Even elderly are split on age-mandated tests
DRIVING: Statistics show seniors are safer than teens, but critics claim they’re hazards.
By Josh Grossberg and Eddie North-Hager
DAILY BREEZE
Roy Thorne thinks he’s a good driver. After all, it’s been nearly 50 years since the retired toolmaker last
received a traffic ticket. So, it came as little
surprise Thursday when the
“There’s an old 65 and a young 65,” Thorne said. “I’m a young 81.”
Thorne said he probably had to take the driver’s test because he “has one good eye and one bad.” He didn’t mind the inconvenience.
Before Wednesday, 86-year-old George Russell Weller was considered a good driver as well. Weller had a clean record with no accidents and no violations, said Steve Haskins, a Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman.
After Weller’s car plowed through a farmers market in
Direnfeld supports mandatory testing for seniors that goes beyond answering multiple-choice questions. “I think it’s wholly inadequate,” he said. “You may be able to sit down and know the rules of the road, but that’s different from knowing you have the physical and cognitive abilities you need to drive a car. We as a society have to adopt rules for the safety of our citizenry.”
When Weller renewed his license in person in November 2000, as required by state law for drivers over 70, he passed a vision test and a written test, but wasn’t asked to take a road test. “Unless there is any noticeable problem, such as confusion or not understanding questions, you have to give a license,” Haskins said. “The DMV is forbidden to require a driver’s test on age alone.”
A 1999 bill by then-state Sen. Tom Hayden would have required periodic behind-the-wheel tests for people older than 75, but after senior citizen groups lobbied heavily against it, a watered-down version of the bill passed that made no mention of age.
Instead, the law established a minimum vision driving requirement and allowed DMV officials to require a behind-the-wheel test based on a referral from a relative, law enforcement or a physician. Last year 68,492 people took a road test because of a referral. On Thursday, Hayden blasted the law. “The bill we proposed . . . might have prevented the tragedy,” he said. “Bureaucratic opposition and claims of age discrimination ground it up into the sausage of compromise. The only answer is mandatory testing behind the wheel at whatever age the Legislature thinks it should start. I thought 75. This gentleman was 86 and he just got renewed.”
Assemblyman George Nakano, D-Torrance, who served on the Transportation Committee when Hayden’s bill was proposed, refused to answer questions Thursday about the committee’s decision to gut its toughest restrictions. At the time, he called the bill discriminatory.
“I know this tragedy brings up the issue of more frequent examination of senior drivers, a subject that the Legislature has looked at in the past,” Nakano said in a statement Thursday. “These discussions always seem to take place after an accident like this, but each case is different and should be treated as such. We should let the investigation run its course and find out all of the facts before we react.”
State Sen. Betty Karnette, who was head of the
Senate’s Transportation Committee, strongly supported Hayden’s bill, even
though she is in her 70s. “Everybody knows Tom isn’t the kind of person who
wants to take freedom away from anybody,” said Karnette,
The AARP said mandatory driving tests are not the answer.
“We support real functional testing of all drivers regardless of age,” said
AARP spokesman
While acknowledging that elderly drivers can have slower reflexes, Beach said they can compensate by being more alert.
He noted that his organization offers a driving safety course for seniors. “We’re teaching them to use their intelligence and experience,” he said.
While younger people obviously have faster reflexes, they have other attributes that work against them. “You don’t often see a 70-year-old trying to change a CD and trying to open a Payday bar,” he said.
The state’s insurance companies agree. The Insurance Information Network of California also is against mandatory road tests, and a spokesman for the network said that when the elderly get into accidents, they typically injure only themselves. “What we saw yesterday is an anomaly,” spokesman Pete Moraga said. “Yes, they do have more accidents after a certain period, but it’s not more than teen drivers. They still pose the higher risk.”
If older drivers die more in accidents, it’s
because they’re more frail, not because they’re more dangerous,
“You can’t say if you’re 75, you need to be tested every year,” he said.
“There has to be a middle ground. You have to look at it scientific with lots
of research.” At the
“Accidents can happen anywhere, even with young people,” Stoddard said. “Weller could have lost his mind or had a stroke. We don’t know. When I get to where I think I should stop, I will. I don’t want to give it up.”
Jerry Stoddard, who was eating lunch with his father, agreed.
“What happened yesterday is an anomaly,” said Jerry, 57, a retired author
who lives in
The billiards club at the
“We never drive fast,” said Harry Masai, 78, a
retired machinist who lives in
In a phone interview, Wayne Marsee said it would be much easier for seniors to give up driving rights if better public transportation was available.
His father, the former longtime El Camino College president who died in 2002, stayed behind the wheel to provide for his family. Now his 85-year-old mother uses a city-sponsored taxi service that is cheap but not dependable. “My father had Alzheimer’s and drove two or three years beyond what he should have,” Marsee said. “Part of the reason was there is no reliable alternative to use if you have to go to the doctor.”
Contact:
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20 Suter Crescent,
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L9H 6R5
(905) 628-4847
garydi@sympatico.ca
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