Mandatory driving tests should be put in place because a driving test can be a great way to gauge someone's driving abilities. In a driving test a DMV official can gauge and elder’s cognitive ability, motor functions and their sight as they drive. According to the Governors Highway Safety Administration, impairments in vision, cognitive ability, and motor function are the main cause of crashes in older drivers. These are common in older drivers because vision declines with age; cognition, which includes memory and attention, can be impacted by medical problems such as dementia and medication side effects; and motor function suffers as flexibility declines due to diseases such as arthritis. A test of cognitive ability is important because in …show more content…
These tests need to be made mandatory because further testing of an elderly drivers ability has been proven to save lives. According to University of Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins University research reported that in 1995, in the 38 states that mandated vision tests for license renewals at the time of study, drivers age 70 or older were involved in 17.2 fatal accidents per 100,000 drivers, but in states where testing was not required the ratio was 18.7 per 100,000 drivers. The difference seems small but it is considerable when the number of elderly drivers is projected to be at about 40 million by 2020. With that many elderly drivers, those who aren’t fit to drive could put many people, along with themselves at risk of injury or death. The rate of elderly drivers that aren’t fit to drive should be highest in states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming because those states currently have no restrictions on elderly drivers causing the rate of fatal elder crashes to be higher than it could be with proper