British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years
bbc.com
bbc.com
The practical details of implementing this are important - is the eye test done at an ordinary optician/optometrist's shop? How are the results going to be submitted to DVLA, etc.? What protections will be in place to prevent people from shopping around for a dodgy optician (as people often do with cars and MOTs)?
I think this is a reasonable and practical step in the right direction. I accept that given the shortage of driving examiners it would be impossible to require re-testing of existing drivers in the foreseeable future, but as the article says, people already get eye tests frequently and often for free, so this is something that can be done without too much additional infrastructure.
A personal anecdote: my grandfather is in his 90s and is not at all fit to drive due to cataracts and various other issues, but he still does "short journeys" because it's convenient and he feels that it's necessary. The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by (though this is not at all universal). Most British towns and cities are very different from their US counterparts in this respect. My grandfather moved house relatively recently --in full knowledge that the house he chose would benefit from car ownership, and in full knowledge about his age. The only thing that will stop him and others like him from putting people in danger is taking away his licence. He has been told by doctors, opticians and family members that he's not safe to drive, but in the absence of any enforcement he persists. I hope that this policy comes in before he or someone else gets hurt.
Which is fine if you live somewhere where there is public transport.
Every passing year non-city/big town buses get cut and cut and cut because councils are bankrupt
To have very limited public transport, then lots of places outside big cities.
I just dropped by daughter off at a friend's house. 4 minutes by car, 40 minutes by bus. Busses here are infrequent and unreliable. You need to take a bus to get to a train if you are going a longer distance.
This is in a town with a population of about 20 thousand in Cheshire.
In most urban areas that equates to about 20 minutes on foot. Why bother to even get into a car/bus for that?
Edit: I checked your weather. Definitely wouldn't want to wait at a bus stop.
I now live in a big city but when I walk to the office it's just before school starts, so I see that yeah at first I'm passing kids happily walking with parents but just outside the school it's a jam of idiots who "just quickly" are here to drop the child from a car. The contrast in a few weeks when school is closed will be dramatic, that street is dead, but I bet every one of those parents thinks of it as a "busy road, they ought to do something about that" while not remembering that it's busy because of them.
This particular trip was 4 min by car because most of the distance was on an A road. It would be a lengthy walk.
Now be a frail 70 year old in the winter (+2°C and rain).
Breeze.
> Now be a frail 70 year old in the winter (+2°C and rain).
Yes, and it was raining last night.
Then there's the fine detail of affording to live somewhere with public transport. :(
The places where public transportation isn't normally found are the places where the average Joe wouldn't have a hope in hell of being able to afford to live there (affluent suburbs, rural areas, etc.) anyway.
Small towns often have a lower sticker price, but the low sticker price is low for reason: Because it is much less affordable. Everyone would be moving there if it were more affordable. Humans love to chase a good deal. After all, even London itself was just a small town, even rural, at one time, but people moved there because it was a better deal and thus the city you know today was born.
Of course, there are always outliers. Perhaps you are one of them. The earlier comment was clear about 'generally'.
Under the previous Conservative government, half of UK bus routes ( ~8,000 ) were cancelled[1]. HS2 high speed train route phase 2 the extensions from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds - which would move freight as well as people, freeing up space on local train lines for better passenger transport - was cancelled[2]. Phase 1 of it was due to be opened in 2026-2033 timeframe but was bungled now has no planned opening time, and Reform are calling to scrap that, too. Local council budgets were reduced[3] under the austerity measures, including one consequence of 40% less transport spending. The West Coast mainline was sold from VirginRail to Italy's TrenItalia in 2019[4] (Deutsche Bahn, French SNCF and Dutch Nederlandse Spoorwegen own most of the other UK railways) although this government is bringing Rail them back into public ownership.
And Reform are promising to remove bike lanes, and scrap Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to let cars use residental roads as through-roads again[5][6].
The UK doesn't have it as bad as the USA - but that's not for lack of trying to make car the only way to move.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/map-bus-route...
[2] https://www.railfuture.org.uk/article1904-HS2-Phase-2-cancel...
[3] https://ifs.org.uk/news/core-funding-english-councils-still-...
[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-a...
[5] https://road.cc/content/news/reform-council-conduct-review-s...
[6] https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/lifestyle/reform-councils-...
[1] https://contact.dvla.gov.uk/driver/capture-transaction-type
Do you know what the process that follows this looks like? Are they just asked to self-certify again? Are they told that someone has reported them (even if they aren't told who it was)?
And to be clear: when I said "anonymously" I meant from the pov of the person being reported. The DVLA requires some basic details of the person making the report, but they're definitely not disclosed to the subject.
Now, I get that some social issues can be touchy in this regard but we're not talking about gay dating in Saudi Arabia here, we're talking about something pretty non-controversial. Everyone's body declines as they get old. Among seniors stopping driving at some point is just a part of the aging process.
Being reported may be seen as betrayal by the parent, even if it is objectively justified. That could also be the reason why „everyone around“ failed to act, even if they agree.
Being anonymous certainly helps.
It kind of is no matter how you slice it. You're prioritizing other interests above theirs specifically to their detriment and then saying "it's justified because X". No value for X no matter how legitimate is gonna change the fundametal reality.
>even if it is objectively justified. That could also be the reason why „everyone around“ failed to act,
If everyone around thinks it's justified then they'll have no problem supporting the guy who does want to act. Buuuut, and this is a big bug. "Will support someone narcing on someone to cause the state to take action" is a way higher bar "will support a DIY solution". Showing up to or organizing your friend's intervention is a way lower bar than throwing them under the bus to the cops. What we're discussing here is basically the "lite" version of the latter.
They might be saving the life of the reported person.
My parents live somewhere that has two buses a week. They could get to the nearest city, then come back two hours later. If they miss the return bus they'd have to wait until next week.
A lot of these things sound great until you actually look at the reality.
This is an absurd take. I grew up in a town of ~60,000 people in the UK. The public transport, was, and _still_ is terrible. To get to the nearby shopping center which was the only place with bowling and a movie theatre, and any shops that weren't charity shops involved 2 trains and a bus taking about an hour and a half. A drive would be 20 minutes and a negotiation with my parents to give me a lift.
Nowadays my mother is in her 70s and lives in this same town, and drives into the countryside every day to take her mental health walks. Without this, she probably wouldn't be here today. Taking her car away from her would be giving her a death sentence to rot at home on a council estate that she hates living in.
> The UK has plenty of public transport options and places where people can live with amenities close by
I mean this simply isn't true. You must live in London or a bubble.
I was commenting primarily on the suggestion that all these old people who rely on their vehicles will suddenly be able to use a functional public transport system - allowing them to get around freely. This is simply not true outside of London.
On the other hand, my grandfather was the exact opposite. He recognized that he would have to move from the country to the city in order to live in a place with adequate public transportation and easier access to medical care. Which he did, and he lived in his own home until he passed away. Likewise, in my university days, I rented a floor in an elderly woman's house. It allowed her to remain independent in a community where she had social connections (e.g. friends and church), health care was easy to access, and everything she needed was within walking distance. To many, renting part of their house out would be unthinkable, but the alternative would be living in a place where everyone is car dependent.
Unfortunately, some people aren't planning with their current or future needs in mind. Or they are unwilling to make compromises in order to address those needs.
According to this women become more dangerous than male 17-24 year old drivers only when they reach 80+ whereas for men they only become more dangerous than female 17-24 year old drivers at 86+.
I actually think more should be done about younger drivers than older.
When you correct for population size, I think you’ll see that difference largely, if not completely, goes away. There are more women than men in the UK from age 50 upwards (https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2025/)
Is that like a dog whistle for "perfectly in line with stereotypes"?
What I wanna see is how it maps vs wealth. Because I have a theory...
During such a test that I could barely read anything, and afterwards realized I could not read most roadsigns--having relied too much on map apps. A visit to the eye doctor confirmed I shouldn't be driving, so I ordered glasses that same day.
Reporting unsafe drivers in my state is not anonymous. And at one point I had to tell a family member that if I found out they were still driving that I'd report them. (They had 3 accidents in 2 years, claiming it's all the computers in the cars.)
But the eye test machines often broken, so the advice was always to get the test done at an optometrist and they fill out a special form that you take with you when renewing your license.
Politically very difficult to take people's licences away though, especially when it's permanent, not their fault and it makes their life a lot worse.
The penalty for an accident without a license is, at minimum, driving without a license. You're also not likely to be covered by insurance without one either, even if you're not at fault.
There are bad drivers out there right now, driving every day that rarely or never get into an accident.
Given that getting a license is an option, and it conveniently doubles as a photo ID, and there's really not a reason to not get one.
I'm not sure if they give regular state id's as real id.
Also, you don't need "Real ID" to fly no matter what they say. You don't even need a photo ID at all (although they'll force you to waste time if you don't have one. I found this out when I lost mine but still had to travel.)
>No Real ID? The TSA Will Now Charge You $45 to Fly
Also healthy enough to be able to walk stairs, as very few places care about people with disabilities, or carrying stuff that is a pain to transport across stairways.
People visit the touristic centre of the main cities and assume we all enjoy nice public transport systems.
That situation is very comparable to many places in the continent, some of them even worse.
Also here that are many small towns and villages that an hourly bus is already something, and naturally there aren't stops scattered all over the place, or worse, offer no protection from weather.
The difference in London is also in large part because London was allowed to retain a unified transport system when Tories dismantled other systems because ideologically their position is the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will fix everything.
On the other hand, it's hard to overstate just how radically car-centric the majority of the infrastructure in the USA is.
Most towns and villages are also not great examples of infrastructure, especially in the southern countries.
Which is also, to some extent, the reality in the US as well. Some number of the "city centers" have better public transport and/or walk-ability [1] available than what is available just outside those city centers.
One big difference in the US is the massive land area difference as compared to Europe means there is a huge amount more land area (and therefore population) with little to no public transport or walk-ability available and a car becomes mandatory rather than optional in those areas.
[1] It's not perfect, I'm sure there are plenty of city centers in western states where even the city center itself is so spread out that walk-ability suffers and that a car tends to become more necessary.
Basic stuff like taking kids to school requires having a car, or being lucky to have some kind of Bus service collecting the kids, for some school levels, and doesn't cover stuff like taking them to other after school activities.
Want to go to the big commercial surfaces? They are all outside the town center and seldom have bus connections.
And many other possible examples.
The buses turn up when they feel like it, and there are problems with antisocial behaviour on a lot of them, including assault.
Oxford was great (though cycling was even better); Leeds, Liverpool, and York were perfectly fine, with regular and reliable services; London's are famously efficient.
Antisocial behaviour isn't honestly that common in my experience, though I'm sure that varies by location. Had some aggro in London once, and again on a London night bus. The football special to the LNER stadium in York was properly boisterous, and quite threatening to the poor away-supporting family on the lower deck, but that at least carried a copper to make sure nothing stupid happened. Other than that, I've only ever really seen loud schoolchildren - who can be annoying but have never caused difficulty for anyone outside their group. I've honestly seen worse behaviour on the tube (and been the object of it on Cross Country Trains).
Football fans are often bad. Especially on trains. I hate getting a train full of them.
Football fans are a bit odd. If you spend a lot of time in football crowds you get much more adept at telling when things are going to kick off and when people are only being obnoxiously loud. Both are annoying but only the first is actually dangerous. But the second can definitely make people feel unsafe. And given that you can't easily get off a train if you feel threatened it's a big problem.
When I was younger I got assaulted on the street five times, and it was always in improbable places and for no obvious reason. Some people are just shitty, some of the time.
Guess what, mostly old folks live there and all this applies there. Its just not financially feasible to cover everybody. Proper full self driving should fix this, nothing less I am afraid.
This sentence is hilarious from an American perspective. There are central business districts of major US cities that are less connected to public transit than the most remote rock at the end of a steep canyon in Switzerland.
A bus that ran 1x a day on any day of any week would be a drastic improvement for nearly all of the US.
That some PT is still not covering somebody's full needs for long term living is understandable too I presume, especially if its few days gaps in service.
Many of these older people don't even know how to use a smartphone so even a 'perfect solution' will take some effort.I still have to help my grandpa with landline calls because he never had one himself (I live in one of the most developed countries in the world).
If you could run a fleet of $30k Waymo’s, that would be nice
/s … maybe
Votes matter more in some systems than others. Preference voting allows for smaller parties to more easily gain seats while first-past-the-post supports two-party systems. In the UK and AU, the prime minister must hold a seat, and so can be removed from parliament through (a subset of) citizen votes removing them from their seat, even if the majority party stays in power. In the US, the President (who can issue executive orders) is elected by an electoral college--none of whom are directly elected by citizen votes. Maybe it's not a big conspiracy, but these systems are doing what they are known to do, and will do so unless they are changed.
Of course there are systems in place to change these systems, which are also quite hard to utilise. And strangely (or not), no one is rushing to improve voter power and representation. So there's some interesting questions there around what changes can be made that would best improve representation, and what could be blocking those changes from being made.
The benefit is the regular ability to remove bad leaders. It doesn’t always happen as fast as we want but it happens eventually.
It’s not perfect, but imagine your least favorite president instead presiding for decades until death or coup.
Yeah, you have to work but you are not allowed to drive or vote any longer. Sounds fair.
Evidence? I thought over-70s were on average safer than young drivers
I think testing eyesight is important. In fact you need to make a declaration about your eyesight when you first get a license and when you renew after 70. There is no real enforcement of the former either (they just ask you to read a number plate at a distance IIRC).
I imagine there’s something of a bathtub curve where young (under 25) drivers have higher accident rates due to some combination of inexperience and immaturity, while older drivers (over 70) have higher accident rates due to disability creeping up on them without them noticing.
Further I’d say anecdotally that past a certain point, certainly by 80s, elderly drivers are not accident free. It’s that they have an increasing number of small accidents until someone takes away the keys. If they do not have someone in their life to do that it’s probably reasonable that the government make that determination.
At some point the reduced vision and reflex speed makes them too hazardous on the road to others, even if they are driving slowly and carefully. Parking lot accidents, hitting kids, slamming the gas instead of the brakes, etc.
So the inherent risk of the situations in which they drive does tend to favor seniors generally
What jurisdictions? The one that is proposing the eye tests?
As usual this is set up as a tax farming scheme for the government to make money. They will make tonnes of money off forcing people to reapply for an overpriced licence every three years.
This is zero-evidence bullshit. On and after the age of 70, all UK drivers have to renew their licence every three years anyway - it's been like that since 1976. This new change just adds a requirement to get an eye test (which the government doesn't "make money" from) as well, rather than self-certifying.
Most of the price of petrol in the UK is government duty and VAT, then there is the extortionate road tax etc. The British exchequer rakes it in off motorists but fails to help provide safe and reliable alternatives.
The main problem I see with over-70s renewing their licence currently is that they have to self-certify that they are safe to drive. Many are reaching a position in which they rely on the car more and more because walking and going on the bus is harder when your agility, cognition and eyesight diminishes. Of course, they will self-certify that they are safe, that is perfectly understandable from their perspective. It needs to be independent.
The NHS may fund free eye tests but they do not fund free glasses. Or free licences.
As I have said elsewhere, I do not find British public transport safe or reliable. On another note, I have sensory issues, so listening to some t*sser going through five second TikTok videos, playing crap music or yapping very loudly on the phone is extremely unpleasant for me. They don't like it if you ask them to be quieter either.
My grandma is 90 and drives 5 miles to the grocery store, a slow road. I don't think she'd pass a driving test but she drives during the day when barely anyone is on the road, chances of serious injury are nil.
Is it worth it to spend large amounts of money on testing these people, taking their license away if they fail? Getting rid of their car will force them to replace it with someone else driving or cycling which could be a problem in many places. Worst case scenario they'll need to go in a retirement home.
I'm not saying it's great for them to drive, I just doubt there's a way to fix it in these sort of places. My grandma cycles to the small store for most of her groceries everyday, it's only the big store she drives to bi-weekly. Honestly the cycling is probably more dangerous, and there's some elderly in my town who're pushing 100 cycling daily.
For UK in particular look up triple lock pension.
I think the elderly former tax payers can have all the taxi vouchers they can reasonably use.
They just need to mutter “asylum seeker” occasionally.
There are already some measures for young people, like the 6 point thing. Maybe there could be more. Doesn't change the facts about dangerous OAP drivers
Don’t you think that statement is also true?
Over a long enough interval, that reduction in risk would be important. So what is the appropriate time interval for these risk assessments?
> You're taking about statistical averages but I'm talking about a significant minority of over-70s who are wildly dangerous.
You sure about that?
Retest everyone's skill every 3-5 years (whenever up for driver card renewal).
So, in theory, policy could appropriately adjust for this dynamic by only requiring the test of over-70s driving more than X miles/year, but that adds hassle to enforcement.
Wife is a GP and she regularly faces this at her work. I begged her numerous times to take away those licenses without mercy if the person is unfit, no amount of pleading, begging, crying of threats should change that. And they do it all, oh so much - to the point she is giving up this revenue stream, too much emotional burden (from somebody who sometimes has to tell patients they have ie cancer).
Why so harsh - we live in more rural place with tons of old folks. They are properly dangerous behind the wheel - they can't handle any sudden situation, heavy traffic is a challenge at best, they need to drive at absolute minimum speed at bright daylight to handle situations.
Its tough, they live their whole lives in the middle of nowhere, too stubborn to sell and move someplace more reasonable and without a car they can't easily take care of themselves in their remote places (but its 2026 we have ubers, taxis and home deliveries, and once further down the road good social housings for elderly). Often, they know old but still working doctors who turn the blind eye because they are old buddies and then its sometimes sad news.
When they handle 1.5 tonne of steel that accelerates fast and easily kills others, very easily it stops being primarily about them but about rest of society. When you see them barely managing driving around local primary school, its either them or us/our kids
It shouldn't be permanent. If they can improve, then why not? Maybe illness causes their poor driving and they find a treatment for that illness.
I'm talking about removing licences due to cognitive decline. It's not a temporary condition
All cognitive decline is not equal.
If they're able to drive they should be allowed to
My opinion is that in the general case people over 70 shouldn’t be driving and I say this as someone who has 4 spritly grandparents in their 90s. I really don’t like how dangerous roads are, a fact that we accept because we did not really have good alternatives, now that we do we should implement them.
I’m pretty sure laws can be changed easier than lifespans can doubled. You can’t always do things right the first time because knowledge unfolds with time, you’ll always know more later. You are proposing a waterfall design versus an iterative design. It would be easy enough to run an experiment for a few years to see if the lives saved are worth it.
You have no way of knowing that. There's no reason it should be written into law. If they can pass the test, then they can drive. Testing already takes care of what you want. If it truly isn't a temporary condition, then you have nothing to worry about.
They do cause a lot of cursing, but they are signalling hard enough they're bad at driving and other drivers leave huge margins, overly grant right of way, don't cross the road, etc...
I will always be bitter that older voters chose Brexit by a large margin, in opposition to the younger voters who will actually be around to feel its long term effects. Not taking that into account in voting feels wrong but there’s no politically palatable way of addressing it.
You can't be drafted in war time emergencies? You can't vote (also yes I do want women to be draftable)
Even moreso when you consider basically the whole generation relies on leeching off the young and have continued to capture an ever-increasing proportion of public spending across the western world despite owning an outsized proportion of both real estate and wealth overall.
It might also suggest further reflection is warranted.
I also loved Verhoeven's film adaptation but he straight up admitted that he didn't finish the book before making the film, which was itself based on a Neumeier (of "Robocop" fame) script called "Bug Hunt at Outpost 7" that bore only superficial resemblance to the book. He made the same mistake as many others in casting the book as fascist merely because of its militaristic elements when it's clearly not. On top of lacking many essential elements of fascism (a dictator, a directed economy, suppression of political dissent, etc) there are also several spots that veer into philosophical treatise to espouse the opposite. The flashback scene involving Rico's professor talking about how a society is obligated to raise its children correctly (and how it's society's failure if they end up delinquent) is a perfect example - "the system is the problem" hardly reads as far-right.
This is all to say that I think Heinlein was more interested in exploring a concept of reciprocal responsibility between a citizenry and its government. The militaristic aspects of the novel as regards a distant, dehumanized enemy and the dominance of the fight over all other aspects of life are far more alarming in my opinion.
Either way, they sound like they have leadership potential.
1. Veteran
2. Property ownership
3. Having children.
If you dont hit 1 of those criteria, you dont get a vote. You need skin in the game. Letting anyone vote is why “tax someone else, give me things” is such a popular platform. Politicians should have to hit maybe 2 out of 3.
Ooooh, this is how you tip the scales further away from the progressive policies.
I own a house but I'd hate such setup.
In the US at least, political rights are considered inalienable, not rewards. The OPs point can be extended to giving more votes to people based on their “productivity” (ie income) to society and the absurdity becomes obvious to most.
They become politically impossible because they're not a front burner issue for anyone so the only people who are driving the issue are extremists who want the criteria set at like 10 whereas normal people want it at like 5 on some arbitrary scale of extremity so whenever it goes up for public consideration it gets shot down. You see this across all areas of mundane policy.
Unless I've botched the math and/or what the internet tells me about the size of the characters on a UK number plate is wrong this seems to be a bit overboard.
The internet is telling me that the characters are 79mm tall and 50mm wide (except for '1' and 'I') with a 14mm stroke.
My eyes right now are about 250mm from my monitor. Something that is 79mm tall and 20m away would have the same angular size as something 250mm away that is 79mm / 20m x 250mm = 0.9875mm tall.
If I set the size to 75% in Chrome that is the size of the numbers on this page in the timestamps and the submission points and comment counts. It is about 1/2 the size of the numbers in the text box that I'm writing this comment in.
I've just taken a photo of that and will include a link to it to show how small that is [1]. In that I'm holding a ruler next to the left side of the text. The "180" up where it says "180 points" is what you have to be able to read to pass the test. (If you can't see the photo because Imgur blocks your country just grab a ruler, hold it vertically 25cm in front of you, and the apparent size of the space between the mm marks is the size character you need to read).
I have no idea what road signs and markings are like in the UK, but in the US in ~50 years of driving I don't think I've ever needed to read anything anywhere near that small.
But if you go outside and do a real world test, you'll (hopefully) find that a number plate should be readable from much further away than 20 meters. If you don't, please go and see an optometrist! I'm serious.
20 m is actually a very lenient requirement IMO. In my country, one should be able to read a number plate from about 35 m easily, and with good eyesight, 65 m and more shouldn't be a problem.
I have some experience because I got a macular hole in one eye which had surgery. With the good eye I can do about 60m, with the problem one about 20.
I would like to see better tests. I have a pet theory that visual perception deficiencies along the lines of simultanagnosia are considerably more common among older people than is generally recognized, and people with these conditions may be able to easily read letters and numbers at a distance but be unable to drive safely due to inability to reliably detect obstacles.
Visual screening is fairly easy and every bit as quick, but it needs different tests. Something along the lines of an Ishihara plate but with colors that are perceptible even to color blind people might work. Or a visually busy image with instructions to identify one or two particular objects in the scene.
So I'm all for doing it, too many old people that shouldn't be on the road, but unsure how.
- Self driving vehicles are truly vs theoretically safer than humans or at least the average 70 year old.
- Self driving vehicles can be attained or reliably rented for an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fraction of a seniors monthly stipend or pension or disability. Reliably meaning no waiting line or shortages of rental self driving cars or vans.
Proper nighttime lighting goes a long way to improving road safety for all drivers.
It would also be totally pointless between 20 and 60 at the very least. The vast majority of people don't have any cognitive decline before then.
That and the scandal of test slots being bought up months in advance by what are essentially touts, as well as the lack of testers you noted, make it unworkable.
And heck, when I got my license I lived in a remote town, 3 hours away from the nearest street light. Lots of things I got away with not learning, and whatever I memorized for the theoretical test 20 years ago is mostly forgotten. I think many people think they "know" the rules, but really don't
> Nearly one in four car drivers killed in 2024 were aged 70 or older, according to government figures.
So, somewhat less than 25%. Let's guess 23% or whatever.
What are the age demographics? According to 2024 stats, 19.7% of the UK was aged 65 or older. 17% in the 0-14 age range.
Thus 65-year-olds and older make up 23.7% of the population older than 14.
It seems, roughly, as if the proportion of 70-year-olds and older might be more or less in line with their representation in the driving age population.
It's not the statistics we need, but close enough to defeat the alarmist idea of OMG, a whopping quarter (almost) fatalities are 70+; get the old buggers off the roads!
Enforcement is another issue. I don't even bother reporting being hit by cars anymore because the police refuse to do anything about it. That is after an incident and with a plate number. Enforcement of people driving without a license would be next to impossible unless there is an incident.
As for "don't bother looking", well, you cannot really test for that since it is usually the result of some form of distracted driving or carelessness. Both of which are unlikely to show up when someone knows they are being assessed.