GREEN LAKE, Wis. — In June of last year, Angela Zodrow got the phone call every parent dreads.
Her husband, John, was calling to tell her that their 12-year-old son, Emmet, had been hit by a car.
"He said, 'You need to get here.' And I was like, 'Really? Okay, is it bad?' He said, 'Yeah. Yeah. It's bad,'" Angela Zodrow recounted. "I said. 'Is he breathing?' And John said, 'I don't want to lie to you.'"
At first, Zodrow had a hard time processing what was happening. The family lives in Green Lake, a small, postcard-ready resort town in Wisconsin, where kids normally ride their bikes all the time without a second thought.
Not that day. Emmet Zodrow was riding his bike on the sidewalk near the public library, one of his favorite places in town. He happened to be in the wrong place at the exact moment a silver minivan jumped the curb, plowing across the sidewalk and through a metal fence, before coming to rest in a grassy lot.
The driver of the minivan, Jean Woolley, was 85 at the time. She told police in Green Lake that she had confused the brake and gas pedals.
"I was just pulling into this parking place," Woolley said after the crash in body-cam footage of her statement to police that was released to NPR. "I put the brake on, and it was the accelerator. And then I panicked and pushed it harder."
Woolley's lawyer called the crash a "tragic accident," but declined to comment further, citing potential litigation. Woolley was not charged with a crime, though she did receive multiple citations and fines.
Nine months later, Angela Zodrow still talks about Emmet in the present tense, as if he might walk through the front door after baseball practice, a confident, outgoing 12-year-old with a big smile and bright blue eyes.
"Emmet loves life. If there's one thing you'd say about Emmet, he loves life," she said in an interview at the family's home in Green Lake.
Since the crash, Zodrow says the family has been trying to do what Emmet would want to spare other families from the pain hers is feeling. That's why they're pushing to change the law in Wisconsin, where older drivers can go eight years without having to renew their driver's licenses.
"We're letting them just renew their driver's licenses without any checks on them. If you say you're fine, we believe you're fine," Zodrow said.
Zodrow wants the state to adopt stricter license requirements and greater accountability for drivers who are involved in crashes.
"The person who killed Emmet was able to drive away, could have driven away," Zodrow said. "That needs to change."
Americans are driving for longer than ever before — in some cases, too long, according to safety advocates. But many older adults say they shouldn't be forced to give up driving solely because of age.
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There is no single national standard for older adults and driving. Each state sets its own rules for how often people have to renew their licenses and what kind of tests they have to pass, if any.
Still, many older Americans depend on driving for mobility and independence. And experts on aging say it's not easy to find the right balance between safety and fairness.
"There's no simple answer," said Anne Dickerson, a professor of occupational therapy and director of the Research for Older Adult Driver Initiative at East Carolina University. "We have to be careful not to overreact, because it's not every older driver."
It's hard to say exactly when older drivers should have to face additional testing to renew their licenses, Dickerson said, because Americans are living longer and aging better than ever before.
"When I started like 20 years ago, I would have said, oh, you know, 70, we have to start doing testing," she said. But crash rates for older drivers have declined since then. Now, for people without dementia or serious medical conditions, Dickerson says she might wait to start additional testing until age 80 or later.
"The research has shown people between 70 and 79 are actually pretty safe," Dickerson said. "Now part of it's decreased risk, because they're not going to work every day, they self-restrict."
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Data show that crash rates for older drivers have generally fallen over the last 25 years, even as the share of older drivers on the road has increased.
"There are more licensed older drivers who drive more miles than in the past, but their crash rates have decreased," said Aimee Cox, a research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
"Older drivers are living longer, healthier lives, and improvements to vehicles over time have increased occupant protection," Cox said in an email, meaning that older drivers are less likely to die in crashes.
The picture gets more complicated when you compare the crash rates of older drivers and younger ones. Teenagers are by far the riskiest cohort, followed by drivers in their 20s, according to federal data reviewed by IIHS. Drivers between 30 and 79 are generally the safest, but crash rates begin rising again for drivers 80 years old and above.
In a perfect world, Dickerson said, "our medical system would be able to talk with their patients and say it's time" to stop driving. But in reality, she says doctors and other medical professionals often don't have the time or inclination to get involved in decisions about driving. Police officers can be reluctant to intervene, as well.
"They don't want to give a ticket to grandma," Dickerson said. "But we've tried to say 'no, grandma needs the ticket to make the family aware.'"
Part of the challenge is that declines in driving ability are often gradual, which can make them harder to detect and manage.
"For most folks, it happens gradually," said David Condon, an eldercare consultant in Columbia, S.C. who helps families navigate senior living options. In cases where a person has had a stroke or fallen, the decline may be sharp and clear. But Condon says that's the exception, not the rule.
"It's when somebody normally ages, and there are gradual declines and it's very subjective from one to the next," he said. And Condon says the appropriate response is often nuanced, as well.
"It's not binary," he said. "Most times, it's not a drive/don't drive. It's, well, maybe you should modify some of your driving, and stay off the roads at night — rain, lighting, that kind of thing."
There was a nationwide push to tighten relicensing rules in the early 2000s. Some states added mandatory vision testing, or more frequent visits to the DMV to renew licenses in person. Some made it easier for relatives, police and doctors to report potentially unsafe drivers.
But many states still don't require any of that. And recently, states have been moving to dial back their requirements — including Illinois, which has among the toughest rules in the country.
"The right to drive should be based on ability, not age," said Philippe Largent, the state director for AARP Illinois, during a press conference last year to introduce the Road Safety and Fairness Act, a new law that takes effect in Illinois this summer after passing with broad bipartisan support.
"Seniors should not be subjected to additional licensing requirements just because they had a birthday," said Jeff Keicher, a Republican state representative who co-sponsored the law, in an interview. "It's an ageist policy, and it needs to be thrown out."
Keicher works as an insurance broker in addition to his job as a lawmaker, and he heard complaints from constituents who found the state's rules too restrictive. Illinois is the only state that requires seniors to take a behind-the-wheel driving test in their 70s.
The new state law does not eliminate that test completely, as Keicher would like. But it will raise the age when it's required to 87, while also making it easier for family members and others to report unsafe drivers of any age.
Other states have loosened their relicensing rules in recent years, too.
"Every state has some kind of licensing policy that affects older adults, but we don't really have good evidence behind those policies," said Cara Hamann, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa College of Public Health who studies road safety. "Are these things really working? Are they not strict enough?"
Hamann noticed that some states allow more time between license renewals — in part to save money, and in part because no one wants to spend more time at the DMV. She wondered how those changes were affecting road safety, so she looked at the data. And what she found troubled her.
"We are seeing increases in injury rates and crash rates with some of these policies loosening," Hamann said in an interview. "Maybe not across all age groups, but among the ages that probably we're most worried about, among the older drivers."
Hamann's research looked at two decades of data from more than 19 million drivers who were involved in crashes across 13 states. Seven of those states loosened their relicensing policies during that time.
The study found an increase in crash rates among drivers between 65 to 74 in states that loosened their policies. Hamann notes that this is only one study, and there's still a lot that's not known about relicensing and safety. But she thinks there is room for improvement compared with other countries that place a greater emphasis on safety.
"We license people really young. And you get licensed and then you stay licensed, basically," Hamann said. "There's not really a lot of testing that happens to renew. Maybe you get a vision test. It's kind of crazy if you think about it."
At the same time, Hamann acknowledges that many older Americans have no good alternatives to driving — especially in rural areas, where public transit and ride-sharing are not viable for most people.
For Angela Zodrow, whose son was killed by an older driver, stricter relicensing policies are a reasonable price to pay.
"Yes, maybe it is a little difficult or inconvenient. I'm sorry about your inconvenience," she said. "It's harder to live without my son."
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