Driving Instructors Slam Ministers And Tory MPs For Backing Dominic Cummings’ Defective Eyesight Driving Offense
by Carlton Reid
U.K. law is clear: driving with impaired vision is illegal. Yet Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings openly admitted to this offense during a one-hour press conference in 10 Downing Street’s garden on May 25.
“My eyesight seemed to have been affected by the disease,” Cummings read from a prepared statement, adding that he had arranged with his wife to “go for a short drive to see if I could drive safely.”
In subsequent radio and TV interviews, government ministers and Tory MPs have tied themselves in knots supporting Cummings’ law-breaking, 30-mile drive to Barnard Castle, County Durham.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove admitted that, in the past, he had committed similar driving offenses.
Quizzed on BBC Radio 5 Live on May 27, Conservative MP Gary Sambrook said that driving with defective eyesight for half an hour on A-roads with a young child in a back seat was a “fair and reasonable thing to do.”
Laughing, the program’s presenter said “Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary, come on,” but the MP for Birmingham Northfield doubled down, adding “I believe it was an eye test and it was a test to physical endurance.”
‘Preposterous’
Driving instructor bodies, motoring organizations, former police chiefs, and MPs have reacted with amazement to Cummings’ original claims and the subsequent support they have received.
Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Manchester Police, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that the drive to Barnard Castle was “not the way to test your eyesight and put, potentially, other people in danger.”
The Automobile Association’s Edmund King told me that, in 2018, uncorrected or defective eyesight contributed to 196 road crashes, three of them involving fatalities. When asked whether Cummings’s driving with defective vision could be considered a “fair and reasonable thing to do,” the AA president answered, “no—an eyesight test should be done when stationary.”
Lawyer David Allen Green told the Financial Times that Cummings’ explanation of driving to test for defective vision was “preposterous.” Social media was aflame with mockery of the eyesight claim minutes after Cummings made it.
Road Traffic Act 1988
“If a person drives a motor vehicle on a road while his eyesight is such that he cannot comply with any requirement as to eyesight he is guilty of an offence,” states Section 96 of the UK’s Road Traffic Act 1988.
If Michael Gove, a former Secretary of State for Justice, is to be believed he and Cummings are both guilty of this offense. Gove admitted as much to LBC radio presenter Nick Ferrari on May 26.
Would Gove go “on a 60-mile round trip to test your eyesight?” asked Ferrari. To the presenter’s amusement, Gove claimed he had done similar in the past, although he couldn’t finish his sentence.
“I have, on occasions in the past, driven with my wife in order to make sure, what’s the right way of putting it?”
Ferrari said he was “staggered” at this half-answer prodding that he had “merely asked you if you’ve ever been on a 60-mile round trip to test your eyesight, and you said you had.”
Ruth Cadbury MP, a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling and Walking, was skeptical of the eyesight explanations. “For anyone that is slightly concerned by their fitness to drive, it is never acceptable to take to the road network and potentially put other road users and yourself at risk,” she told me.
“The apparent lack of importance attached to being a safe and responsible driver by some senior people in government is very concerning,” she added.
David Davies, executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, or PACTS, told me he was “concerned by comments made to the media by certain senior people in government, which do not seem to take account of the responsibilities of drivers for the safety of themselves, their passengers and other road users.”
He added: “Although the current attention of government and the public is rightly on preventing deaths from Covid-19, this does not mean that road safety should be overlooked or compromised.”
No excuses
Motoring and driving instructor organizations have also been critical of Cummings and his defenders.
“In the interest of road safety, I would not recommend anyone would drive any distance if they felt their vision was impaired,” said Peter Harvey, chairman of the Motor Schools Association of Great Britain.
Driving with impaired vision wouldn’t be a “fair and reasonable thing to do,” then?
“No would be the simple answer,” Harvey replied.
Approved Driving Instructor Federation managing director Barbara Trafford told me:
“It is the driver’s responsibility to ensure they are fit to drive prior to driving.”
“It would not take half an hour or a 30-mile distance to check one’s capabilities to drive,” she added.
Cummings’ claim that he felt dizzy and had to sit for a while before driving back was, according to Trafford, “not a reasonable act but one of putting other road users at risk.”
Neil Worth, road safety officer for road rescue organization GEM Motoring Assist, agreed: “There are simply no excuses for driving when you’re unsure you can see properly, as you risk causing injury not only to yourself but to your passengers and anyone else who happens to be in your way.”
(GEM stands for the Guild of Experienced Motorists.)
Worth added that “driving for an hour to a local beauty spot is absolutely not the way to do [an eyesight test]. If you are concerned your eyesight may be impaired or defective—even slightly—you should not drive.”
Danger
Road safety organizations are dismayed by the defense of Cummings by ministers and MPs.
“Impaired driving endangers lives so if there is any doubt about your fitness to drive, you simply should not do it,” said Joshua Harris, campaigns director at road safety charity Brake.
“Driving is a complex and dangerous task, and a single lapse behind the wheel can have catastrophic consequences,” he stressed.
“Everyone who uses our roads has a responsibility to do all they can to minimize the risk to themselves and others.”
The Road Danger Reduction Forum chair Dr. Robert Davis believes Cummings admitted to a “blatant contravention of the law.”
“There are many people killed and seriously injured by such illegal behavior,” said Davis, author of Death on the Streets, a 1990s book on the “myth of road safety.”
Durham police are investigating whether Cummings has broken lockdown laws. It is not yet known whether Cummings is also being investigated for the driving offense he seems to have casually admitted during his highly unusual Downing Street press conference.