People 75 and older account for nearly 8% of Illinois drivers and are among the safest on the road. That’s according to a report from the Illinois secretary of state’s office.

Yet Illinois is the only state in the country to require behind-the-wheel road tests for seniors renewing their licenses.

Proposed legislation in Springfield is looking to eliminate that mandate despite conflicting research from some national safety groups.

Republican state Rep. Jeff Keicher of Sycamore is sponsoring the bill. He said the road test for seniors doesn’t solve the problems on the road.

“Anybody out there who’s listening to this right now can recognize the number of unsafe drivers that we’ve seen on the roadways, especially since COVID,” Keicher said. “And many of them are younger drivers texting and swerving and, you know, seniors, when you look at the volume just don’t have the accident tendencies at the volume that we do at younger drivers.”

Ryan Pietzsch is the program technical consultant of driver safety, education and training with the National Safety Council. He said these numbers probably don’t show the whole picture. According to the group’s research, most young people are involved in single-car crashes while elderly drivers account for more accidents with more than one vehicle.

Pietzsch added that more factors should play a role when evaluating drivers.

“We should provide for multiple-discipline approach, which addresses all elements of driver safety, including educating people on new vehicles,” Pietzsch said. “Think about the cars on the road today versus what they were when these drivers first started driving. So it’s not only the driver’s licensing, but that’s one element of it. It’s education. It’s safer roadways and access to medical care. So the safe-system approach is really what we should look at here.”

Keicher said the proposal would allow for factors such as a history of tickets and accidents to trigger a requirement to be retested regardless of age.

Ryan Gruenenfelder is the senior director of advocacy and outreach for AARP Illinois. He said getting retested is a common complaint from seniors. But basing driving ability on functional ability rather than age alone, he said, would meet their goal.

“If we can get to a point in Illinois to where driver’s license renewals are based on functional ability — and that includes the vision tests, and whatever other tests the Secretary of State’s Office requires to get that license — then that is achieving our objective here,” Gruenenfelder said. “It will make sure that older drivers in Illinois are treated as fairly as all the rest of them.”