Should We Retest Licensed Drivers Periodically?

Although some driving skills can deteriorate with age, experienced drivers tend to be the safest drivers. To an extent. Learn when and how experts think drivers should be retested in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here. If you drive a car, or
sometimes take cabs or lifts, or have ever been around cars,
you've likely had at least a few frustrating or scary
experiences with really bad drivers. You know, erratic merging or
u turns, or casual disrespect for stop signs, speed limits

(00:25):
or pedestrian right of way, or perhaps not disrespect but ignorance.
Of study conducted by GMAC Insurance, nearly one in five
drivers weren't able to pass a written test of basic
driving knowledge, the sort that license applicants take. But even
though most people passed, there were some glaring gaps in
critical areas. Of those tested, for example, couldn't name the

(00:48):
correct thing to do when approaching a yellow traffic light,
and only one in four knew how to calculate the
safe distance for following a vehicle. And see the article
version of this story at how stuff works dot com
if you want to quiz yourself or acquiring experienced motorists
to regularly demonstrate their competence isn't something that's ever been
conducted on a widespread basis in the US, where some
states didn't even require novice drivers to pass a road

(01:10):
test until the nineteen fifties. Only one state, Illinois, has
a law mandating road skills tests for licensed renewals, and
that's only for motorists who have reached age seventy five.
New Hampshire once had a similar age related testing requirement,
but repealed it. In Pennsylvania randomly selects a small sample
of the states forty five and older drivers and requires

(01:30):
them to undergo additional medical and vision exams. Based on
those results, they might have to take a driving test
as well. Additionally, a handful of other states Iowa, Missouri, Michigan,
and California, allow officials to selectively require road tests for
license holders whom they have reason to believe might be unsafe.
We spoke via email with Andrea Henry, director of Strategic

(01:52):
Communications and Policy for the Iowa Department of Transportation. She
explained that in her state, quote drivers with valid licenses
maybe to demonstrate their driving ability prior to renewal due
to changes in their health. This includes physical and mobility conditions,
as well as produced vision and cognitive issues. While data
on how many retests are conducted wasn't available, most of

(02:14):
those drivers end up getting renewals anyway, though many have
restricted privileges such as a lower personal speed limit or
daytime driving. Only one obvious problem with regularly retesting experience drivers,
who numbered around two hundred and ten million in two
thousand nine, the most recent year for which Federal Highway
Administration data was available, is that they'd have to get

(02:34):
in line with all of those first time applicants. That
would create even longer lines of testing stations that already
have their hands full coping with nervous adolescents struggling to
perform complex maneuvers like the dreaded reverse two point turnabout
without hitting those little yellow cones. A lot of those
youthful license applicants end up coming back for retests themselves.
As of twenty eleven, in California, for example, forty two

(02:57):
point seven percent of applicants flunked the knowledge test a
bombed out on the skills test. The worst knowledge test
performance was in Missouri, with a sixty one point four
percent failure rate, while mains would be motorists did the
worst in driving skills with not making the grade. In
the US generally has driving tests that are a lot
easier than the ones used by the rest of the world.

(03:18):
In the Canadian province of British Columbia, for example, would
be drivers have to undergo forty five minutes of testing
on several different types of road, and also must verbally
describe what specific road hazards are immediately beside their vehicles,
one block ahead and also behind them to test their awareness.
There isn't a lot of evidence that additional testing over
the years necessarily would improve safety on the roads, As

(03:42):
the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains, studies have yielded
conflicting results on the question of whether age restrictions reduced
the rate of crashes. In Illinois, they did, but in
New Hampshire they didn't. The rate of injury causing crashes
per one hundred million miles driven actually is highest among
teenage drivers, and then decrease and levels out for decades
before starting to rise again slightly among people in their

(04:04):
seventies and eighties. That's not the pattern that you would
see if many people saw their driving skills or knowledge
deteriorate significantly in middle age. We also spoke by email
with Jake Nelson and Triple As, Director of Traffic Safety
Advocacy and research, he said. Retesting where if you fail
the test, you lose the license, has been shown to
have zero safety impact on the drivers involved, and it

(04:27):
has been shown to reduce mobility by way of drivers
voluntarily giving up their licenses due to fear of getting
them taken away rather than any legitimate concerns about their driving.
There's no justification through data and research for testing or
screening at a certain age one. Gary Biller, president of
the National Motorists Association, which is a nationwide advocacy group,
is similarly skeptical about the value of retesting experienced drivers,

(04:51):
he said via email. Safety statistics consistently show that the
accident rates of drivers seventy years of age and older
are not much different than those in the thirty five
to six nine year age group. By contrast, drivers younger
than thirty five are at the highest risk of accident.
That indicates a couple of things. One is that experience
behind the wheel is one of the most important factors
for safe driving. Another is its state requirements for the

(05:13):
renewal of driver's licenses are reasonable. Those requirements vary state
by state, but generally include more frequent re licensing and
vision tests. Once driver reaches sixty, seventy or seventy five
years of age. But Billard does think there could be
value in allowing officials the option of re examining certain
potentially problematic drivers. He said there should be an objective

(05:36):
process through which the licensing agency could be petitioned to
do an evaluation of a given license holder based on
firsthand knowledge of family members, a law enforcement agency, or
the courts. In fairness, there should also be an appeal
process for the person who is in jeopardy of losing
his or her license or having it restricted. That approach
might offer some protection against the most clearly impaired potentially

(05:57):
dangerous drivers out there, but as for the driver who
violate the rules because they think they can get away
with it, you're probably just going to have to continue
to be wary of them. Today's episode written by Patrick
Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Radios
How Stuff Works from one on this and lots of
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(06:19):
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