OpinionJanuary 27, 1996

Politics may have been on the side of the Idaho legislators who killed Rep. Twila Hornbeck's bill requiring old people to pass driving tests before renewing their driver's licenses. Biology and good sense were on Hornbeck's side.

"Discrimination," opponents of the bill charged as they refused to let it out of the House Transportation Committee. And that's what it was, all right. But this is not the mindless discrimination that tells Latin people they can't have workers' compensation insurance or homosexual people they can't rent a house. Just as realities of human development justify discriminating against toddlers who want to drive, realities of human aging justify discriminating against old people who don't want to prove they can still operate a dangerous machine safely.

Hornbeck's legislation pushed no one from behind a wheel. All it did was tell people beyond the age of 75 that they would have to do what first-time drivers do, show they can

drive before getting their license. It would still be possible for many Idahoans to continue driving in their 80s and even 90s if they were competent to do so.

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The sad fact is, however, that some of them are not. Their judgment, a faculty so weak in many young drivers, might be stronger than ever. But their reflexes are slower each year, while traffic refuses to slow down to accommodate their waning abilities.

It isn't, after all, lunch counters or drinking fountains Hornbeck, R-Grangeville, sought to exclude some old people from. It is a potential lethal activity that some of them are simply no longer qualified to engage in. How many Idahoans have faced the tough job of persuading an aging family member to turn the driving over to someone else when the time came?

Not all older Idahoans are lucky enough to have family members look out for them that way. Hornbeck's legislation sought to help them as much as their potential victims on the streets and highways of this state. Thanks to legislators' action, those streets and highways will be less safe than they should be. J.F.

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