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The story
A personal account reported by the money-focused outlet “THE GOLD ONLINE,” about a son who pressed his 73-year-old father to surrender his driver’s license, became a hot topic on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (“Anything Goes Live”) board. According to the story, the father resisted for six months, insisting “My eyes and ears are still sharp and my reflexes haven’t slowed down—don’t treat me like an old man,” but after being shown calculations of upkeep costs and hearing pleas from his grandchild, he eventually caved and voluntarily surrendered his license. On the thread, comments backing the son’s handling (“better than dragging someone else into an accident”) stood alongside pushback (“judging by age alone is harsh,” “everyone’s different”) and doubts about whether the cognitive function test given at license renewal actually works. Many also flagged inconsistencies in the article itself—like the detail that the father kept his Land Cruiser even after surrendering his license.
“If you end up causing an accident, it’ll be too late to fix. The upkeep costs aren’t exactly cheap either, so why not go ahead and turn in your license?”
When Toshinori made this suggestion, Saburo turned red with anger. “My eyes and ears are still sharp, and my reflexes haven’t slowed down one bit! Don’t treat me like an old man,” his father insisted. Toshinori wouldn’t budge either: “You can keep the car right where it is—just stop driving it.” But Saburo brushed this off: “What good is a car that never gets driven? A car’s only worth something if you can actually drive it.”
For the next six months, Toshinori kept up the persuasion every time he visited his parents’ house. He showed his father a breakdown of the upkeep costs, and got his grandchild to chip in too—”Grandpa, your driving worries me, please stop”—with the whole family working on him together. In the end, Saburo gave in, muttering “Fine, do whatever you want” as a parting shot, and went down to the police station to voluntarily surrender his license. Toshinori breathed a deep sigh of relief: “Now I don’t have to worry about him hurting someone else.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Seriously, this.
Every single person who's put someone else through hell thought they themselves were fine.
Can't tell from the article, but if his cognitive function really wasn't an issue, it's harsh to make him give it up on age alone.
You shouldn't just write someone off based on age alone.
Put a little more detail into it, come on.
Even just pedal mix-up prevention alone makes a huge difference.
No matter how capable you are, you're not allowed to get a license before age 18.
By the same logic, no matter how capable you are, once you're past 70 you shouldn't be allowed to drive anymore.
It's really that simple.
It's not like they can just move to the city.
A 73-year-old driving something that huge is pushing it, surely.
The people who can rationally judge 'my abilities have declined with age, I should surrender my license' are the ones who are actually fine.
It's the guys shouting 'I haven't declined at all! I'm not surrendering anything!' who are the dangerous ones—those are exactly the ones who should have their license taken away.
Yeah, the thing is the cognitive test at renewal time doesn't actually mean anything.
Guess a lifelong single person wouldn't get that.
But it was that very grandkid who told him to stop.
Well, it's fiction, so.
Not like the elderly-driver courses at driving schools, but a real test where failing means mandatory surrender.
Though give them a few retry chances.
Those tests go easy on old folks—if all you do is wobble a bit while driving, you'll pass with room to spare.
That scares me—feels like it's going to produce a fatality eventually.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The “voluntary surrender” system for elderly drivers’ licenses carries no legal force—family members or police cannot confiscate a license on the basis of age alone. Even under the revised Road Traffic Act of 2022, the mandatory practical driving test applies only to drivers 75 or older with a certain violation history; 73 itself is not, under current rules, an age at which surrender can be forced. The thread split between those praising the son’s decision as a sound family call to prevent an accident, and those pushing back with “don’t judge by age alone when everyone’s different”—with several commenters also questioning whether the cognitive function test given at license renewal actually measures real driving ability. Meanwhile, since the original piece is a personal-account article from THE GOLD ONLINE, an asset-management-focused outlet, and contains inconsistencies—such as the father keeping his large SUV even after surrendering his license—many replies suspected it was fiction or AI-generated; however, the article itself doesn’t clarify how it was actually written, so this can’t be confirmed.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “The Son Who Took the Car Away From His 73-Year-Old Father Who Wouldn’t Give Up His License—The 〈Hellscape〉 He Saw One Month After the Surrender.”
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