A bill is considering a compulsory medical examination for seniors
Every Thursday, Josette takes out the car from her garage when the French are still at the table. It is 1 p.m., the Gironde roads bordered by vineyards are deserted. Complete silence in the cabin, the 86 -year -old motorist is concentrated. “I wear a hearing aid,” slips this resident from a small town halfway between Bordeaux and Libourne. Direction the supermarket, about ten kilometers from her house. “It’s my moment of freedom!” The other days of the week, the animators of the elder club come to seek Josette in minibus with the other members to participate in the activities. When she has medical appointments and she has to go to the bank, her eldest daughter takes her. Otherwise, it should borrow the N89. However, for two years, the octogenarian sulks the main axes, which she considers “too dangerous with the trucks”.
What does Josette think of the Transpartisan bill, tabled on April 1 in the National Assembly and debated next May? The text, signed by a hundred deputies, plans to pass a compulsory medical examination every five years to drivers over 70 years (1). “I wonder what will happen if I do not succeed in the test because of my device,” she replied, anxious. According to an IPSOS survey (2), 51 % of seniors are opposed to a control of this type – visual acuity tests, motor capacities, cognitive capacities and blood pressure taking – which can lead to a driving prohibition. Admittedly, when involved in a fatal accident, drivers over the age of 75 are presumed responsible in 78 % of cases. But this proportion is equivalent to that of young people aged 18 to 24 (3). And these seniors commit half less accidents than the latter.
Driving … For all generations, the idea of no longer being able to take the wheel comes from the sentence. For the elderly, it is even worse: this perspective has the bitter taste of the passing time, isolation, loss of autonomy and the end of daily freedom. “Wouldn’t you like to come and live in town?” The children of Françoise, 78, are worried. In mid-March, this resident of a Bourgade du Poitou struck a post by wanting to park. The shock caused the roof of the covered market. Fortunately, no one was injured. “This is the first accident in my life,” comments the septuagenarian. A medical visit every five years? Very little for her, this dynamic retiree feels in perfect health. “I don’t want to be infantilized,” she creaks. If I was prohibited from driving, I would have the impression of being at the gates of the Ehpad! »»
Family tensions
Within families, the subject is very often, a source of concern. Witnesses, Cécile and her brothers. For a long time, they looked for the right way to do to prevent their octogenarian father, whose dizzying more and more frequent at the wheel, from going every spring from his house in the Paris suburbs to the south of Spain – more than 1,700 kilometers. The old man always got angry. He ended up giving up himself, without more comments.
Sabine’s grandfather, too, loved crossing France twice a year, from Lorient to Strasbourg. The former factory director accustomed to his service car had “osteoarthritis at the knees and no longer knew how to press an object with his hands,” says his 26-year-old granddaughter. During the twelve hours of the journey, his family activated as in a control center. The children made their father’s phone calls, then remembered to cross -check their information. The grandfather has always arrived safely but “we could see that the car was a little damaged,” says Sabine.
Medical confidence
Only epileptic or Alzheimer’s patients are formally prohibited from driving. Doctors identifying failures in their patients are held by medical confidentiality and cannot launch any reports. As a result, it is often relatives who alert the prefecture. Clément Mercier, member of the collective “Saving lives is allowed”, knew a grandfather grabbed at his wheel when he suffered from a neurodegenerative disease. “At the three -color fire, he no longer went green, he only looked on the left or right,” explains this internal in medicine. With the rest of his family, they decided to remove the vehicle battery. “We made sure that the convenience store did not come …” A few years later, in 2020, Clément Mercier’s grandmother was overthrown by the car of an octogenarian motorist victim of a heart discomfort while driving. “The driver had refused to be asked a pacemaker, he was no longer able to drive,” said his grandson. Now, Clément Mercier does not hesitate to advise some of his elderly patients and to the capacities visibly diminished to test their ability at the wheel. At the risk of appearing to them very unfriendly and never see them again.
