Greyerbeard wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 12:42 pm

horobags wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 4:25 pm

I hope they got a good bollocking.

Well...he was a fairly frail old bloke; pretty shocked and covered in broken glass from his door window...aggression wouldn't have helped, really!
Police and his insurance will deal with him; he's admitted full liability.

Glad you're ok , i'm a fairly(very) old bloke but happily not to frail, being old's no excuse, these buggers that can't drive give us old people a bad rep. & we're slagged off enough nowadays

Bit harsh

Harsh, but true. I wasn't going to mention this in my last comment, but there are a lot of very elderley road users which I'm sure wouldn't go anyway near passing a driving test and are quite dangerous drivers. One of my neighbours has took out 2 wing mirrors in the past few months and isn't a good driver. Total respect to them and I'm sure most need their cars but they can be a very dangerous hazzard on our roads.

I'm just against judging and condemning without knowing full facts .If guy has had few accidents then fair enough if it's just a one off isolated incident then it's different and not age related .If follow previous poster logic one mistake and can't drive and giving old drivers a bad name .

I'm 74...

For some reason, I'd associate not looking in the mirror before opening the door with younger people - in a rush, thinking of other things, on their phones etc. Older people might have more experience...obviously not!

I'm just a youth at 72. But anyone of any age can make mistakes, not be as careful as they should etc. Most of the time they (we) get away with it.

When my dad got to over 80 he asked me to check his driving. He was slow at getting away and clearly took longer than he should assessing situations and reacting to events, however he was probably not actually dangerous. I suggested he pack it in and he was happy to agree. He had been a police class 1 driver so had come down quite a long way.

I'm trying to get in the habit of opening the door with my left hand; I read somewhere quite recently that it goes some way towards not flinging the door open!
Trouble is, the saying including 'old dogs' and new tricks' comes to mind.
I constantly remind myself that I must pay more attention as I grow older.

You are right Waldorf ,it's hard to get a new habit. Opening the door with the 'wrong' hand is also supposed to make you turn and check the road for oncoming traffic but it is certainly hard work at the moment.

This is apparently called the 'Dutch Reach' (or Dutch something or other!). I guess it just as easy to teach yourself to look in the mirror as to start using the 'wrong' hand.