Yesterday the General Medical Council (GMC) issued new draft guidance that said GPs must tell the DVLA if a patient continues to drive when they are not medically fit. In he guidance, the GMC said doctors have a public protection duty to inform authorities if a patient is driving against medical advice. Doctors do not need a patient's consent to inform the DVLA (or DVA in Northern Ireland) when a patient has continued driving. The strengthened advice is part of a public consultation on the GMC's core guidance on confidentiality. This aims to help doctors balance their legal and ethical duties of confidentiality with wider public protection responsibilities. I welcome this progress but practically I don't think it will have the impact that's required to make our roads safer. How many doctors and patients will follow the advice? How will it be policed? How will a GP know if a patient has 'continued driving' unless they happen to see them out and about? I did a series of interviews on this matter yesterday and heard a number of GPs and representatives of different motoring bodies speak. The GPs generally welcomed the guidance but said it didn't go far enough in addressing an issue that they can't tackle alone. One quite rightly said that she couldn't assess a person's fitness to drive properly because she wasn't a qualified driving instructor. She also explained that the current DVLA guidelines on medical conditions that might affect a person's ability to drive safely are inadequate because they only deal with singular conditions. Another talked about how confusing the DVLA guidance is even for qualified practitioners and questioned how difficult it must be for self-assessing drivers to follow. The most worrying thing I heard yesterday, though, was the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents' position on retesting for drivers over 70 - they think it would make no difference to road safety. I'm trying so hard to explain, with much support, that what's needed is a completely new test that takes the following things into consideration: health, medication, response rates, driving skills, eye sight and hearing. I'm not suggesting retaking the same test you can sit when you are 17 would make much of a difference when taken by a driver with decades of experience on the road. How could an age-appropriate test not though? Yesterday's news presented a brilliant opportunity to continue the debate at a national level, but it came on the same day as news about cuts to the transport budget. Strengthened guidelines to GPs alone are not the answer to a problem that is only going to get worse as the number of drivers over 70 doubles in the next 20 years. Keeping the issue at a personal level by asking family members and GPs to police our roads is not enough. New policy is needed to make this happen. Please continue to sign and share this petition if you agree. Many thanks, Ben