Crashes involving elderly fall slightly; year-old Katie's law could see changes
12:00 AM CDT on Monday, September 1, 2008
Brian Whitley
In the year since Texas made it tougher for older drivers to hang on to their licenses, traffic accidents involving the elderly have seen a modest decline and backers of the new rules have weighed further restrictions.
As data about the effects of "Katie's Law" trickle in, the possibility of requiring more testing or adjusting the age cutoffs – and reigniting a charged debate over roadway rights – looms larger.
The law, named for a Dallas teen killed in an accident with an elderly driver, requires motorists age 79 and older to renew their licenses in person and undergo a vision test. Starting at age 85, drivers must renew every two years, instead of every six.
If office staffers observe shaking hands, trouble answering questions or other red flags, they can require a road test or ask for input from on-site medical examiners.
State Rep. Dan Branch, the Dallas legislator who co-sponsored the House bill, said he's waiting to see whether those measures are enough to reliably identify unsafe drivers. He said some effects of aging, such as reduced hearing and delayed reflexes, might be harder to spot.
"If [the law] isn't working well, you have to come back and say: 'Beyond the vision screen, do we need other tools? Do we need to be measuring other sensory areas besides vision?' " Mr. Branch said. "That's where this debate and discussion is going to go."
That debate rankles some seniors, who battled more stringent provisions included in draft versions of the legislation before endorsing the law, which Gov. Rick Perry signed in May 2007.
"If they push much harder, they're being totally unfair to seniors," said Carlos Higgins, chairman of the Texas Silver-Haired Legislature's legislative action committee. "I think most senior drivers are careful about when they drive and where they drive. They don't get out on the Katy Freeway at 5 p.m. and whiz around."
There are 483,730 drivers 79 and older in Texas, about 3 percent of the state's registered motorists.
After Katie's Law took effect, crashes involving those drivers declined slightly, according to preliminary figures from the state Department of Transportation.
Since Sept. 1, 2007, elderly drivers have been involved in 10,332 crashes, 96 of them fatal. Crash statistics since 2003 indicate that an average 12-month period includes 11,018 total crashes and 129 fatal accidents involving elderly drivers.
Despite those declines – 6 percent overall and 25 percent in fatal accidents – state officials caution that it's too early to draw conclusions about the law's effects. Many drivers are in the middle of their renewal period, so the law has yet to affect them.
Jean Barrar, an 88-year-old Dallas woman who drives every day to volunteer work, supports the law. She says she attends an AARP safety course every few years and says her peers often surprise her with their answers to questions in class – for instance, by saying drivers should stop and wait before merging onto a freeway, rather than easing into traffic.
"That tells me they shouldn't be driving," she said.
But Ms. Barrar, a driver since the 1930s, also exemplifies arguments against more restrictions. Some senior advocates say age-based legislation makes little sense because their demographic varies so widely in health and ability. They say personalized licenses with specific rules, such as prohibiting nighttime or interstate driving, are enough.
Ms. Barrar passed extensive cognitive and road tests before getting back on the road after suffering a serious head injury in 2006. She says she'll know when it's time to hang up the keys.
Most potentially unsafe senior drivers are referred to the state by family members or police, though Department of Public Safety officials say Katie's Law may have contributed to more seniors being tested or reviewed by its Medical Advisory Board.
Between Sept. 1, 2007, and Aug. 6, the department required 1,241 drivers age 79 or older to pass a road test as a result of safety concerns. Unfavorable reviews by the medical board led to 1,506 enforcement actions during that period.
Research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows seniors drive fewer miles than people in other age groups and are involved in relatively lower rates of police-reported crashes per capita.
But older drivers are involved in a relatively high number of crashes per mile. What's more, seniors will probably account for one out of every four American drivers by 2030, a considerable jump from the current tally of about one in seven.
"They are far and away the most dangerous drivers on the road" on a per-mile basis, said Chicago lawyer David Rosenfield, who advocated reforms like Katie's Law in a paper for The Elder Law Journal.
They also tend to be more fragile than other groups. An analysis of Texas traffic data from 1975-99 by AAA showed drivers age 75 and older are 2.38 times as likely to be impaired by illness or another physical problem when involved in an injury crash.
The current law is named after Katie Bolka, who died in June 2007 after a 90-year-old woman sped through a red light at Preston Road and Royal Lane and slammed into her driver's-side door.
Her father, Rick Bolka, and his wife, Johna, worked with Mr. Branch to develop the current rules. Mr. Bolka said Katie's Law still has room for improvement.
"We're not so presumptuous as to believe that by making a statute change, there isn't some tweaking that needs to be done along the way," he said.
But Mr. Higgins, a member of the Texas Silver-Haired Legislature, had a warning for those who might push to apply such restrictions to increasingly younger drivers.
"Whatever you do with the laws now, they're going to catch up to you someday," he said.