Drivers beggin MLA for help
Local seniors, worried about facing driving tests when they pass age 80, have been pouring into the office of Cowichan Valley MLA Bill Routley.
He presented petitions carrying more than 950 names in the Legislature recently to make several points about his own concerns about the Drive ABLE program, calling the process “unfair,” particularly to rural seniors.
“This is an important issue to the Cowichan Valley, that’s for sure,” he said this week. “I’ve had probably more constituents in over the recent months about Drive ABLE than over anything else. Seniors are really upset about what’s happened to them.”
The major concern is that older drivers are forced to go to larger cities for testing. In the Cowichan Valley, drivers over 80 have to take their computerized tests and driving tests in either Nanaimo or Victoria, even if they may not have driven in those cities for some time.
Gary Coons, MLA for North Coast, has also raised the issue in the Legislature. Routley related some information gathered by Coons that hammered home the difficulties faced by some B.C. seniors.
“People from the Queen Charlotte Islands have to spend $3,000 to $4,000 to go to Prince George for their tests,” he said.
Some people who’ve come into Routley’s constituency office are so fed up they are leaving the province in the hope of better treatment elsewhere.
“People are really angry about the computer part of it. One senior – he actually passed the test at the end of the day – but he actually lost 11 pounds because he was so terrified,” Routley said.
“What’s alarming to me is that people are losing their licences and don’t even have the ability to have a real driving test in their own community. Seniors have to be treated with more dignity and respect,” he said.
In addition to having to travel and pay $300 for testing, drivers have to hit the road in a strange car, equipped with two steering wheels and an instructor.
Routley said he had heard a pungent description of a road test from one Valley man.
“He was told he had to pull out on a busy, one-way street – which he’s not used to in the Cowichan Valley – and he said there was a whole wall of traffic coming towards him so he decided to wait until it went by. They failed him right there, saying: ‘you have to be able to make decisions in a hurry in a driving situation.’ He was totally frustrated at that.”
Routley’s got a whole collection of stories. One man, a long-time truck driver, infuriated that someone thought he couldn’t drive, lost his cool.
“I’ve run into those fellows before. He told the instructor what to do with her computer, which wasn’t the thing to do. He realizes that now. But they feel powerless,” Routley said, adding that the whole situation becomes tinged with age-discrimination when problem drivers in their 70s don’t get sent for similar testing.
“But once you’re 80 and older there’s almost a pressure on doctors. If they feel there’s anything at all, they put a certain kind of squiggle on the paper and the next thing you know, you’re off to Drive ABLE,” he said.
So, what’s happening now?
The NDP is developing a strategy but the fact remains that Drive ABLE is a reality, established by government and contracted out.
However, Routley knows he’s not alone in his fight.
“I’m hearing that there are letters going to government. It is mostly rural MLAs that seem to be hearing about this.”
There are plenty of good ideas in other jurisdictions, too, and Routley hopes some of them will come to B.C.
“I understand from some seniors that other countries can restrict drivers licences to, say, daylight hours or driving in your own community and a lot of seniors do that themselves. People understand these things,” he said.
One senior lady told Routley a heart-breaking story.
“She has lost her husband and now her drivers licence, all within a year. Now she’s forced to move and sell her home because she can’t rely on others to drive her all the time. Those are really tough decisions. When you’re looking at taking someone’s freedom and independence away, it’s important to be careful,” he said.
In a reply to Routley, the provincial Solicitor General Shirley Bond said public safety was a primary responsibility for government.
She pointed out that the touchscreen test looks at such questions as memory, attention span, spatial judgment and decision-making, not overall cognitive function or intelligence.
A good result in that test is the end of it, but if there are still concerns then it’s time for the road test, Bond said.
Those tests are aimed at assessing drivers for “driving errors associated with cognitive decline, not general driving skill or knowledge or ‘rules of the road,’” she continued, but added that efforts are underway to reduce confusion about the tests and to provide seniors with more information on what to expect.