We all love having the freedom to be able to get in our cars and go wherever we want, whenever we want. This was the privilege we couldn’t wait for when we were 16. We were car-crazy at that age, but we never thought of the future. Now that we have grown up, our view of driving has changed a little. We look at our parents and grandparents and ask ourselves the question, "must we take their license away to keep them and others safe?"

It scares us to hear about an elderly driver who plows through a crowd of innocent victims. It could happen anywhere in any city. We read about these tragic situations in the headlines or hear about them on TV, but what can we do to help our elders avoid them?

At the American Gerontological Society’s annual meeting and around the country, experts are trying to figure out how to get unsafe older drivers off the road without unfairly penalizing those who drive well. Should we take drivers licenses away at a certain age? Here are some thoughts to consider: if we take driver's licenses away from the elderly at a given age, many argue that the elderly have few options to transport themselves to the doctor's office, drug store, and shopping. There are pros and cons to argue, each case for each individual needs to be evaluated. Keep in mind that any solution based solely on age will not prevent safety issues. How can we address the real source of the problem?

Some facts should be known before we go any farther. Teens have the highest accident rates, and elders have the second highest. These two driver groups don't have "age" in common. What they do have in common is that most don’t pay as much attention as they should at the wheel.

Let's consider teens first. We put them behind the wheel of motorized machines capable of moving far above the legal speed limit. Limited experience behind the wheel, while not a crime, can easily result in poor judgment and over-confidence, leading to a higher risk of an accident. There are many well-qualified teen drivers, but we can’t get the incompetent ones off the road. It is possible, however to help teens be safer on the road by offering additional education through outside classes or training. There are many local and national driving programs that are available at no charge, such as www.driversedge.org; check the Internet or your local paper for more details.

Many elder drivers, like some teens, are dangerous behind the wheel. One reason is that, when today's elders learned to drive, there were no high-performance automobiles, power brakes, power steering, distracting cell phones and CD players, highway clover leafs, and 70 mile-per-hour speed limits, to name just a few differences. Sixty-five years ago, when today's 80-year-olds formed their driving habits, cars didn’t have current automotive conveniences and safety technologies.

Just as transportation and highways have become modernized, the elderly haven’t updated their knowledge at the same speed. Aging also causes changes in our bodies that can change and affect our driving skills.

Here are a few reasons that our skills decrease:

1. As we age, our vision can decrease. An 80 year old needs three times more light to see as well as a 20 year old. Included in vision issues is the fact that glare increasingly becomes an obstacle for older drivers over time. Reflected sunlight and nighttime headlights of other cars create glare.
2. Reaction time increases during unexpected events (e.g., in response to a child dodging into traffic). Slow reactions also include hand-to-eye coordination and the delay it will take to hit the brakes or steer to avoid an accident.
3. Perception (what color is the traffic light), judgment (deciding how to react, go, or stop), and executing an appropriate action (step on the gas or the brake) can all become problematic as we age.
4. Range of vision decreases as adults become more dependent on eyeglasses. Bi-focals and tri-focals don't allow for good peripheral vision. These types of lenses can make focusing and re-focusing from near to far and back again require more time. These few seconds can cause an accident.
5. Hearing loss can cause the inability to respond to sounds, or can cause older drivers to become startled or frightened. Background noise, such as traffic sounds, environmental distractions, or the radio, blends with conversation, alerts, or warnings given from passengers.

Help is available for these drivers to compensate for these age-related changes. That's why many late-life drivers operate vehicles safely and without incident. Thus, revoking a driver's license based on age alone is age discrimination; instead, the determination must be made on an individual basis.

The only thing others can change for older drivers is to improve driver competence and to provide transportation alternatives for those beyond help. Some things that may help in solving these problems are to suggest the following:

• Drive during the day only, avoiding rush-hour traffic and highways.
• Take advantage of mass-transit discounts, service vans, carpools to shopping, volunteer companion drivers, and getting help from relatives.
• Safe-driving classes for the elderly are held at many senior centers, and some can result in insurance-cost reductions.

The bottom line is that we need to decide together when it’s time to take away someone's license. As the one who went to the DMV with my grandmother, it was a bittersweet day, but in the end she thanked me. It was still my responsibility to make sure she had transportation available. Think about all the variables, and do what’s best and safest for you, your family, and the other drivers on the road.

Sources for more information:

• www.seniordrivers.org
• www.safeyoungdrivers.com
• www.driversedge.org