As Attitudes on Older Drivers Change, Florida Starts Testing
Tamper with an older person’s liberty to drive, the Florida dictum goes, and you’re courting political suicide. But on Friday, motor vehicle offices throughout the state began enforcing a new requirement for seniors’ driver’s licenses.
Under a new law, championed by a legislator who lost a daughter in a car accident and backed by a powerful senior lobby, Floridians 80 years and older must have their eyes examined when they renew their licenses. Under the old rule, like younger drivers, they could have gone as long 18 years without a vision check.
Democratic state Rep. Irving L. Slosberg of Boca Raton, the measure’s sponsor, calls it the “if you can’t see, you can’t drive law,” and says it will help make the roads safer. Already, 726,000 people 80 and older possess a Florida license, and statistics show they are involved in more than their fair share of accidents.
According to the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, drivers 75 and older made up fewer than 4% of Florida motorists in 2002 but accounted for more than 10% of the drivers killed.
Only a minority of states, California included, impose special requirements on the elderly when it comes to driving, according to Justin McNaull, national spokesman for the American Automobile Assn. In Utah, for instance, motorists older than 65 must take vision tests when they renew their license.
Like with the tightening of driving laws for teens that occurred in the 1990s, however, the United States may have reached a juncture where special requirements for seniors are seen as necessary or desirable, McNaull said. And vision, he said, is one of the easiest things to test.
“You look at the aging going on, the changing demographics in the population, and you realize there are going to be more older drivers on the road in the decades to come,” the AAA spokesman said. The special problems those drivers may present, he said, were brought to the nation’s attention when an 86-year-old man plowed his Buick through a farmers market in Santa Monica in July, killing 10 people and injuring 63.
“In different parts of the country, there have been crashes that raised awareness, but the California crash drew attention at a national level that the issue hasn’t seen,” McNaull said. “It will be interesting to see this month when 36 state legislatures go into session how they respond.”
As long ago as the 1980s, you could see bumper stickers in Florida that demanded Grandma’s car keys be confiscated to protect other drivers and pedestrians. But it probably was a change in position by the AARP, a potent political force with 2.6 million Florida members, that enabled the new law to pass.
“In Florida, when you tell some people they can no longer drive, in some ways you may be literally giving them a death sentence,” said AARP state affairs coordinator Lyn Bodiford. “They have no way to get prescriptions or groceries. They become prisoners in their own homes.”
Her organization endorsed the new law, Bodiford said, because of a clause that establishes an advisory council that will study how degenerative processes affect a motorist’s vision, mobility, cognitive function and reaction time and how skills training, physical therapy or a change in driving practices might enable people to keep driving longer. The Florida At-Risk Driver Council is also supposed to recommend alternative modes of transportation for seniors who can no longer safely drive.
“Baby boomers have grown up driving,” Bodiford said. “We have to look at ways we can retain that independence.”
Slosberg, who says he represents more seniors than anyone else in the state Legislature’s lower chamber, agreed. His South Florida district is home to sprawling retirement complexes that are the real-life counterparts of Del Boca Vista, the apocryphal residence of Jerry’s parents on the sitcom “Seinfeld.”
The lawmaker estimates that 95% of seniors will pass the vision test, which requires corrected vision of at least 20/40 in one eye. The test can be administered by a motorist’s doctor or optometrist or by an employee of the driver’s license office.
But for those who fail, “we just can’t say, ‘Bye-bye, Charlie, see you later.’ We have to take care of them,” Slosberg said. He has filed another bill that would raise an estimated $15 million to help fund transportation for seniors by using fines paid by motorists caught running red lights.
Slosberg, a former businessman, got involved in politics only after a road tragedy struck his family. His 14-year-old daughter Dori was killed in 1996 when a Honda Civic driven by a 19-year-old man at 100 mph struck an oncoming car. The enduring grief -- “I’m under a life sentence,” Slosberg said -- has made him one of Florida’s most prominent activists for driving safety.
“I’m not picking on seniors alone. I don’t want any parent or loved one to have to go through what I’ve gone through,” he said. Slosberg has also sponsored a proposed law requiring police to inform a young driver’s parents if their child is stopped or cited for a traffic violation.
In a legislative district where there are many older voters, the new vision test requirement seemed at first like “political suicide,” Slosberg said. But he met with more than 2,000 constituents, he said, and found 95% of seniors supported it.
“Their vision is fine,” Slosberg said. “But they know that some of their neighbors can’t see, and that they are out on the road.”
In California, a regulation has been in place for more than 10 years that does not permit drivers 70 years old or older to renew their license by mail.
“They have to physically come into a Department of Motor Vehicles office,” said department spokesman Steve Haskins in Sacramento. “There, they are given a vision test as well as a written test.”
A doctor or family member concerned about the skills of a motorist of any age also can request that the driver be summoned for an interview that may include a driving test, Haskins said.
