This is not your teenager’s driver’s ed.

In this class, no one gets behind the wheel to learn how to make a three-point turn. Instead, the instructor gives students exercises to loosen their neck muscles and strengthen their ankles. He tells them about special rearview mirrors. And he gives them a reality check.

“Our bodies after 50 are not the bodies of a 40-year-old or a 30-year-old,” says Ramiro C. Acosta. “We are never going to be what we once were.”

Acosta, a 75-year-old retired accountant, is the Spanish program coordinator for AARP’s Driver Safety Program. He teaches the six-hour class at the Kendall Regional Medical Center, hosted by Health-2-You/Los Saludables, a senior citizen group associated with the hospital. The AARP class, which covers topics from accident prevention to car-safety features, is offered in various locations across the state at least once a month. AARP members pay $12; others pay $14.

Most of his students are retirees hoping to get a discount on their car insurance. But Acosta wants them to take home more than savings.

“I want them to be able to drive in Miami as safely and with as little stress as possible,” he says.

More seniors are on the road than ever before, and organizations from AARP to AAA and the Florida Department of Transportation are taking note. If current trends continue, older drivers will also be staying behind the wheel longer. This is particularly true for Florida, which claims five of the nation’s top 10 cities with the highest median age, including Fort Lauderdale and Hialeah.

Statewide, more than 17 percent of the population is 65 and older, and those older folks make up 18 percent of drivers. As the baby boomer generation ages, demographers predict that by 2030, Florida’s 65-and-over set will make up 27 percent of the population and one in four drivers.

“We’re going to see a tremendous jump,” says Gail Holley, the Safe Mobility for Life manager for the Florida DOT. “We’ve already started to see it.”

The number of elderly drivers keeping their licenses has grown at a faster clip than the number of young drivers applying for them. A University of Michigan study, published last year in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, found that older licensed drivers now make up a greater percentage of total drivers than they used to. More of them are also continuing to drive well into their 80s.

Today, about 94 percent of 65- to 69-year-olds and 78 percent of those 70 and older have licenses — up from 79 percent and 55 percent, respectively, in 1983. In that same period, the number of drivers under age 40 dropped by 10 percentage points.

Researcher Michael Sivak says these changes will have “potentially major implications” for not only road travel but also car manufacturers. Though many transportation experts are pushing for alternatives to car travel, Acosta’s students in the AARP class say they want to drive for as long as they can.

“It’s a matter of independence,” Acosta says. “No one wants to turn in the keys.”

Many of them have taken the class several times to brush up on skills. Charles Garrido, 84, is one of them. He has been driving since he was 15, but he acknowledges that people his age need a refresher course because so much has changed. “This type of class makes you feel better and more secure in driving,” he says. “You have to drive defensively in Miami.”