Grieving family calls for opticians to report drivers with bad eyesight
OPTICIANS should be forced to report patients with bad eyesight to the DVLA, the family of a man killed by a partially sighted driver has said.
The relations of David Evans, who was fatally knocked off his motorbike on Christmas Day 2015, said all medical professionals, not just doctors, should face disciplinary action if they fail to raise concerns.
Their call for enhanced regulation came after a former soldier, Nigel Sweeting, was jailed for seven years for causing Mr Evans’s death.
A court heard the 50-year-old had been “fully aware” of problems in his field of vision and had been told by an optician not to drive. Under recently strengthened General Medical Council rules, doctors are obliged to report patients they feel are unfit to drive, having first encouraged them to contact the authorities voluntarily.
However, rules governing opticians and optometrists make no explicit mention of dangerous drivers, although there is a general duty to “promptly raise concerns” about patients who may pose a risk to the public.
The Evans family want all medical regulators to explicitly force their practitioners to report suspected dangerous drivers.
Newport Crown Court heard that Sweeting, who denied causing death by dangerous driving and perverting the course of justice, had not stopped when he struck the bike of Mr Evans, 49, in wet conditions. He later painted his car in an attempt to cover up the damage.
Patrick Maguire, a serious injury lawyer from Slater & Gordon who is representing the victim’s family, said: “What makes this even more tragic is that Mr Sweeting should have never been behind the wheel. That is why we are campaigning for a change in the law to require any medical professional aware of a person’s inability to drive safely to report them to the DVLA so that their licence is withdrawn.”
Sweeting’s optician had encouraged him to see a GP about his eyesight problems, but the defendant said “he couldn’t be bothered”.
Prosecutors said he had been travelling at more than 80mph along the M4 near Newport, South Wales, when he hit Mr Evans. His eldest daughter Isabella said: “I relive throwing his Christmas dinner in the bin. Every Christmas Day will remind me of that.”
Under the new GMC rules, doctors who believe a patient may pose a danger no longer have to seek the patient’s consent to contact the DVLA if they believe it is not “safe or practicable to do so”.
Campaigners for a so-called “Poppy’s Law”, following the death of Poppy-arabella Clark, want a legal as well as a regulatory duty to inform the authorities. The three-year-old was killed last year by a 73-year-old motorist who had ignored opticians’ warnings not to drive and was not wearing his glasses at the time.