chad wrote:
skills testing i agree with. not a doctor's slip/recommendation though. i have 5 doctor's in the family, and i can attest to the fact that they sometimes just 'sign things.'
There are three doctors in my family, and none of them will admit to just signing things, but I'm sure they do. Usually a nurse will come up with a stack of papers and say, "Sign these." I can see them missing it if that were the case. What I had in mind was a sort of questionaire the doctor was required to administer. The test would cover motor skills, reaction time, judgement capacity, etc.
Sure, mandatory skills testing would be nice, but I doubt it will ever happen. You'd have to inrease the infrastruture of each state's DMV, and I doubt state legislators would be too happy about that. State funding is much tighter than federal funding, and I doubt it would be a federal program.
If it's a physician's permission, the infrastructure is already in place, most old people go to the doctor all the time, and the state's costs would be minimal compared to a whole new testing sector for the DMV.
So while regular skills testing would be nice, I don't think it's feasible at all.