Illinois Decides Old People Don't Actually Need Mandatory Driving Tests To Renew Their Licenses Anymore

The next time you see someone driving a car with an Illinois license plate, you might want to be extra cautious. As of July 1, the Illinois Road Safety and Fairness Act has officially gone into effect, removing the previous requirements that elderly drivers pass a driving test before they could renew their licenses. The vote to pass the bill into law wasn't exactly close, either. About 70% of state lawmakers signed on as cosponsors, and it passed unanimously in both the Illinois House and Senate before Governor Pritzker signed it into law. 

To be fair to Illinois, it hasn't eliminated driving tests for all elderly drivers. Instead, it raised the age at which driving tests become mandatory from 79 to 87. As long as you're younger than 79, you're required to renew your license every four years, and it can be done online. Drivers aged 79 to 86 no longer have to pass a driving test to renew their licenses, but they do have to renew them in person every four years. Then, once they turn 87, it becomes an annual renewal with a mandatory driving test. 

As you can probably imagine, state lawmakers claim they had good reasons to stop requiring driving tests for drivers in their 80s that aren't, "We're scared of the AARP," or, "Big Storefront Repair has us in its pocket." Instead, they point at statistics from the Illinois Department of Transportation that showed crash rates in 2023 for drivers 75 and older were "lower than every age range of drivers between 16 and 74 years old." That's hard to believe, but IDOT says it's true. 

There is, however, another component to the law that could help keep Illinois from turning into "Fast & Furious: Cadillac Drift." Illinois was previously one of only five states in the U.S. that didn't have a mechanism in place to allow family members to report their relatives as unsafe drivers. Now, if you believe cognitive impairment, physical ability, or other medical issues now limit a relative's ability to drive safely, you can report it to the state. Illinois will then review those reports and decide whether or not to take further action. 

In theory, this will get unsafe drivers off the road while simultaneously removing the mandatory driving test. How that will play out, though, likely depends on how effective the state is at taking licenses away from people whose families report them. How a new law is implemented and enforced is typically just as important as the text of the law itself.

It'll be important to watch and see whether or not crash rates for elderly drivers change (and if so, by how much), while also keeping an eye on exactly whose licenses Illinois chooses to take away, and who's allowed to keep driving. Will they be more lenient on those with political connections? Are certain demographics of drivers going to see more aggressive enforcement? Can you trust that the same decision will be made regardless of where your elderly relative lives? Sadly, we won't know until enough time has passed for someone to look at the data and write a report.

If data shows that drivers 75 and older crash at lower rates than younger demographics, how did they get a reputation for being such bad drivers? Part of the explanation probably has to do with the fact that stories in the news about older drivers crashing tend to be pretty dramatic. But Illinois' decision to focus on crash rates per 1,000 drivers could also be painting a rosier picture of just how safe elderly drivers are. 

For example, the CDC prefers to look at crash deaths per 1,000 crashes, and when you run that data through the Analyzer 9000, the results show that when they do crash, the deadliest demographic is drivers who are at least 70 years old. That's a nationwide study, not an Illinois-specific one, so maybe old folks in Indiana are special? It sounds preposterous on its face, but dig into IDOT's report on 2024 crash statistics, and you'll find the overall fatal crash rate is 0.18, while Illinois drivers 75 and older have a below-average fatal crash rate of 0.13. That's also less than half the rate of 18- and 19-year-old drivers (0.27 and 0.29, respectively), and close to half what we see with drivers 30-34 (0.23).

The biggest issue when it comes to dealing with older drivers, however, continues to be that we've built the U.S. around cars, not people. Driving is an essential part of life in most cities in the U.S., and whether you're old, disabled, or just a bad driver, there aren't many other options. It's not some big secret, either. Bad drivers are encouraged to hold onto the keys far longer than they should, and every time someone tries to encourage cities to make a few changes that might improve life for non-drivers, they're relentlessly attacked as anti-America communists who hate freedom. 

Regardless of what you think about Illinois changing its testing laws for older drivers, we can probably all agree that dangerous, unfit drivers shouldn't be on the road regardless of age. But if you also bristle at the suggestion that we make it easier to live a fulfilling life without a car, what's your alternative solution? Change nothing and hope the problem fixes itself?