"A blanket test discriminates against older people"

The Hamburger Sozialverband (SoVD) rejects general aptitude tests for older drivers. That puts senior citizens under general suspicion of being unfit to drive and is discriminatory, said Hamburg SoVD country chief Klaus Wicher on Wednesday. After all, such tests would not be required of younger drivers either. The use of mobile phones while driving, for example, is punished individually and not collectively.

The debate about general aptitude tests for older drivers flared up again after a 77-year-old driver almost crashed into a busy café while parking in Hamburg's Waitzstrasse shortly before Christmas. A concrete bollard stopped the SUV, no one was hurt.

Shortly after the accident, Green politician Stefanie von Berg spoke up on Twitter. “When will the driving ability tests for seniors finally come?” she asked. "Again, a heavy, highly motorized car, again obvious excessive demands in everyday driving, gas and brake mixed up again," wrote von Berg, who is the district office manager of Altona, the Hamburg district in which Waitzstrasse is also located.

In the busy street near the Othmarschen S-Bahn station, accidents like this happen again and again - statistically at the moment a little more often than once a year and mostly caused by senior citizens.

In 2021, the district changed the parking regulations on the street and also set up bollards weighing several hundred kilograms to stop potential accident vehicles before they drive into the windows of the small shops on the street. The bollard stopped the 77-year-old's SUV, but only after he had knocked over some of the tables and chairs in the café's outdoor dining area.

For SoVD boss Wichern, the accident is no reason to fundamentally doubt the driving ability of older drivers. "If some would advocate safe traffic routes and safe vehicles just as vehemently and media-effectively as for a driving ability test for older people, "we might already be over the hill in terms of road safety," he said on Wednesday, aiming, among other things, at Hamburg more and more accidents involving e-scooters, but little is being done about it. Sending older drivers to the “driving or health TÜV: This puts seniors under general suspicion of being unfit to drive.”

In the "Hamburger Abendblatt" the accident driver from Waitzstrasse now spoke up himself. He thinks it's a technical defect. The vehicle drove off suddenly and the brakes did not work. He was only able to deliberately steer towards the bollard so that it would stop the journey.

The Abendblatt quotes the 77-year-old as saying that he had to undergo a police medical examination at the scene of the accident, "It was found that I am mentally healthy and able to react quickly." He does not understand how easily accidents like his, on the age of the drivers would be reduced. He was annoyed by the generality with which drivers who were no longer young were judged.

Meanwhile, there have been two other serious accidents involving senior citizens in the Hanseatic city since the beginning of the year. A 77-year-old had her 88-year-old husband trapped between the car and the wall when parking in a parking garage in the Lohbrügge district. He died from his injuries. Just two days later, an 87-year-old had an accident with her car in Hamburg-Marmstorf and crashed into a house wall.