Tens of thousands of Swedes are too ill to drive and should have their driving licences confiscated, the authority responsible for issuing licences has said.

Older drivers who couple classroom courses with behind-the-wheel training can significantly improve their driving performance, according to a report published in the latest issue of The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences (Vol. 62A, No. 10).

Drivers 65 and older are just one-third as likely as drivers 15 to 24 to cause auto accidents, and not much more likely than drivers 25 to 64 to cause accidents, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

In an editorial published in the April issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Malaz Boustani, M.D., M.P.H., of the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute, Inc. writes that assessing the safety of older drivers is not a responsibility that should reside with the primary care physician.