Elderly should be road tested

Breeze Perspectives

A yarn bow desperately clung to a few gray curls as the old woman squinted over the steering wheel and pressed her red-toed shoe on the accelerator, rocketing through the red light.

"What are you doing?" screamed my aunt.

"Oh, don’t worry! It’s all right on red!" reassured my nanni.

Discomforting as this scenario is, it really occurred — my 92-year-old-great-grandmother interpreted "a right on red" to mean that it was fine to fly through any given hue at any given time. Individuals should not be able to go from 16 years of age until the potential end of their driving career without having their eyesight, physical reflexes and mental alacrity retested in a road exam.

Other certifications are tested for annually — or at least more than once — that are of equal or less importance than a driver’s license. To maintain a CPR certification, an individual must be tested every three years. A written assessment for driving may be administered every 10 years or so, but the road portion is never retested based purely on the age of an individual. Surely there are more deaths due to on-the-road collisions than there are from drowning. USA Today reported that, "the number of fatal crashes in which older drivers are involved is increasing, reported the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. As the numbers surge, elderly driving deaths will rival drunken driving as the nation’s top road threat." Elderly citizens often do not know when they should stop driving, and will not be told unless they encounter numerous accidents or become physically disabled.

Initially, a test is administered because driving is a privilege, not a right. There is not a single part of the Constitution or Bill of Rights where it mentions that everyone and anyone should be able to drive. With privilege comes responsibility, and a 99-year-old woman or man with failing eyesight or an impairing disease should know that it is time to take the bus. Alzheimer’s disease also can impair elderly drivers before they even realize the loss of their cognitive abilities. According to Dr. Allen Dobb of Loyola University, "Thirty to 50 percent of dementia patients who drive have a crash within a few years of diagnosis. Eighty percent of those diagnosed continue to drive, and 20 percent have at least one more crash." A senior citizen should not be regarded as an unworthy candidate to drive, but after an extended period of time, a person should be retested for their license. Even gambling has its limits, and the roads need to be safe for generations to come. I am an 18-year-old college student who would like to live long enough to blow out the candles on her 99th birthday cake.

Carolyn Telesco is a freshman psychology major.