Anyone Can Drive in Tennessee

A year or two after moving to Nashville I was shocked by the ease with which I exchanged my expired Indiana license for a valid Tennessee one. Nonetheless, the Tennessee Department of Safety has bigger problems than me.

In recent years all discussion about to whom the State of Tennessee should issue a driver's license has centered on illegal immigrants. I think we need a moratorium on this debate so that we can focus instead on why we grant licenses to blind people. From The Tennessean:

Virginia Anderson's eyesight has diminished to the point that she reads her mail with a magnifying glass. Her hearing is so poor she often can't hear someone call her name from across the room. She uses a wheelchair much of the time, and arthritis in her hands makes her unable to grip a pen.

But none of that was enough to keep the 85-year-old woman from leaving a Department of Safety office recently with a renewed and valid Tennessee driver's license. . . .

State law dictates that drivers need to take a vision test for their first Tennessee license only.

"If you stay in Tennessee for your entire life and don't get your license suspended or revoked, there's no requirement for you to submit to a vision test," said Tim Stringfield, director of the Department of Safety's driver's licensing office.

Workers at Tennessee's licensing centers can't deny a renewed license or request a vision test based on a person's age, said Stringfield. However, police officers, doctors, licensing workers or even concerned citizens can ask that the state check a driver's abilities.

More vision tests would lengthen already long lines and require more staffing and more money, Stringfield said. It also would mean that fewer people could renew their licenses over the Internet or by mail, he said.

A solution to the problem of long lines that doesn't involve blind people driving is opening more license branches. You can put them in strip malls and limit them to certain functions, such as license renewal.