[skyguy79]

Originally Posted by billethkid

Yes there should be discrimination in renewing drivers licences. Once past 80 they should be for no more than 2 years...and require vision and reaction testing.

With all due respect and speaking as a retired Supervising Motor Vehicle Representative for the State of New York with 26 years experience, many of which were primarily as an enforcement supervisor, I have to disagree that age discrimination is an acceptable thing. Many 80+ drivers are sharp capable drivers and even more so than they were years ago thanks to advances in medical knowledge. It's true that there are those that should stop driving, but who are we to say when and at what age? Especially since we've seen relatively young driver that are worse than older ones. As an example, my father at about 83 was one of the many who recognized when it was time to give up driving and we know that because he instructed us to sell his car so he wouldn't be tempted to use it again!

Now, I'm not familiar with MV operations in FL, but in NY I know that there are programs to trigger retesting based on performance complaints. If our Driver License Adjudicators received three creditable complaints from unrelated sources, they did call in drivers for retesting and if they failed to appear for that retesting, the order was given to suspend their license, which in turn I had to forward to the police. One time I even received a special order directly from the head adjudicator to immediately send an order to the State Police to immediately pickup a license at the request of their immediate family. Normally the motorist would be sent a notice then had 30 day to comply before we sent the police to visit them. I'd be surprised if Florida didn't have a program similar to this.

Sadly, today enforcement via the police is no longer practiced, and the reason is that the department had determined that the majority, if not nearly all drivers, will continue driving following the pickup of their suspended or revoked items anyway. I'd even seen through my office window next to my desk, several suspended or revoked motorists I had sat and discussed their situation with, get up when we were finished and proceed directly to their car, get in behind the steering wheel and drive off.

As a final note, there's one humorist story that I'd like to share. We were not supposed to send orders to police if the mailing address was a PO Box. One got out by accident and on the reverse of the order where they were to explain why they can't enforce an order and return to us, the trooper noted something like this... "I proceeded to the post office of the address, went inside to the little box with the number on the order. When I looked inside, I didn't not see the motorist whose license I'm supposed to pickup, so this order is being returned unenforceable!" There are more stories I could tell, but that's for some other time... maybe!