Driving Us Crazy

The first thing Peter Haugen noticed was that the dents in his mom's car were multiplying. Then the Osterville, Mass., software engineer learned that his mother, 85, had confused the brake and the gas pedal and ended up, unhurt, atop a stone wall. He pleaded with her to stop driving. He spoke to her doctor. He even persuaded her to see a geropsychologist.

Nothing worked. Like many older drivers, she clung to her license to preserve her mobility as well as her sense of independence and identity. But on July, 16, 2003, Haugen decided he had to do more. On that day, an 87-year-old driver made national headlines when he plowed into a Santa Monica, Calif., farmer's market, killing 10 people. "I told my sister," he recalls, "'We gotta get going on this. There but for the grace of God go we.'"

Enlisting the aid of their mother's doctor, her minister and the local police, Haugen and his sister persuaded their mom to get a driving assessment at the DriveWise program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She failed. Mom was off the road, and--who knows?--perhaps another fatal accident was averted.

Haugen's call was one of a flood received by DriveWise director Lissa Kapust and other driving-safety centers around the country following the Santa Monica horror. For years, experts on highway safety and aging had been crying, "The boomers are coming! The boomers are coming!" But until Santa Monica, government and foundations had been sluggish in responding to the scary statistics. In seven years, the oldest boomers will turn 65; by 2030, 1 out of 4 drivers will be 65 or older. Not all older drivers pose safety hazards, but people 75 and older have more fatal crashes than any other group except teenagers. And drivers who are cognitively impaired--about 25% of the 65-and-older group--are 7.5 times as likely as nonimpaired drivers to be at fault in a crash, exceeding the rate for even drunk drivers.

After the Santa Monica accident, legislators, state departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) and others began putting a premium on older-driver safety. The push is occurring on several fronts: research to identify which drivers need testing, development of more accurate assessment tools, a greater focus on driver remediation and the creation of specialized licensing for the elderly. In addition, states and social-services agencies are starting or bolstering programs to support older people who have stopped driving, offering counseling and alternate transportation options. Backing up all these efforts, officials are launching public education campaigns to encourage testing of older drivers and counter their often passionate resistance to giving up driving.

New Hampshire and Illinois are the only states that require age-based road tests (for those 75 and older). Most states are wrestling with how to identify at-risk drivers scientifically without the difficulty and expense of testing everyone past a certain age. Maryland has been at the leading edge of research to determine the age at which large-scale screening of drivers makes sense. Preliminary results, says Dr. Robert Raleigh, chief of the Maryland Medical Advisory Board, indicate that 75 is the age at which screening at license renewal becomes most effective.