On car trips, my family sometimes battles boredom by playing the "alphabet game." We see who can pick letters off billboards and road signs the fastest. Lately, I'm not doing so well.
I'm 55 and know I can't triumph at silly games forever. But Friday, in a quiet office in northeast St. Petersburg, I encountered a more unsettling harbinger.
It was a vision test called "contrast sensitivity," a series of pesky gray lines on white backgrounds that get fainter and fainter until they seem to disappear.
The test measures a person's capacity to read road signs, particularly at dawn and dusk, when light plays tricks. Though I was okay while using both eyes, the test indicated that vision through my left eye was slightly below normal.
Do I just need a new prescription for my eyeglasses, or is this an early warning?
Maybe I should drive more slowly. Maybe I should plan out-of-town trips more carefully, so I can anticipate road signs. Maybe, gulp, my wife should do more of the driving.
Frank self-evaluation is precisely the purpose of the "Getting in Gear" program offered by the Area Agency on Aging. Older clients usually come at the urging of worried doctors or family members. Is it time to surrender the license? Could better driving habits or changes to your car make things safer?
Where do you stand?
State driver license offices will give people vision and road tests. But flunk them and you can lose your license on the spot.
Getting in Gear offers more extensive tests and a lot of counseling about options. Even people with slight dementia can keep driving under some circumstances. Because of confidentiality, the results are not shared with anyone unless you agree. A free evaluation takes 15 to 20 minutes. A full battery of tests takes 21/2 hours and costs $50 or a suggested donation of $130.
After an 86-year-old California driver killed 10 people last week, I wanted to find out what Getting in Gear can offer.
I consider myself a good driver, though my wife thinks I sometimes drive too fast and my teenage son thinks I sometimes drive too slow. On the interstate, I often drive about 10 miles over the speed limit when conditions seem safe. About every other year, some officer takes offense and writes me a ticket. Fourteen years ago, I pulled out of a gas station and caused a fender-bender.
"People will tell you they haven't had a crash or ticket for years," said Susan Samson, who runs Getting in Gear. "But crashes are such rare events they are not good predictors of whether or not you have a problem."
However, tests devised by researchers can predict your skill level.
People who fail the "contrast sensitivity" vision test are much more likely to have accidents than people who don't.
A test called "trails" requires you to take a pencil and connect letters and numbers in sequence. People who can't finish in time often have trouble staying in their lane, Samson said. People with dementia often can't finish it at all.
Several tests take place on a computer, although they require no computer savvy to complete. You just touch the screen or press one button to register an answer. These tests are easier to comprehend than the new touchscreen voting machines.
One test measures reaction time. A shape appears in different screen locations and you just touch it. The computer measures how fast you can do it. Another test flashes a shape inside one of two boxes. You identify the box while the computer tries to distract you with various beeps and flashing arrows.
Another test flashes a word in a box and a dot outside the box. You have to identify the word and the rough location of the dot. It gets harder when the target dot is intermingled with smaller, duller dots. People who fare poorly on this test don't deal well with unexpected distractions, like a child driving a bicycle from a yard into the road.
Another test measures "complex judgment," a trait that apparently finds me lacking.
A series of lines and gaps flows up and down the screen. You control a box, just like a little car, by pushing a button to make it go. You try to drive the box "quickly and safely" through the moving gaps.
Being part of the video game generation, I focused on "quickly," but ignored "safely." (Hey, if you crash one car, you just get another one, right?). I tried to make quick dashes through small gaps rather than waiting for nice, big gaps. I sacrificed several little boxes to this strategy.
The most interesting test was "component driving abilities," video vignettes of actual street scenes, filmed from the driver's viewpoint.
Your car moves through wet pavement and dry, night and day, clear roads and obstructions. The computer tells you how fast you are driving, while other cars and pedestrians move through the scenes as well. One scene takes you right past St. Petersburg's Bayfront Center.
The computer gives you a few seconds to size up a driving situation and offers you one of four choices, such as "brake," "turn hard right," etc. Sometimes, the computer asks what you expect another driver to do.
These tests showed that I am still a good driver, but raised a red flag. The computer penalized me for completing the tests too quickly - not just the moving gap test, where I wrecked little boxes, but even during tests where I got the right answers. Choosing too quickly is a sign of an impulsive driver.
Harrumph!
The last segment was a 40-minute road test, with Vic Corman, who runs Drive-Safe Driving School in Seminole. You tour around St. Petersburg's Gateway Mall area, along Fourth and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. streets, changing lanes, merging and turning. Vic's 2000 Chevy Cavalier has a dual brake pedal in case you goof up.
Vic is a tough date.
I drove as I normally would, which included 5 miles over the speed limit on Fourth Street, because that matched the flow of traffic. I accelerated "too fast for the conditions" and rolled through one stop sign. Vic also said I mishandled a yield sign, though I swear he was wrong about that one. I made several bad left turns onto busy roads by cutting across the perpendicular lanes, instead making a wide arc. Those lanes were empty, but the driver license people would have flunked me on the spot, Vic said.
Mine were not typical sins of older drivers with problems, but according to Vic, I drive "aggressively." Maybe it is time to be more careful.
When I relayed the results to my wife, she rolled her eyes and stooped to sarcasm: "Well that's a big fat surprise."
For more information
Getting in Gear is the first of four pilot "safety resource centers" funded by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Besides the driving assessment, clients and family members can get counseling and literature about issues facing older drivers. Some problems are fixable through training, medication changes or occupational therapy.
To find out more, call the Area Agency on Aging at (727) 570-9696, ext. 234.
