by Jenna Schweikert and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)
Capitol News Illinois
A law coming into effect on July 1 will increase the age at which older drivers must take a driving test to renew their license. The 2025 law, titled the Road Safety and Fairness Act, also creates a process for immediate family members to report declines in cognitive or physical health to the state for review.
The minimum age for a driving test will be increased from 79 to 87, although drivers aged 79 and over will still have to take a vision test and, if they have a driving offence, a written test.
Foreign Minister Alexi Giannoulias said on Twitter welcomed the law as “replacing outdated, age-based testing with a smarter, data-driven focus on a person’s ability to drive safely – not his or her age.”
Drivers between the ages of 81 and 86 must personally renew their driver’s license every two years. The law for drivers aged 87 and older – annual driver’s license renewal with both a vision and a driving test – will not change. In 2022, the General Assembly and Secretary of State worked to adjust licensing requirements through emergency regulations and a later trailer law, amid a pandemic-related license renewal backlog.
Illinois still has one of the strictest renewal requirements for older drivers. But a 2023 report Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias shows that drivers age 75 and older are involved in the fewest number of crashes compared to any other age group. The Road Safety and Fairness Act was passed by the General Assembly in May 2025 with bipartisan support and signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker in August.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government reporting to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
