Federal court rules Senior citizen must undergo medical examination after driving

A senior citizen had to undergo a medical examination after driving in an unusual manner.

A man over 80 years old was rightly ordered to undergo a fitness to drive test. According to the Federal Supreme Court, this was not due to his age. The reason for this was the inexplicable behavior of the senior citizen, who continued his journey to his dentist appointment after a collision with a parked car.

The collision occurred one afternoon in September 2022 in a 30 km/h zone in Bern's old town. The impact caused damage to the bodywork of the man's car and a broken axle on the front right wheel. The driver continued driving for over a kilometer. When he arrived at the dentist, he parked his car in the no-parking zone and informed the owner of the damaged car from there.

In a ruling published on Wednesday, the Federal Supreme Court confirmed the view of the lower court in Bern that the man had driven through Bern with a "mental tube vision" focused on the dentist's appointment. The fact that he swerved to avoid a pedestrian - as he said - instead of simply stopping in the traffic-calmed zone could indicate a visual-spatial impairment of perception.

Contrary to the complainant's view, it is not relevant that he had undergone a regular traffic medical examination five months previously without any problems. The man must therefore undergo another examination.

SDA