you really don't know what you are talking about - there are only two places in the State where you can drive on the Beach and neither one is a place where old coots are hanging out!
Driving close to the beach is as bad as on it. As for being allowed, how often do you hear of an elderly driver going the wrong way on the interstate. Check with any tow company near the ocean or Gulf and see how many "Beach Recovery" runs they make.
There are many places you can drive on the beach - New Smyrna Beach, Daytona, Amelia, Jacksonville, St. Augustine just to name some. And some of my neighbors ("old coots") do drive/park on the beach. The guy that's doing the paint on my car told me its very important to keep the car clean, especially one that visits the beach often.
Years ago, someone I thought might know said any car driven regularly within a mile of the ocean beach would see a lot of salt corrosion. His claim was the waves introduce a lot of salt into the air, and it carries inland as much as a mile. My '72 442 spent some time in Florida - not sure where, though - and it has corrosion in the dash, and in the electrical connections, that not even my '74 Camaro has. And I drove it through 5 Michigan winters.
We're staying at the beach, park as far back as I can, but every time I go anywhere I have to hit the windshield washers to clean the greasy salt film off the glass. Can't be good for a vehicle that is subjected to this over time.
When I ran a salvage yard, I got a couple of Florida cars in an auction lot. One had been driven into the ocean as part of an insurance con. The other was just from the area. It wasn't much better although the mechanical parts were salvageable. The Lincoln from the con was scrap except for the glass.