Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. If you drive a car, or
Speaker 1: sometimes take cabs or lifts, or have ever been around cars,
Speaker 1: you've likely had at least a few frustrating or scary
Speaker 1: experiences with really bad drivers. You know, erratic merging or
Speaker 1: u turns, or casual disrespect for stop signs, speed limits
Speaker 1: or pedestrian right of way, or perhaps not disrespect but ignorance.
Speaker 1: Of study conducted by GMAC Insurance, nearly one in five
Speaker 1: drivers weren't able to pass a written test of basic
Speaker 1: driving knowledge, the sort that license applicants take. But even
Speaker 1: though most people passed, there were some glaring gaps in
Speaker 1: critical areas. Of those tested, for example, couldn't name the
Speaker 1: correct thing to do when approaching a yellow traffic light,
Speaker 1: and only one in four knew how to calculate the
Speaker 1: safe distance for following a vehicle. And see the article
Speaker 1: version of this story at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: if you want to quiz yourself or acquiring experienced motorists
Speaker 1: to regularly demonstrate their competence isn't something that's ever been
Speaker 1: conducted on a widespread basis in the US, where some
Speaker 1: states didn't even require novice drivers to pass a road
Speaker 1: test until the nineteen fifties. Only one state, Illinois, has
Speaker 1: a law mandating road skills tests for licensed renewals, and
Speaker 1: that's only for motorists who have reached age seventy five.
Speaker 1: New Hampshire once had a similar age related testing requirement,
Speaker 1: but repealed it. In Pennsylvania randomly selects a small sample
Speaker 1: of the states forty five and older drivers and requires
Speaker 1: them to undergo additional medical and vision exams. Based on
Speaker 1: those results, they might have to take a driving test
Speaker 1: as well. Additionally, a handful of other states Iowa, Missouri, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and California, allow officials to selectively require road tests for
Speaker 1: license holders whom they have reason to believe might be unsafe.
Speaker 1: We spoke via email with Andrea Henry, director of Strategic
Speaker 1: Communications and Policy for the Iowa Department of Transportation. She
Speaker 1: explained that in her state, quote drivers with valid licenses
Speaker 1: maybe to demonstrate their driving ability prior to renewal due
Speaker 1: to changes in their health. This includes physical and mobility conditions,
Speaker 1: as well as produced vision and cognitive issues. While data
Speaker 1: on how many retests are conducted wasn't available, most of
Speaker 1: those drivers end up getting renewals anyway, though many have
Speaker 1: restricted privileges such as a lower personal speed limit or
Speaker 1: daytime driving. Only one obvious problem with regularly retesting experience drivers,
Speaker 1: who numbered around two hundred and ten million in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the most recent year for which Federal Highway
Speaker 1: Administration data was available, is that they'd have to get
Speaker 1: in line with all of those first time applicants. That
Speaker 1: would create even longer lines of testing stations that already
Speaker 1: have their hands full coping with nervous adolescents struggling to
Speaker 1: perform complex maneuvers like the dreaded reverse two point turnabout
Speaker 1: without hitting those little yellow cones. A lot of those
Speaker 1: youthful license applicants end up coming back for retests themselves.
Speaker 1: As of twenty eleven, in California, for example, forty two
Speaker 1: point seven percent of applicants flunked the knowledge test a
Speaker 1: bombed out on the skills test. The worst knowledge test
Speaker 1: performance was in Missouri, with a sixty one point four
Speaker 1: percent failure rate, while mains would be motorists did the
Speaker 1: worst in driving skills with not making the grade. In
Speaker 1: the US generally has driving tests that are a lot
Speaker 1: easier than the ones used by the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: In the Canadian province of British Columbia, for example, would
Speaker 1: be drivers have to undergo forty five minutes of testing
Speaker 1: on several different types of road, and also must verbally
Speaker 1: describe what specific road hazards are immediately beside their vehicles,
Speaker 1: one block ahead and also behind them to test their awareness.
Speaker 1: There isn't a lot of evidence that additional testing over
Speaker 1: the years necessarily would improve safety on the roads, As
Speaker 1: the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains, studies have yielded
Speaker 1: conflicting results on the question of whether age restrictions reduced
Speaker 1: the rate of crashes. In Illinois, they did, but in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire they didn't. The rate of injury causing crashes
Speaker 1: per one hundred million miles driven actually is highest among
Speaker 1: teenage drivers, and then decrease and levels out for decades
Speaker 1: before starting to rise again slightly among people in their
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. That's not the pattern that you would
Speaker 1: see if many people saw their driving skills or knowledge
Speaker 1: deteriorate significantly in middle age. We also spoke by email
Speaker 1: with Jake Nelson and Triple As, Director of Traffic Safety
Speaker 1: Advocacy and research, he said. Retesting where if you fail
Speaker 1: the test, you lose the license, has been shown to
Speaker 1: have zero safety impact on the drivers involved, and it
Speaker 1: has been shown to reduce mobility by way of drivers
Speaker 1: voluntarily giving up their licenses due to fear of getting
Speaker 1: them taken away rather than any legitimate concerns about their driving.
Speaker 1: There's no justification through data and research for testing or
Speaker 1: screening at a certain age one. Gary Biller, president of
Speaker 1: the National Motorists Association, which is a nationwide advocacy group,
Speaker 1: is similarly skeptical about the value of retesting experienced drivers,
Speaker 1: he said via email. Safety statistics consistently show that the
Speaker 1: accident rates of drivers seventy years of age and older
Speaker 1: are not much different than those in the thirty five
Speaker 1: to six nine year age group. By contrast, drivers younger
Speaker 1: than thirty five are at the highest risk of accident.
Speaker 1: That indicates a couple of things. One is that experience
Speaker 1: behind the wheel is one of the most important factors
Speaker 1: for safe driving. Another is its state requirements for the
Speaker 1: renewal of driver's licenses are reasonable. Those requirements vary state
Speaker 1: by state, but generally include more frequent re licensing and
Speaker 1: vision tests. Once driver reaches sixty, seventy or seventy five
Speaker 1: years of age. But Billard does think there could be
Speaker 1: value in allowing officials the option of re examining certain
Speaker 1: potentially problematic drivers. He said there should be an objective
Speaker 1: process through which the licensing agency could be petitioned to
Speaker 1: do an evaluation of a given license holder based on
Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of family members, a law enforcement agency, or
Speaker 1: the courts. In fairness, there should also be an appeal
Speaker 1: process for the person who is in jeopardy of losing
Speaker 1: his or her license or having it restricted. That approach
Speaker 1: might offer some protection against the most clearly impaired potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous drivers out there, but as for the driver who
Speaker 1: violate the rules because they think they can get away
Speaker 1: with it, you're probably just going to have to continue
Speaker 1: to be wary of them. Today's episode written by Patrick
Speaker 1: Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works from one on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics that will absolutely let you merge if you're
Speaker 1: using your turn signal, visit our home planet how to
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