Should Senior Citizens Driving Skills Be Re-Tested?

Thursday, February 24th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Wednesday, a 92-year-old woman lost control of the car she was driving and crashed through a mid-town Tulsa drug store, killing one customer. The accident left many people wondering about elderly drivers. "I think they should be tested,â€ said Tulsa Bobetta White. â€œI think their eyesight should be tested. Their reflexes change after a certain age and you can't react as quickly." Teresa Taff, also of Tulsa, says after a certain age, elderly drivers ought to be re-tested to see how they can react in a situation.

However, older drivers aren't the only ones who lose control of their vehicles. A 14-year-old girl crashed into a house in Tulsa last summer killing a woman.

The American Automobile Association (A-A-A) says drivers 24-years-old and younger were involved in more than 43,000 accidents in 1998 in Oklahoma alone. Drivers 75-years-old and older were only involved in about 5,000 wrecks.

But the statistics still don't make difference to most people. "In the state of Oklahoma, we have no special policies for older drivers,â€ said tag agent Anne Jones. â€œAs long as they renew their drivers license every four years, they can continue to drive."

Oklahomans can even renew their license through the mail, never coming back for a road test or even an eye test. Chuck Mai with A-A-A says he'll propose a plan to legislators that would require everyone to be re-tested every two years. "We might even go every three years to make it palatable,â€ Mai said. â€œBut a vision test certainly at the least."
Mai says re-testing just older people would be discriminatory.