DMV eye test puts new focus on boomers

By TONY BIZJAK
Sacramento Bee
Monday, June 04, 2007

Sadie Johnson is concerned.

The 60-year-old Sacramento woman must renew her driver's license soon. Last week, at a Department of Motor Vehicles office, she got a glimpse at what may await her.

A series of new eye charts hung from the ceiling, each containing rows of letters that become successively more faded. By line six, the letters are so ghostly they are invisible to many people.

"Oh, no, no, no," Johnson said, straining to make out line five. "That's an E. Is that an O? I think that's a W."

DMV officials have been trying out the new charts since May at six of the 23 Northern California field offices.

The Pelli-Robson contrast sensitivity test shows if drivers will have trouble seeing dark objects in the shadows or light objects, such as a gray truck, in the fog.

It's the most visible -- and for some, intimidating -- part of a five-month trial program the DMV hopes will identify more people with visual, physical and cognitive limitations that could make them unsafe drivers.

If the tests are made permanent, all California drivers, regardless of age, would be required to take them.

But DMV officials say their focus is on the state's large and aging baby-boom generation.

Faced with record numbers of older drivers each year, safety experts say the state must find better ways of dealing with drivers with diminished abilities -- without simply resorting to taking licenses away.

DMV researcher David Hennessy, who developed the testing program that includes the new eye chart, said analysts believe the program can make drivers safer by making them more aware of their diminishing abilities and showing them ways to compensate.

"It is really not about losing licenses," Hennessy said. "It is about finding ways of extending safe driving years."

However, he said, the more thorough testing process will take more drivers off the road who shouldn't be there.

And that has some older drivers and senior-citizen advocates worried.

Losing a driving license can be traumatic, said Therese Schultz of the Senior Center of Elk Grove.

"Your car is your access to food, to socialization, to doctors," she said. If family members or friends with cars aren't available, and if bus systems are inadequate, "you can be isolated in your home."

Sadie Johnson said she isn't opposed to getting more of the worst drivers off the streets, but she doesn't like the thought of losing her license. "I have to take kids to school, drive elderly people around. If I couldn't drive, I wouldn't know what to do."

Judy Schab, 65, of Rocklin applauds the DMV for the new tests.

"If my eyesight is deteriorating so that it impacts my driving safely, I would want to know about it as soon as possible," Schab said. "It would be so stressing to me to harm someone else" in a crash.

DMV analysts have not yet reviewed test results, Hennessy said. Through May, the first month of trials, only about 1,000 people in Northern California had taken the new eye exam, Hennessy estimated.

The DMV will review the test results after September to decide whether to make a recommendation to the state Legislature to make the system permanent and take it statewide.

Drivers who do poorly on the eye test will not necessarily lose their licenses, Hennessy said.

Some will be referred to their eye doctor for an exam and told to return with a form from the doctor advising the DMV on the person's eyesight and its potential effect on driving abilities.

Ian Bailey, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Optometry, said the Pelli-Robson eye test is a very good tool for contrast sensitivity, which, he said, "might be the most important visual aspect to driving."

Although many ophthalmologists and optometrists don't use that test, they may check more carefully for diseases if a person has been referred to them by the DMV because of a poor Pelli-Robson score.

The DMV is "going in the right direction," Bailey said.

(Tony Bizjak can be reached at tbizjak@sacbee.com.)