Harsh, or fully justified

[Horse]

Hah - even here in the civilised part of the country it's not much better!

Our main post office is a counter at the back of WHS. Banks are just offices, HSBC moved the counter service upstairs, then closed it. Smaller towns won't have a bank at all.

At rellies' local town, the post office van arrives two mornings a week.

But we do have two Waitrose, three Tesco, three Sainsburys, Lidl, Aldi, etc with a couple of miles and all types of food delivered by scooter at any time of day

[DefTrap]

Here most towns will not have half of those. Banks? Here these are old historic building now repurposed for something else. Post offices are usually hidden in the back corner of something else. Tobacconist? I can honestly say I have not seen an old-style tobacconists for about 25 years. Butchers and bakers survive, just!

To put it in context
- my village (c2k pop) in Fronce has all of those. (Oh and I forgot the weekly market for cheese, fish, veg, random clothes and mattress FFS sales etc). But, as said, no chance of an Uber. No chance of supermarket home deliveries - doesn't seem to be a thing here.
- my (old) village (c2k pop) outside Cambridge UK - has a mimimart, pub and PO. That's it. Way more chance of an Uber though.

Not a UK bashing post, it's just that circumstances vary. My folks (80s) are realistically very close to giving up their DLs - they won't like it but the reality is that where their house is (outskirts of Poole) it isn't too awful to have to rely on public transport and local shopping.

[A_morti]

A person died.
It wasn't an accident, because the driver had been told it was no longer safe for him to drive and decided to ignore that. So it was a negligent and selfish decision for which somebody else bore the grave consequences.
A crime was committed, and the mandated punishment is custodial.
Being old does not excuse you from the appropriate punishment befitting your crime; justice must be blind.
The victim being old is here nor there; how should anybody rate a killing as less tragic because the victim was old?

The answer is, without any doubt at all, that a custodial sentence was fully justified.

[Yorick]

A person died.
It wasn't an accident, because the driver had been told it was no longer safe for him to drive and decided to ignore that. So it was a negligent and selfish decision for which somebody else bore the grave consequences.
A crime was committed, and the mandated punishment is custodial.
Being old does not excuse you from the appropriate punishment befitting your crime; justice must be blind.
The victim being old is here nor there; how should anybody rate a killing as less tragic because the victim was old?

The answer is, without any doubt at all, that a custodial sentence was fully justified.

Like the driver

[The Spin Doctor]

I've had conversations with people in our church about driving when diagnosed with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's etc... A few do actually give up their cars. one lady who has just turned 80 has an old Fiat, 40 years old it is, and she knows that when ULEZ hits it is a goner and she is not likely to get another car and will have to walk. She is looking for a shopping bag on wheels for her weekly shopping run or cadging a lift with friends who still drive, and that list is getting smaller.
o

I think that ^ is a truth far too often overlooked by our metropolitan governing elite. Public transport does not exist fir large swathes of the countryside, and modern electric cars are a pipedream. It is drive an old banger or walk. Uber does not exist, and if it did it would be too expensive.

It doesn't work for a lot of people in cities either. You can be a long walk from a tube or train station even in London and neither are very good if you're not going in and out of the centre, and getting buses often requires multiple changes. Lugging even a couple of days shopping around for a family isn't so easy particularly as many families have both parents at work. At least the trend to mega-supermarkets has reversed and there are far more local shops available than ten years ago.

[mangocrazy]

My Mum had to have her DL almost forcibly removed from her grasp after she had knocked a young lad off his motorbike on the estate on which she lived. It was a low speed accident and the lad was OK, but Mum was totally culpable and showed little or no remorse. She only gave up her licence after being harangued and threatened with prosecution by a solicitor for over 20 minutes. She tried to get sympathy off me but I was having none of it.

On the other side of the coin, my oldest friend (both in time served and in years) decided to give up his licence and sell his vehicle 2 or 3 years ago. He was in his early 70s when he did this and used to drive HGVs for a living. He thought he'd miss driving badly, but now seems to enjoy being ferried around by friends and relatives. His daughter is less enamoured of the arrangement (he can be a cantankerous sod), but does it with good grace.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Thing is...

Only one of my four grandparents had a driving licence and I'm only 38. None of said grandparents served in WW2. My MiL doesn't have a DL either. Owning a car and driving everywhere might be the norm now, but that's a pretty recent thing in the grand scheme of things.

Cars didn't appear overnight and they won't disappear overnight either.

[mangocrazy]

Thing is...

Only one of my four grandparents had a driving licence and I'm only 38. None of said grandparents served in WW2. My MiL doesn't have a DL either. Owning a car and driving everywhere might be the norm now, but that's a pretty recent thing in the grand scheme of things.

Cars didn't appear overnight and they won't disappear overnight either.

How many of them drive, though (or have ever driven)? My Dad (born in 1920, served in WW2) had a motorbike/motorbike and sidecar 'licence' from the War, but passed his 4-wheel test in the early 60s and got a 'real' driving Licence, as did Mum. I also started riding motorbikes in the 60s and provisional and full driving licences were a thing, as were driving tests, even if they were pretty rudimentary by today's standards.

[Mr. Dazzle]

AFAIK my maternal grandfather was the only one of them to ever get behind the wheel/bars of a powered vehicle.

[Dickyboy]

I got the garage to rather extensively condemn my dad's car before he'd give up driving, after he'd driven to Scotland and back from Hereford within 24hrs to "prove he was still safe to drive".

We plan on moving somewhere with facilities so don't need a car when we retire - not sure about giving up biking though