Chapter 1: What incident sparked the discussion about older drivers?
In June of last year, Angela Zudrow got the phone call that every parent dreads. It was from her husband, John.
He just said, Emmett's been hit by a car.
First, Zudrow didn't really grasp what was happening. The family lives in Green Lake, a small postcard-ready resort town in Wisconsin where kids ride their bikes all the time without a second thought.
He called back and he said, you need to get here. And I was like, um, really? Okay. Is it bad? He said, yeah, yeah, it's bad. I said, is he breathing? And John said, I don't want to lie to you.
12-year-old Emmett Zudrow was riding his bike on the sidewalk near the public library, one of his favorite places, when he was accidentally run over by a minivan driven by Jean Woolley. Woolley was 85 at the time. She told police in Green Lake that she had confused the brake and the gas pedals, as you can hear in this body cam footage of her statement released to NPR.
I was just pulling into this parking place, and I put the brake on, and we'll see you soon. Okay. And then I panicked and pushed it harder.
Woolley's lawyer called the crash a tragic accident, but declined to comment further, citing potential litigation. Woolley wasn't charged with the crime, though she did receive multiple citations and fines. There's no single national standard when it comes to older adults and driving. In a lot of states, there are no age-based testing requirements to stay on the road.
In Wisconsin, older drivers can go eight years without having to renew their license. Angela Zudrow is pushing to change that.
We're letting them just renew their driver's licenses without any checks on them. If you say you're fine, we believe you're fine. That needs to change.
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Chapter 2: What are the laws regarding older drivers in different states?
The research has shown people between 70 and 79 are actually pretty safe. They have really come down from crashes. Now, part of it's decreased risk, because they're not going to work every day. They self-restrict.
But if you compare older drivers to everyone else on the road, you get a different picture. Younger drivers are the most risky, by far. Teenagers, even people in their 20s, those are the riskiest drivers. Drivers from 30 to 80 are the safest. But when you get to 80 and above, those crash rates do start to climb again.
You mentioned before that some states have actually loosened, not tightened their restrictions.
How has that gone? There really is not a ton of evidence either way. But there is one study that came out last year from the University of Iowa College of Public Health. I talked to the lead author, Kara Haman, and she wondered how those changes were affecting road safety. So she looked at some data and what she found troubled her.
We are seeing increases in injury rates and crash rates with some of these policies loosening. Maybe not across all age groups, but among the ages that probably were most worried about, you know, among the older drivers. That's what we found.
Hammond's research looked at two decades of data from 13 states, more than 19 million drivers who were involved in crashes. Seven of those states loosened their relicensing policies during that time. And in those states, the study found an increase in crash rates among drivers between 65 and 74.
Now, I should also add, Haman is very sympathetic to older adults who do not have good alternatives to driving. She says we really need to think of better ways for them to get around and not just about taking away their mobility.
At the same time as we're talking about all of this, transportation and technology are changing so quickly. We are seeing this push towards self-driving cars as a commonplace reality. Curious what you think that could change about all of this for older drivers.
In some ways, changing technology in our cars is already making a difference. There are more older drivers on the road. They're driving more miles. And yet we are seeing crash rates decline. In part, that could be because of the safety features in our cars that are getting better.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do families face when discussing driving with elderly relatives?
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