WEDNESDAY UPDATE: South Carolina legislators have delayed discussion of a bill doing away with a requirement for driver's license vision tests every five years. The House's transportation subcommittee said Wednesday it will discuss later requiring vision tests for drivers under age 65 only when they renew their licenses every 10 years.
TUESDAY: Seven years ago, South Carolina lawmakers changed the state's driver's licenses so they're valid for ten years instead of five. But lawmakers were concerned about doubling the length of time between vision checks for drivers, so they kept in the law a requirement that drivers pass a vision test every five years.
The problem has been enforcing that requirement. The Department of Motor Vehicles hasn't been doing it. A spokeswoman says it's too difficult to administer a five-year vision check on licenses that are valid for ten.
The DMV says setting up a system in its computers to track which drivers get the five-year checks, and notifying those that don't, would cost $773,000.
State lawmakers are considering a bill to do away with requiring drivers to get their vision checked every five years. Rep. Phil Owens, R-Easley, the main sponsor of the bill, says, "A true ten-year license in most of the other states doesn't require that the vision screening occur after five years."
He also says he doesn't know of any studies that show checking drivers' vision every ten years instead of every five hurts public safety.
But optometrist Dr. Philip Flynn says, "Five years is a long time as far as our eyes are concerned, and you can have progression of cataracts, of glaucoma, of macular degeneration."
And driver Phillip Gunter, who was at the DMV Tuesday, thinks it's a bad idea to lengthen the amount of time between making sure drivers can see well enough to drive.
"Some people don't even get eye checks so often, so this is a way to get eye checks sometimes. So I think it'd be a good thing to do it more often," he says.
Dr. Flynn says vision changes can occur even faster after age 65. It's important to point out that current law does not allow anyone 65 or older to get a ten-year license, so this would not affect them.
The bill to repeal the five-year vision check requirement for drivers will be up for debate Wednesday in a House subcommittee.
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