Royal’s crash stokes debate on older drivers － by Benjamin Mueller, NYT Jan. 21, 2019 フィリップ殿下の運転事故と高齢者運転の議論
The idea of Prince Phillip, age 97, behind the wheel has alarmed some Britons
Prince Phillip was at the wheel?
To the astonishment and alarm of some Britons, he was. At age 97. On a public road, alone. Last week, his car went straight into the path of a minivan hurtling down a motorway with 9-month-old boy inside.
The crash flipped the armor-plated Land Rover driven by Prince Phillip. The minivan careened off the road.
Prince Phillip and the child were unhurt, though a minivan passenger broke her wrist and the driver suffered knee cuts. The prince told police officers he had been “dazzled by the sun,” a witness said.
Still, some Britons were confused at why the prince, the wizened gaffeprone duke of Edinburgh who is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was even driving.
“You’d have to be a superhero for your mental acuity not to have slow down,” said lnger Wallis, a London resident out walking her dog on Friday, a day after the incident.
She shook her head as she repeated his age, while acknowledging her “deep respect” for the supporting role he has played for so many decades beside Elizabeth. Ms. Wallis’s father, she said, hung up the keys at 84, scared to drive.
If nothing else, Britons could be thankful that for one day at least, the agony of Britain’s tortured withdrawal from the European Union was not the leading topic of discussion.
The crash, involving a famously headstrong and famously aging royal, did provoke a lively discussion about whether Britain should stop older people from driving. The country will have a million drivers older than 85 by 2025, doubled from a few years ago. And those drivers are more vulnerable to crash injuries because of their frailty.
That Prince Phillip was unaccompanied in the Land Rover by his round-the-clock bodyguards or royal chauffeurs also drew attention to an inconvenient fact, for those who have ever tried to pry the keys from older relatives.
Driving is a lifeline for some older people, especially in Britain, where smaller towns and rural areas have scant public transit. And older drivers are, by many measures, are safer drivers, with people older than 70 half as likely as drivers 25 and younger to kill a pedestrian, the Older Drivers Task Force in Britain said in 2016.
If the government is to take anyone’s keys, experts said, it should target young men.
Arthur Currie, 70, a resident at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London for veterans of the British Army, said his relatives sit more stiffly in the passenger seat when he gets behind the wheel. “Or they will say to me, ‘You see that car coming, Daddy?’” But when they broach the topic of his giving up his keys altogether, Mr. Currie makes his view clear.
“My first reaction is looking at them and giving them what they call a laser stare,” he said. “Being an ex-regimental sergeant major, I have perfected laser stare.”
Mr. Currie said his only thought, upon hearing about the crash, was concern for Prince Phillip and others involved. As an honorary colonel of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, where Mr. Currie was once a sergeant major, the prince made annual visits to the troops.
“If he felt he was able enough to drive, who am I or who’s anybody else to say he shouldn't be driving?” Mr. Currie said.
Not all Britons were so deferential.
John Clegg, manning the register at the London Review Bookshop, wondered why the prince could not simply get his driving fix on the private roads of his vast royal estates.
“What’s the point in going around in a Land Rover unless you're going off road?” he asked. (Not the most pressing question, perhaps, regarding the solo driving by a 97-year-old royal.)
Mr. Clegg said his grandmother finally persuaded his grandfather to stop driving after too many instances of having to shake him awake.
“He never went off the road, but she could see when it could happen,” Mr. Clegg said.
The prince is regarded a bit warily by the British public. He is known to be hardheaded and occasionally gruff and to make racist and sexist comments, including ones about Chinese with “slitty” eyes and women who cannot cook.
Ingrid Seward, a royal expert whose latest book is “My Husband and I: The Inside Story of 70 Years of Royal Marriage,” suspected the prince would stubbornly resist the queen’s admonitions about his driving but would see the logic and could be persuaded to give it up.
“It is the lobotomy of his last vestige of independence,” Ms. Seward said.
Like many others, Ms. Seward has her own experience trying, with some difficulty, to persuade a parent to relinquish the keys. At 86, her mother took a driving test in an attempt to defy Ms. Seward and prove she could still drive. She failed.
Ms. Seward said Prince Phillip may have been in the Land Rover because he was only driving from one side of his Sandringham Estate to another. A few years ago, the Obamas got into the car with Prince Phillip on the same estate, and looked somewhat less than at ease.
Prince Phillip was known to prize fast sports cars, and the British news media quickly dug up examples of his reckless driving, including one accident in 1996 in which he rear-ended a car at a pedestrian crossing, leaving the driver in a neck brace. As far back as the 1950s, a British tabloid questioned whether he should be trusted to drive the queen around.
On Thursday afternoon, he was pulling off a private road and either onto or across a public motorway known for accidents, with its 60 mile-per-hour speed limit and scary bends. Local lawmakers, who coincidentally met on Friday to discuss the road’s safety, lowered the speed to 50 m.p.h.
As the British tabloids chronicled in graphic cartoon mock-ups of the crash site, the prince’s car turned over, he was rescued through the sunroof, and he had to submit to a breathalyzer test.
Hugh Bladon, 77, a spokesman for the Alliance of British Drivers and a proud older driver, said another alliance member familiar with the road had told him he could understand how the sun may have blinded the prince.
“Obviously, everyone’s going to jump on the age bandwagon.” he said. “But age actually is nothing to do with skill.”
British law requires drivers at age 70 to start self-reporting medical issues related to their fitness for the road every three years.
The Older Drivers Task Force recommended the government raise the age to 75, but also start requiring an eyesight test, a more accurate barometer of any problems.
Britain instituted driving tests in 1935, but it is unclear whether Prince Phillip, who joined the Royal Navy at 18, took one. The royal palace, though, confirmed on Friday that he had a license.
The queen, as the person in whose name British licenses are issued, is the only Briton who can drive without one.
British lawyers said there was a chance Prince Phillip could be charged with driving without due care and attention, though he could also possibly avoid charges by voluntarily surrendering his license.
There were hints on Friday, though, that the prince would not give uq quite so easily. A replacement Land Rover was seen by British photographers being driven onto the grounds of his estate, under the watchful eye of the police.
John Clegg, manning the register at the London Review Bookshop, wondered why the prince could not simply get his driving fix on the private roads of his vast royal estates.
“What’s the point in going around in a Land Rover unless you're going off road?” he asked. (Not the most pressing question, perhaps, regarding the solo driving by a 97-year-old royal.)
Mr. Clegg said his grandmother finally persuaded his grandfather to stop driving after too many instances of having to shake him awake.
“He never went off the road, but she could see when it could happen,” Mr. Clegg said.
The prince is regarded a bit warily by the British public. He is known to be hardheaded and occasionally gruff and to make racist and sexist comments, including ones about Chinese with “slitty” eyes and women who cannot cook.
Ingrid Seward, a royal expert whose latest book is “My Husband and I: The Inside Story of 70 Years of Royal Marriage,” suspected the prince would stubbornly resist the queen’s admonitions about his driving but would see the logic and could be persuaded to give it up.
“It is the lobotomy of his last vestige of independence,” Ms. Seward said.
Like many others, Ms. Seward has her own experience trying, with some difficulty, to persuade a parent to relinquish the keys. At 86, her mother took a driving test in an attempt to defy Ms. Seward and prove she could still drive. She failed.
Ms. Seward said Prince Phillip may have been in the Land Rover because he was only driving from one side of his Sandringham Estate to another. A few years ago, the Obamas got into the car with Prince Phillip on the same estate, and looked somewhat less than at ease.
Prince Phillip was known to prize fast sports cars, and the British news media quickly dug up examples of his reckless driving, including one accident in 1996 in which he rear-ended a car at a pedestrian crossing, leaving the driver in a neck brace. As far back as the 1950s, a British tabloid questioned whether he should be trusted to drive the queen around.
On Thursday afternoon, he was pulling off a private road and either onto or across a public motorway known for accidents, with its 60 mile-per-hour speed limit and scary bends. Local lawmakers, who coincidentally met on Friday to discuss the road’s safety, lowered the speed to 50 m.p.h.
As the British tabloids chronicled in graphic cartoon mock-ups of the crash site, the prince’s car turned over, he was rescued through the sunroof, and he had to submit to a breathalyzer test.
Hugh Bladon, 77, a spokesman for the Alliance of British Drivers and a proud older driver, said another alliance member familiar with the road had told him he could understand how the sun may have blinded the prince.
“Obviously, everyone’s going to jump on the age bandwagon.” he said. “But age actually is nothing to do with skill.”
British law requires drivers at age 70 to start self-reporting medical issues related to their fitness for the road every three years.
The Older Drivers Task Force recommended the government raise the age to 75, but also start requiring an eyesight test, a more accurate barometer of any problems.
Britain instituted driving tests in 1935, but it is unclear whether Prince Phillip, who joined the Royal Navy at 18, took one. The royal palace, though, confirmed on Friday that he had a license.
The queen, as the person in whose name British licenses are issued, is the only Briton who can drive without one.
British lawyers said there was a chance Prince Phillip could be charged with driving without due care and attention, though he could also possibly avoid charges by voluntarily surrendering his license.
There were hints on Friday, though, that the prince would not give uq quite so easily. A replacement Land Rover was seen by British photographers being driven onto the grounds of his estate, under the watchful eye of the police.
