GREEN LAKE, Wis. — In June of last year, Angela Zodrow got the phone call every parent dreads. Her husband, John, told her their 12-year-old son, Emmet, had been hit by a car.
“He said, ‘You need to get here.’ And I was like, ‘Really? Okay, is it bad?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. It’s bad,'” Zodrow recounted. “I said. ‘Is he breathing?’ And John said, ‘I don’t want to lie to you.'”
The family lives in Green Lake, a small resort town in Wisconsin where kids often ride bikes freely. That day, Emmet was on the sidewalk near the public library when a silver minivan jumped the curb, plowed across the sidewalk, tore through a metal fence and stopped in a grassy lot. The driver, Jean Woolley, was 85. She told police she had confused the brake and gas pedals.
“I was just pulling into this parking place,” Woolley said in body-cam footage released to NPR. “I put the brake on, and it was the accelerator. And then I panicked and pushed it harder.”
Woolley’s lawyer called the crash a “tragic accident.” She was not charged criminally but received multiple citations and fines.
Nine months later, Angela Zodrow still speaks of Emmet in the present tense, as if he might come home from baseball practice. “Emmet loves life. If there’s one thing you’d say about Emmet, he loves life,” she said.
The family is pushing to change Wisconsin law, which allows older drivers to go eight years between license renewals. Zodrow says that system trusts self-reporting too much and provides no adequate checks. “We’re letting them just renew their driver’s licenses without any checks on them. If you say you’re fine, we believe you’re fine,” she said. She wants stricter relicensing rules and greater accountability for drivers involved in crashes. “The person who killed Emmet was able to drive away, could have driven away. That needs to change.”
Across the U.S., Americans are driving longer than in past generations, which raises questions about when and how to require additional testing for older drivers. There is no national standard; each state sets its own rules for renewals and tests. Many older adults rely on driving for independence, and experts warn against blanket measures that punish all older people for the decline of some.
“There’s no simple answer,” said Anne Dickerson, a professor of occupational therapy at East Carolina University. She cautioned against overreacting because most older drivers remain safe. Two decades ago, she might have suggested additional testing beginning at 70, but improvements in health and vehicle safety mean she might wait until 80 or later for those without dementia or serious medical conditions. “The research has shown people between 70 and 79 are actually pretty safe,” she said, noting many self-restrict their driving.
Crash rates for older drivers have fallen over the last 25 years even as the share of older drivers has grown. Aimee Cox of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says older drivers live longer, healthier lives, and modern vehicles offer better occupant protection, reducing fatalities. Crash risk is not uniform by age: teenagers are the riskiest group, followed by drivers in their 20s; drivers between 30 and 79 are generally the safest. Crash rates rise again for drivers 80 and older.
Ideally, doctors could advise patients when to stop driving, but clinicians often lack time or willingness to intervene. Police can be hesitant, too. “They don’t want to give a ticket to grandma,” Dickerson said. Yet gradual declines in ability are common and hard to spot, making nuanced responses—like limiting night driving or avoiding bad weather—often more appropriate than an all-or-nothing approach.
In the early 2000s, some states tightened relicensing rules, adding mandatory vision tests or in-person renewals and easing reporting by relatives, police and doctors. More recently, several states have loosened requirements. Illinois, long among the strictest, passed a new law raising the age for mandatory behind-the-wheel testing from the 70s to 87 while also making it easier to report unsafe drivers of any age. Supporters argued the old rules were ageist and burdensome.
“There’s not really a lot of testing that happens to renew. Maybe you get a vision test. It’s kind of crazy if you think about it,” said Cara Hamann, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa who studies road safety. Hamann examined two decades of data from more than 19 million drivers involved in crashes across 13 states, seven of which loosened relicensing policies. Her study found increases in crash rates among drivers aged 65 to 74 in states that loosened policies. She warned the evidence base for relicensing policies is limited and more study is needed, but her findings suggest loosening rules may raise injury and crash rates among older drivers.
Hamann also recognizes many older Americans lack viable alternatives to driving, especially in rural areas where public transit and ride-share options are scarce. That reality complicates policy choices: stricter rules can improve safety but may also strip mobility and independence from people who need to drive to access services and maintain quality of life.
For families like the Zodrows, whose son was killed by a driver who said she confused pedals, stricter relicensing seems a reasonable trade-off. “Yes, maybe it is a little difficult or inconvenient. I’m sorry about your inconvenience,” Angela Zodrow said. “It’s harder to live without my son.”