One Driven Mother
I didn’t make it to the opening day at the Utah Legislature, but no worry. We still have 43 days left in which to dissect motives and messes on the way to making state law. Today I found my way to the Capitol for a short committee meeting. State senators who oversee transportation matters took up a bill that would allow family members and friends to rat out–anonymously–people who are incompetent to drive their cars and therefore may pose a risk to themselves and others on the roads. The bill would empower concerned family members to call the state drivers license division, and report the geezers they feel should no longer be driving, but not have to face any grilling or repercussions for making that report.
It would all be on the QT.
The bill passed the committee 4-0. They barely had a quorum. Now it moves on to a House committee for consideration.
Sen. Allen Christensen, a Republican from North Ogden, got the idea for the bill because his elderly mother kept taking off for California on a whim. She would hop in her car and go. Christensen said his mother did this after she had suffered a stroke, had lost some of her capacity for balance and decision making. But she thought nothing of driving oh, 600 miles, as if she were a sorority girl skittering off for a long weekend to Vegas.
Christensen got a little flushed when he testified that he couldn’t possibly have told his mother straight out about her driving incompetency, or reported her to authorities, for her poor road skills. If he–or other adult children who can’t stand up to their elders–could pass the problem on to government authorities to investigate and determine a solution, why not? Whenever his mom got into the car, Christensen testified, “she scared the tar out of me.” So suddenly, his problem became everyone’s problem. If you don’t have the chutzpah to tell your mother what she needs to be told, or to just take her keys away, why not legislate it? We all have to feel his pain, I guess.
What I always love to see at the Utah Lege is the brick-sized blind spot that blocks its vision. We live in a state that glows with this philosophy that government should stay out of our lives. Too much government, too many taxes, too much intervention, too much Big Brother. But give one guy an aging mother who who can’t be controlled or deterred, who insists on independence and driving wherever and whenever she likes, and suddenly we need a statewide solution.
I’d say the senator has a few mother issues. Seems like more of an issue for Sigmund Freud than the legislative grist mill.