA. It's important. Doesn't always mean telling the DVLA you lose your license. In fact, very few would do that. It's just the DVLA need to be aware. If actually you were involved in a collision and didn't have that, you could get into problems.

Rob Heard:
There's different things on that. We've got a lot of useful videos about driving at night, dealing with roundabouts, turning right at junctions, lots of different things. We've got lots of recordings from previous webinars on interesting subjects like I've already mentioned. But there's just a whole plethora of stuff on there for people. What we'd say is explore the website. Have a look up on there. You can find courses in your area. If you want to know when new webinars come up, there's a follow button on our website. Just click on there. Put in your email details. We'll always be posting updates about things. We're not going to be sending people lots of emails. You'll only get an email when a post is put on the website, which would be about something new happening. You're not going to get bombarded. We certainly, certainly, I promise you, do not sell your details to anybody because we're not about that. I hate getting bombarded by spam. You won't get any of that. I promise you that.

Chantal Boyle:
Are you on social media as well?

Rob Heard:
Yeah, we're on Facebook as well. We have Older Drivers Forum on Facebook as well. We're looking at moving into Twitter as well.

Chantal Boyle:
Rob, thank you so much. This has been a really, really interesting chat. It's been incredibly informative, as all the chats that I have with people are. It's definitely the most favorite aspect of my job. I really enjoy it. I don't know. I'm keen to finish this call and download the app to my phone.

Rob Heard:
Grand. Grand. Well, thank you for your time, and very much appreciate it. I do think what you're doing with the Hidden Sunflower organization, Hidden Disability Sunflower, is just wonderful. I really do. That's why we were keen to have you on our webinars, as well, because I think it's a real good source for people. A lot of us have a hidden disability that we want people to know about, but we want the right people to know about it at the right time.