Driver's tests unfairly target seniors

I don't get it. If elderly drivers are the safest drivers on the road today in Illinois, why in the world are we the ones who have to go through more road testing as we age?

We are the only state that requires a road test for senior drivers. It seems like such a waste of time for us and the people who work at the Secretary of State facilities. The vision test makes more sense. Or how about a reaction time test on a simulator? Maybe a hearing test where we simulate the sound of a train's horn or an oncoming semi-trailer truck?

I've done the test several times and the examiner was barely awake. Commands to "turn here" or "stop there" on some quiet suburban street hardly replicate real-time traffic conditions. Have the examiner take the elderly driver on a trip into downtown Chicago on the Kennedy Expressway to see if they really know how to drive in traffic. That would truly be a road test.

I have watched as an elderly driver tried to pass the vision test and was "passed" only with some prompting from the person administering the test. These people should not be on the road, yet they are fulfilling the letter of the law, with help.

If this testing is so important to the safety of elderly drivers and the rest of the drivers on the road, why has it not been overwhelmingly adopted by states with a large senior population, like Florida or Iowa?

It's time for the Secretary of State and the Illinois legislature to overhaul this unnecessary law, or make an honest effort to go after those deadbeats who have no drivers license at all, and keep running into us.

T.K. Petersen

Elgin