At 99, He Still Manages to Travel in the Fast Lane : Seniors: Drivers in John Chapman’s bracket are maligned, but have fewer accidents than the young. And he aced his recent DMV test.

Let’s just say John H. Chapman deserves the very senior citizen discount on his car insurance.

You see, this 99-year-old former mechanic is not only of sound mind and body, he still drives.

And one of his pet peeves: Older people who drive too slowly for their own--and everybody else’s--good.

“You get on the freeway and there’s a slow mover, nine times out of 10 you look over and it’s an old gray-hair. I say, if you can’t keep up with the flow of traffic, well then, maybe you ought not be on the road.”

Then there’s cruise control: “Don’t trust it.”

Metered on-ramps: “Do they do any good? You wait 15, 16 seconds, and when you get on the freeway it’s still congested.”

And factory-installed cassette decks: “I guess you’re supposed to put records in there.”

Well, actually, it’s for tapes, but such innovations were hardly de rigueur when Chapman first hit the road in 1910.

Blessed with a ready wit and vigor to spare, Chapman recently walked into a Department of Motor Vehicles building in Laguna Hills, aced a driving test and got a new license. It authorizes him to be driving past the age of 100, which he will reach next February, and makes him one of the oldest registered drivers in the state.

“That’s all I want,” said the man who was born the year before actor-comedian George Burns, everybody’s favorite senior citizen, “to be able to say I drove at 100.

“That’s an accomplishment.”

Actually, as of July, 1993, dozens of Californians over the age of 99 had been issued driver’s licenses--although Chapman may be the only one of them who still uses the fast lane. And while there’s a widespread perception that Chapman and his fellow nonagenarians and centenarians are menaces on the road, it’s not entirely deserved, or true.

“There’s a lot of age-ism going around,” state Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Evan Nossoff said.

Older drivers actually get in fewer accidents each year than very young drivers, according to the DMV.

For every 100 drivers 85 and over, an average of 4.8 are involved in accidents each year. By comparison, for every 100 drivers 16 to 19 years old, 9.4 are in accidents in a year.

Drivers of ages 45 through 84 have the fewest accidents.

While DMV statistics show that drivers over the age of 85 are involved in more serious accidents per mile than other age groups, it’s roughly equivalent to the danger posed by younger drivers--4.5 accidents per one million miles for drivers 16 to 19, compared to 5.5 accidents per million miles for drivers 85 and up.

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Basically, said the DMV’s Nossoff, if people over 70 were to be barred from driving because of the increased danger they posed, “we’d have to--on the same grounds--take licenses away from men under the age of 24 and women under the age of 20.”

Because of impaired vision and duller reflexes, older drivers do tend to drive slower and make ill-advised turns and lane changes. But statistics show time and again that the most dangerous violation is speeding, and older drivers, as a group, aren’t guilty of that anywhere near as often as their younger counterparts.

Overall, three of every 100 drivers 85 and over are ticketed each year--the lowest number in any age group, according to the DMV. By comparison, 42 of every 100 drivers in the 20 to 24 age group are ticketed each year. Not surprisingly, the highest number of tickets--47 each year--involves the 16-to-19 group.

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“What it is,” Nossoff said, “is that people, as they get older, are annoying to be on the road with, but they’re not more dangerous.”

As further proof, he offers:

Among the 34 oldest drivers in the state--an elite group that includes a 104-year-old man and probably will soon include Chapman--there have been two accidents in the last three years, resulting in injuries to two people, “although,” Nossoff said, “I can’t guarantee all 34 of those people are still alive.”

“The best indicator of a person’s driving ability is the driving record, not the ability to pass tests or age.” Nossoff said. Which means plucking a license from someone like Chapman isn’t exactly just, he said.

“Who are we to mess with Mother Nature and survival of the fittest?”

Chapman, who said his only health problem is having too much potassium (“and I’m not sure that’s a problem,” he said), actually serves as a perfect example of why some older drivers are safer bets than younger ones: They’re experienced, they drive less and they stay out of trouble.

The year Chapman started driving, George V ascended the British throne. Congress passed the Mann Act, which prohibited transportation of women across state lines “for immoral purposes.” And Madam Curie published her “Treatise on Radiography.”

In three years Chapman has logged only 4,800 miles on his glossy white Saturn, which he washes himself. (“Why not? I’ve got nothing but time,” he said.)

And when it comes to wrongs committed against him by other drivers, “mostly young fellas,” he subscribes to the turn-the-other-cheek school of thought, a school that few Southern California drivers have attended, he notes.

On a recent day, he padded out of his Irvine townhome, ascended a half-flight of stairs and climbed into his car with the dexterity of a man half his age, shortly before darting off to see the “tax man.”

As he chugs down the San Diego Freeway he’s no speed demon, but he doesn’t mind pushing it to 60, even 65, to keep up with the flow of traffic. In fact, he thinks the speed limit should be increased. “Cars today are . . . made to go faster,” he said.

Of the older-drivers-aren’t-safe debate, he says, “A lot of elderly people do go too slow. But it depends on the physical makeup of the person. I don’t think I’m any hazard to other drivers, but then again I don’t necessarily go slow either.”

Of the thousands of miles of roads he’s driven, what’s his favorite stretch? “The 17-Mile Drive” on the Monterey Peninsula.

His worst driving experience? As a young man in Los Angeles, he was once struck by a street car equipped with a cowcatcher and carried half a mile.

The worst car he ever owned? A Hupmobile, produced by the defunct Hupp Motor Car Co.

Best car? An Oldsmobile, but he admits to being partial because he worked for the company for years.

The next car he’d like to buy? “I’d like to have a new car, but it’d be foolish to buy one now.

“I am close to 100, you know.”