The suggestion was made at an inquest yesterday into the death of a woman who was knocked down by a car outside the General Hospital almost a year ago .
At the inquest into the death of 81-year-old Kathleen Killey, it was revealed the driver of the car which hit her suffered from a blind spot.
This meant that Robin Cabot, the driver, did not see Mrs Killey and her brother as they crossed the Parade last February.
Despite his condition, which had come about after a stroke some years earlier, Mr Cabot’s consultant at the Hospital, Dr Ram Kumar, advised him he was able enough to drive in the Channel Islands, but not the UK or Europe.
At the inquest, police surgeon Dr Brian Holmes suggested that the way medicals were carried out for driving purposes should be reviewed.
‘The tests that we, as GPs, carry out are very inadequate.
The only way one would ever find a peripheral field defect (blind spot) would be through an optician’s test.
‘At present there is no requirement for an optician to do anything – there’s nothing in law that obliges an optician to report any problems to driver vehicle standards,’ he said.
If a person’s eye sight is found not to be good enough by a doctor for that person to drive, then recommendations can be made to the licensing authorities to revoke the licence.
If those same visual defects are discovered by an optician, then there is nothing in the law to make the optician take the matter further.
The inquest found that Mrs Killey died from multiple injuries after being hit by the red Daihatsu car.
