Shortly before my 75th birthday, five years ago, I renewed my driver’s license. On that occasion, I did so without leaving my desk.

All I needed to do was go online to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, fill out some basic information, arrange a credit card payment, and send in the application electronically.

It was hard to believe the renewal could be done without inconvenience. No searching for a parking place, no waiting in line, no dealing with out-of sorts clerks. All I had to do was sit there and use my fingers.

The Registry mailed me my renewal a few days later. And the renewal was for five years, all the way to my 80th birthday. It is hard to imagine how the whole process could be made any easier.

However, the procedure left me with a few scruples. Why was there no effort to discover what my driving abilities were? How could the Commonwealth award me the right to continue driving without assessing my fitness to continue on the road?

It shocked me to realize how much the Registry had sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. No one had looked at me to assess the extent of my physical and mental capacities. My ability to drive might have declined drastically, but they never would have known.

This experience leads me to the present public discussion about people in the older generations driving cars. Three recent accidents involving older drivers in Massachusetts have inflicted injuries on a total of some 20 innocent people; a fourth accident took the life of a four-year-old girl who had been walking hand-in-hand with her grandfather on a crosswalk.

These sad events have provoked much discussion among our legislators about revising the rules concerning older drivers. One state senator has proposed a bill requiring drivers 85 and older to take a road test every five years. Thus far, nothing politically viable has emerged for a vote.

Another stimulus has come from a June 17th cartoon in the Boston Globe. It shows a crabbed old man at the wheel of a car that has just plowed through the wall of a Registry office. In case you did not recognize the driver as aged, a front bumper license plate reads “OVR 80.”

As his car knocks everything askew before the desk of a startled clerk, the driver cries out: “Is this where I come for that blankety blank driving test?”

Drawing with his usual artistic force, the veteran syndicated cartoonist Wasserman has created a compelling image of an old driver. He has dramatized a public safety issue so as to make readers take notice.

Unfortunately, the cartoonist has also indulged in a stereotype of old people. In fact, his portrayal of an octogenarian exemplifies ageism   prejudice against people on the basis of age ─ more blatantly than any I have seen in a long time.

Wasserman buys impact at the price of bias. My age peers do not look like this, they are not generally grumpy, and most of us who are still driving drive well and carefully.

However, the issue remains real. Some elderly drivers with licenses should not have them. Those prone to mistake the gas pedal for the brake pedal ought not to be on the road. The time came quite a while ago for the state to reform the system of awarding licenses.

The procedure that allows people to apply from their desk should be discontinued for drivers of all ages. Applicants should be at least seen by Registry officials so as to verify their basic fitness for being on roads and highways.

I do not consider it unreasonable for the state to require driving tests for people over a certain age. Ideally, I consider this desirable for everyone, but such a requirement would almost surely overwhelm the Registry’s resources.

I stand ready to take a road test the next time my license needs renewing. If I doubted my ability to score well on such a test, I would not apply again.

For me, it does not count as discriminatory to require this measure of driving capability. Given the facts of widespread diminishment of reflexes and other bodily abilities, I see no reasonable objection to the enforcement of standards.
And the community should also feel free to assess the cognitive fitness of elders who wish to keep driving.

We elders cannot reasonably object to testing that prevents driving menaces from taking to the road.

However, we can and should object to the caricatures of older people like the one in that Globe cartoon. Younger people should look upon us as their future selves, rather than distorting us into images of a race apart.

Regulation, yes; legislation yes, but discrimination never. Those older drivers who have retained the skills required to drive carefully should be allowed stay on our roads.

Richard Griffin