By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
A bill in the legislature, H.604, would require drivers age 65 and older to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and retake the driving test they took when they were 16.
“We license these people,” said Rep. Alison Clarkson, who has twice put a similar driving bill before the legislature. “We have responsibility for them. We should make sure that they are still competent to be driving.
“We are, I think, lazy as a state. We let families deal with it.”
Clarkson’s bill last year would have required drivers 75 and older pass a vision test and drivers 80 and older pass a road test.
“No one seems interested,” she said. “It’s been ignored.”
Woodstock Police Chief Robbie Blish called the bill a “waste of resources” and said it should be handled on a “case-by-case basis.”
“It’s sort of age discrimination in a sense,” Blish said.
The DMV expected it would need more money and more staff for such a law. The department retests drivers according to police recommendations.
“We don’t just do them automatically,” said Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles spokesperson Chauncey Liese. “We want to do effective work, when it’s necessary.”
Rep. Donald Turner of Milton proposed H.604 after a senior at Colchester High School was injured by a 79-year-old driver.
Nathan Hoffmann, 17, was was going out to dinner after a Thursday night football practice Sept. 17 when his motorcycle collided with the 79-year-old’s Chrysler. The accident left Hoffmann with a traumatic brain injury. He has a short temper now and loud noises give him a headache.
“I did absolutely nothing wrong. I took that as a motivation to look at what the law was,” the senior in high school said.
Turner sponsored the bill even though he knows it will be controversial and even though he doesn’t expect it will go anywhere in the House.
“It’s one of those bills that it’s important people hear these stories and these concerns are out there,” he said.
Turner shares concerns many elderly drivers share: The state is too rural and there is no public transportation system.
Gerry Fields, 87, of Pomfret, drives every day. She goes to doctor appointments in Ascutney and Hanover and goes to an exercise class at the Thompson Senior Center in Woodstock three mornings a week.
“It would be really a huge problem. We would have to find someone to drive us everywhere we wanted to go,” she said.
Fields said she doesn’t feel unsafe to drive.
“For those who aren’t having any trouble, I don’t know why they should be chosen,” she said.
At least 20 percent of Windsor County is 65 or over, 2015 census data shows. Seventeen percent of the state’s 626,562 population is 65 and older.
Statistics show the greatest number of accidents happen to the state’s youngest and oldest drivers.
The young are inexperienced and the old have slow reaction times.
Drivers above 70 years old increased 30 percent between 1997 and 2012, according to statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Drivers 70 and older travel fewer miles, the institute said. The institute also found drivers over 60 kill less pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists than drivers in the 30-59 age group.
Norwood Long, 81, drives to and from North Carolina every year.
“I drive everyday,” said the Pomfret resident. “If I happen not to pass the test it would be a real problem. I think we’re more dependent on cars than a lot of more urbanized places.”
Long is confident that he’d be able to pass his driving test and doesn’t think requiring everyone in his age group to retake it would be a bad idea.
“I think it’s like gun control,” Long said. “You really do need to get a handle on the population that is still capable and that which is not.”
Clarkson admits the state has challenges when it comes to transportation. “That’s no excuse, she said. “We can solve it thoughtfully.”
This article first appeared in the January 28, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.