As a senior, you’ve been enjoying your life. You can still look after your basic needs, you grow a garden every year, and you have a decent car that you drive uptown or to a friend’s place, albeit a bit slower than in the past.
In fact, life is good. However, you’re getting close to 80, and a letter arrives from the superintendent of motor vehicles. You are being asked to take a driver’s medical exam as a pre-condition to getting your driver’s license renewed.
As part of checking on your ability to drive, a doctor will look at three aspects of your being — (1) sensory functions such as clarity of vision, (2) motor functions such as co-ordination and reaction time, and (3) cognitive functions such as information processing and decision making.
The cognitive function procedure is the fitness item being criticized by seniors and their advocates. Locally, it seems many of our doctors are using the Simard document to check on cognitive functions.
I heard about one senior who received a letter asking him to see his doctor to complete a driver medical exam, and it had to be done within 45 days. During his session, he was informed he had to take the Simard cognitive test. He was quite uneasy about this test because he had been given no information about it and had no chance to prepare himself emotionally for it. So he refused to take the test on that day.
At a later date, he returned to the clinic and took the Simard test. In the meantime, however, he found out the nature of the test and practised answering similar questions. Apparently, you need to score 70 or you fail in cognitive function.
Why an 80 year old will fail is the same reason a 25 year old will fail: the nature of the questions. The initial question asks you to listen to a list of 10 unrelated words and remember them. Partway through the other questions, you are asked to recall as many of the words as possible. This part of the test is unreliable as a check on senior cognitive functions because people of any age can fail. Apparently, young adults given the list of unrelated words often don’t do as well as seniors.
If seniors fail the Simard exam, then the superintendent of motor vehicles will ask them to register for the province’s driveABLE program. Such seniors are required to complete a computer-based cognitive test. If you pass this test, you are considered fit to drive safely, and you will be able to renew your driver’s license.
However, you will only be licensed for a two year period and will have to do these tests every two years. It’s a major sore spot with most fit-to-drive seniors that they are not being licensed for the same number of years (five) as regular drivers.
Should seniors fail the computer-based test, they have the right to do an on-road evaluation. The results of the medical and the tests will be sent to the superintendent of motor vehicles for analysis. Sometimes a license will not be issued, which to seniors is like losing their independence and freedom.
Seniors can appeal the loss of their license, but it must be done in writing.
It’s easy to see how seniors could be upset by the process and find it demeaning, particularly if they’ve been accident-free drivers all their lives. True, if a senior shouldn’t be driving on our highways, then we need ways to find that out. However, we need a better assessment tool than the Simard-MD.
Gord Turner writes in this space every other week.
