It will soon be harder to get a license in Virginia as the Department of Motor Vehicles requires a higher degree of peripheral vision. Sandy Hausman reports on the likely impact of two new laws taking effect July first.
State Senator Siobhan Dunnavant couldn’t say no to the idea of tougher vision requirements. A young Richmond-area woman had been killed, and her father wanted to prevent future tragedies.
“He had unfortunately lost his beautiful daughter in an accident as a bicyclist/pedestrian on the side of the road," she recaslls, "and it was discovered later that the driver had had significant vision field impairment.”
Right now, state law requires drivers to have a certain amount of peripheral vision – to be able to see 90 degrees, but it turns out other places have tougher standards.
“Virginia had some of the least restrictive visual field requirements compared to the other states in the country,” Dunnavant says.
So she crafted a law to increase the minimum. In the House, Delegate Buddy Fowler offered a similar bill.
“We wanted to go up to 140 degrees, " Fowler explains, "but the problem we ran into was DMV does the testing, and the highest their machines would go up to was 110.”
Rather than spend the money to replace testing devices in the state’s motor vehicle offices, he and Dunnavant agreed to raise the requirement from 90 to 110 degrees.
Dunnavant knows this could create problems for people who live in areas not served by mass transit.
“We don’t want to limit anybody’s opportunity to drive and have that freedom and independence, but the safety of the community has to take precedence.”
The legislature also passed a law protecting healthcare providers from lawsuits if they violate a patient’s confidentiality by reporting to the DMV that said patient can’t see well enough to drive.