When you reach 75 (it was 70 until a few years ago) you are obliged to prove you are still safe to drive and keep your licence. This works as follows:
The street traffic office send a letter a few weeks around your 75th birthday. The letter explains that you have a couple of months to respond, either by handing in your licence in the envelope provided with the letter (not stamp affixed) or get your doctor to test you.
The letter contains a code number, which your doctor can send electronically to the street traffic office after the consultation.
Eye test is very rudimentary. Just indicating whether a squared âWâ is facing up, down left or right. With glasses and without, covering one eye each time. I wear glasses - multifocal for reading and distance and passed without glasses. Otherwise a âmust wear glasses to driveâ code is added to your licence. A new licence would be issued and charged for.
The rest incudes touching you nose with your eyes closed. Checking peripheral vision. Following the doctorâs finger with your head still. Walking a couple of metres in a straight line without falling over. Finally the doctor checks to see if you heart is still beating.
I was surprised there was no reaction test al all.
Within 48 hours I received a letter from the street traffic office saying I was good for another 2 years - and a bill for CHF100.- from my doctor, which the health insurance wonât help withâŚ
Iâve dug this one up again as my doctorâs practice and the Zurich Strassenverkehrsamt (Street Traffic Office) do not see eye to eye.
Twice my other half who as worn glasses since age 12 has been advised after the rudimentary eye test at our docâs (CHF120,- if you please) that she must pay CHF20- to have her driving licence updated to show âno glasses requiredâ. She canât see a thing beyond 2 metres without them.
Now they have written to me, who passed the simple eye test, advising that I must pay and have âglasses or contact lensesâ added to my license.
I actually have 20/20 vision after cataract lens replacement surgery and have no glasses at all.
The practice say they filled in the form correctly and the street traffic office agrees to differâŚ
With age my vision ability changed, glasses suddenly are way off, but I stopped wearing them at some point (wasnât driving at that time). I donât drive regularly so I just use 0 glasses behind the wheel
my in-laws kept on driving up to their 90s,âŚSome five years back, I had already refused to get into their car if I wouldnât drive it.
the children asked their house doctor to revoke their license,⌠well, it was not possible. The DOCTOR said ⌠âthey passed the âtestâ, and they only go shopping with the car, and to church â just a couple of kilometers within the village, you cannot remove their freedomâ. SO IRRESPONSIBLE.
After they suffered major health problems (a stroke, and some other cardiac serious events), a full test was required by the doctor. And then, on the â controlâ part of the test (a computer driving simulation with cars around them), which measures attention, reaction time and coordination, both of them crashed their computer cars within seconds.
It was a real relief!
The optician has no part to play in these tests, itâs all done by one of the approved doctors.
My husband had a similar thing to the OP.
His doc filled out the forms and stated that he needed glasses for driving based on his eye test.
Because his vision was technically better than the minimum requirement for the drivers licence he got a letter from them requesting he upload a new photo without his glasses and stating that they would remove the requirement to wear glasses from his licence. He received a new licence in the post a few days later but wasnât charged for it.
The scary thing is he canât really see clearly without his glasses and can barely read road signs unless they are really near so heâd be dangerous if he drove without them. The system here seems totally bonkers to me.
back in the days when I was exchanging my license for a Swiss one, the optometrist told me that in EU the rules are more lenient than in Switzerland thatâs why I suddenly got a ârequire glassesâ code on the plastic. I think it was something like 0.5 approved in EU, but only 0.3 approved in Switzerland (whatever these numbers means, funny just asking AI it turns out the Swiss rules are more lenient, as I have had one eye always perfect). I donât know, maybe I should indeed remove the silly code from my license.