Get a regular medical checkup to check your ability to drive and maintain your license. This principle intended to limit road accidents related to the medical incapacity of drivers could see the light of day in the form of a European directive debated at the end of February. If adopted, this measure, once transposed into French legislation, would mark the end of the lifetime license.
If it were still necessary to discuss the terms of this obligation, the frequency of these medical visits could be set at fifteen years. A way to address all age groups. Because it is an “undifferentiated measure” supported by the EELV MEP, Karima Delli, rapporteur of the bill.
“A second seat belt”
“At 50 or 40, you may realize that you have an illness or abilities that do not allow you to drive,” he explains to BFMTV this Tuesday, February 20.
“The medical examination is for you, as for others, a second seat belt,” he continues to believe.
A vision shared by Vincent Julé-Parade, lawyer specialized in the defense of victims of traffic accidents.
“It is not because we are in good health at a given moment in our lives that we cannot have a disease that requires pharmacological treatment that alters our abilities,” he illustrated this Tuesday morning on the BFMTV set.
“I have always considered that it was not a question of age: we no longer have to think about age but about aptitude,” he added, before questioning: “We have a technical inspection of the vehicles, why not do a medical examination? of the drivers”.
More frequency for older people?
A periodic control that will inevitably raise awareness among older people. But for them, a check-up every fifteen years could be less effective due to the more rapid deterioration of their health and cognitive abilities.
“What you can do at 75, at 85 you may no longer be able to do,” confirms Me Julé-Parade. Hence the idea of increasing the frequency of medical visits, starting at a certain age.
“In terms of mortality, older people are not more represented than others, not even less,” he reports. “On the other hand, in terms of responsibility for accidents in which they are involved, they return at the same rate as young people between 18 and 24 years old, that is, approximately 80% responsibility.”
The permit, a tool for social integration
But, whatever its exact terms, establishing such an obligation in the name of strengthening road safety raises other questions and difficulties. Starting with social integration.
“This is a measure that can easily be considered in Paris,” says Julé-Parade. “But if you are 82 years old and live in the depths of Corrèze, revoking your driving license is also your social death sentence somewhere,” she laments.
A fear widely shared by the association of 40 million motorists who launched a petition against this proposed measure.
“Our driving license is access to employment, it is taking our children to school, it is the social link,” said Pierre Chasseray, general delegate of the organization on BFMTV, on Tuesday.
Source: BFM TV
