The nice driving instructor quietly jotted a note on his checkoff sheet. I continued driving through Rose Park, cruising slower than normal, hesitating at every turn, swinging my head to look both ways.

It's been 20 years since I left my family's baby blue VW van at home and drove a friend's car on the West Valley City test range. But I decided to take the driving test again last week.

I figured it was the least I could do if I were going to point a finger at older drivers.

The idea came to me last month after an 86-year-old driver mowed down a father and daughter in a 1300 East crosswalk. There were no skidmarks. The driver's car drifted another 85 feet before stopping. So far, Murray police have not charged him.

It seems so obvious. A younger driver would have seen Don and Gwyndalyn Ostler walking to Twin Peaks Elementary School for the 5-year-old girl's class. A younger driver would have stopped.

Maybe.

I know there are no absolutes when human beings are involved. All 75-year-old drivers are not made equal; neither are all 20-year-olds. But it is not out-of-bounds to assume age played a factor in that May 22 accident. That's the conclusion Nancy

Ostler reached.

"It's my very strong opinion this man should have had his license turned in and his keys taken away," the grieving grandma said after the accident.

I have my own modest proposal: Require all Utah drivers over the age of 80 to take a driving test every two years.

When I mentioned my idea, Driver License Division bureau chief Wallace Wintle's eyes flickered briefly, as if he felt a migraine coming on. He tried to reason with me.

"Just on the basis of age, it would be unfair," Wintle said. Teenagers and elderly drivers are easy scapegoats. "At either end of the spectrum, we judge really quickly because they're stereotyped."

There are reasons for those biases. A study of 2001 accident data by the Government Accounting Office found that drivers over 75 were involved in more fatal wrecks than any other group - just slightly more than 16- to 24-year-old drivers. On the flip side, the Utah Department of Public Safety in a 2004 study concluded that drivers over 65 accounted for a small percentage of accidents in the state - 5.6 percent. But drivers ages 15 to 29 were involved in 47.5 percent of crashes. The numbers are skewed because there are fewer older drivers on the road and frail elderly drivers are more likely to die in accidents.

Getting at the truth, obviously, is tricky. Too often, anecdote becomes proof, as in that Murray accident.

"If there were an easy solution, we would already have it," says Laura Polacheck, AARP-Utah associate director.

After a Utah driver gets a license at 16, the only thing the state tests, for the rest of your life, is your eyes. In Utah, doctors can recommend driving tests for elderly drivers. So can the police officers who respond to accidents. The license division blocks impaired drivers from meandering along the highway or limits some to a geographic zone like a neighborhood. But those so-called "117 tests" account for just 2,500 of the 48,000 driving tests administered in Utah each year.

At the end of my 10-minute test, I had seven points knocked off - for driving with one hand on the wheel, failing to "head check" going into turn lanes and for that missed signal. You fail at minus 20.

North Ogden Republican Sen. Allen Christensen suggested retesting older drivers a year ago. But state number crunchers said more testing would be expensive and cumbersome. And the AARP opposed the bill.

This year, Christensen sponsored legislation that would allow friends or family members to confidentially report a relative who shouldn't be driving anymore. Although the AARP supported the bill, lawmakers killed it anyway, worried Utahns would maliciously turn their neighbors in. But after talking to the Ostlers, Christensen plans to bring the legislation back next year.

"Sometimes, getting a ticket is too late," Christensen says.

walsh@sltrib.com