This is a cautionary tale. This time no one was hurt.
on Thursday night the 8th January 2026, shortly after 6 pm an 88-year-old driver in Wollerau was stopped at a railway crossing due to congestion. Shortly after, the rail barriers closed, so the driver could no longer drive his vehicle off the tracks in time. The driver made it to safety unharmed. Despite having initiated full braking, the locomotive driver could no longer prevent a frontal collision with the passenger car. Due to the collision, the car was torn several meters on the tracks and subsequently remained standing upright on a noise barrier wall. No one was hurt.
If in a queue of traffic, don’t cross a railway line until there is space the other side for your vehicle.
And if you screw up, or your car breakdown on the crossing (and you can’t drive it across using the starter motor), then get out and get across the barrier to safety.
People don’t realize they are driving a one-ton machine – but a very fragile one.
Shouldn’t the authorities request a driving test (on real conditions) every 10 years, regardless of age?
People start developing bad habits, and then you see things like that… or like this. ( I have seen this in Texas also, but, hey, over there it ices once every 10 years…)
true, true. I have several family members, still driving on their 90s… and refusing to give away their license. We only managed with one of them, as she had a light stroke, (after we talked privately to her GP!).
The others (with glaucoma, half deaf, macular degeneration, parkinson and what not) are still happily making everybody else’s life at risk
I’m sure it would have been possible to crash through a barrier - either reversing down the wrong side of the road where there would be no cars or overtaking the queue in front.
It’s quite bizarre here.
Once you hit 75 you have to get a medical exam and the doc has to send the report to the driving licence office.
Our neighbour did it just before Christmas and the doc send it off confirming that he needed glasses. He got a letter back saying that since his doc had stated he was no longer obliged to wear glasses for driving could he submit a new photo without glasses.
He was a bit baffled by this but he came to ask hubby to take his photo and showed us the forms.
Bizarrely even though he wears glasses all the time as he says he doesn’t see clearly without them because his vision is better than the minimum required for driving the requirement to wear glasses has been removed from his licence.
I guess his short sightedness got slightly better with age as the long sightedness kicked in.
It is quite worrying that it is perfectly legal to drive here with less than ideal visual capacity.
The last couple of times I had this exam I had to suffer a long diatribe from my doctor about he had no clue how to decide if I was fit to drive or not.
He said they get no instructions from the govt. on what are the decision criteria.
Consequently he is worried about his liability for approving people to drive who later have a major accident or similar.
At a minimum the test involves a medical history, physical examination, and specific tests like eyesight and blood pressure checks.
There is some sort of ambiguity (like a double negative) on the form doctors have to complete for the traffic office, as this has happened a number of times to people I know…
