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Reveal Everything Just to Keep a Driver's License Wes VernonDriving may obligate you to tell bureaucrats minute details of your health problems and other personal matters. Dean C. Eger of New Bern, N.C., was stunned when he received a 10-page questionnaire this month from the state Division of Motor Vehicles. Some of the 114 questions were to be answered by him, the others to be filled out by his physician. Failure to answer in 30 days "will result in cancellation or denial of your driving privilege." NewsMax.com has reviewed the questionnaire and found it to be extremely detailed and intrusive. A physician would have a hard time answering it without going back to the driver and asking questions the doctor himself had probably not thought to ask most patients. For example, how is a doctor to know at what age the patient started drinking alcohol or whether, in the absence of Alzheimer's disease, the patient has any memory problems? "I have not had one person I have asked say they have received such a message from the Division of Motor Vehicles," Eger told NewsMax.com. "I am very upset by the way our privacy is fading from the American scene. I do not want personal information going to every agency, government or commercial, which could, in some cases, be detrimental to one’s well-being." The 79-year-old Eger sounds very lucid and articulate on the phone. He sounds 30 or 40 years younger. But what really leaves him puzzled is that he is "blessed with great health and [has] been driving and have never had an accident." Wouldn’t anyone who had a record like that be surprised if, out of the blue, he were to receive a 10-page questionnaire demanding answers to 114 personal questions? Some clue as to the rationale for the questionnaire comes from Bill Jones, a spokesman for the North Carolina DMV. He told NewsMax.com that such inquiries were triggered when: A. A highway patrolman sees something that convinces him a motorist should not be driving, and he tells DMV. B. A driver's license examiner sees something curious during the motorist's application for renewal of his license, and submits that concern to DMV headquarters. C. Anyone – it could be a neighbor or a complete stranger – may write the DMV and express a concern about the eligibility of the motorist to be driving. D. An adult child of the motorist, out of concern for the parent's safety, will write to the DMV expressing a belief that the parent should not be driving. Eger shot down the last possibility in a conversation with NewsMax.com. His only adult child lives several states away and knows full well that he (Eger) has all his faculties. Here are samples of what North Carolina’s DMV wants to know: How Far to Your Church?
The doctor portion of the document requires him to say how long the motorist has been his patient. And if you ever had any apparently quaint notions about the privacy of your medical records, you can forget it. If the feds have to wait a while to prepare public opinion for a national medical ID card, complete with computerized records to your medical history, trust someone to find a way and a rationale to extract it through a back door. Someday, in order to hold on to your driver's license, you might be in the position of asking your physician to answer questions about your cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, "emotional" (Could one think of a more subjective category than that?) or "any other impairment." The doctor is asked to address his diagnosis, date and type of operations or treatments, and, in one case (hypoglycemia), the patient's "attitude" toward treatment. Does the patient have diabetes?
When was the patient’s last drink? (Do they think a person's doctor places a cop in the patient's home to observe whether he has a glass of wine with dinner?) Is the patient involved in "social or other type of health aid program such as mental health, private counseling"? Whose business is that? Bill Jones, the public information officer with North Carolina’s DMV, was very cooperative with NewsMax.com. With Southern courtesy, he explained that anyone targeted in such a manner as to receive such a questionnaire could, in a timely manner, find out the name of the person "who turned him in." However, he immediately sought other terminology on the grounds that many people who write the DMV (and the information must be submitted in writing, with a signature) do so out of concern for the driver and not necessarily in an adversarial spirit. Of course, there's no way of determining motivation. The move could as easily be prompted by malice or ignorance. All the driver has to do is visit his local DMV examiner's office and ask the name of the person whose letter triggered the mailing from the DMV. He should get back the information within "a matter of a few days." If he wanted to see the letter, complete with other information in the driver's medical file, he would have to write the DMV and ask for it. That should take 30 days. Jones said a federal drivers privacy act forbids any release of the information to the public or to other agencies. Even assuming the best of intentions here, there are privacy questions raised by the very idea of anyone "turning in" anyone, unbeknownst to the driver until he receives the shock in the mail. Perhaps that barrier has long been broken. The federal Internal Revenue Service for years has been openly encouraging informers to tell them of anyone whom they even suspect of evading taxes. It is legitimate to ask whether, even in the interest of safety on roads and highways, such an exhaustive, time-consuming and invasive inquiry is a case of overkill. And how easy is it to get around the federal privacy law involved? Are there teeth in it? Drivers who are subjected to this kind of intrusion into their lives are bound to ask themselves questions like that.
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