When is it time to give up driving?

[GER308]

Originally Posted by Murk

I took away all my father's keys the day he came home 8 hours after he said he would be back and couldn't account for where he had been the whole time and had a cracked in headlight. There had been another incident where he got lost and ended up about 4 hours past where he was trying to go before then. He yelled at me and my sisters about it for 4 years. He still brings it up occasionally and it's been 7-8 years now. He was somewhere around 73-75 and not in the greatest health.

My mother is 72 now and drives as well as she ever did. I can't imagine she will have to give up her car for a long time, but when the time does come, she won't complain.

My dad was always scary to ride with but as his Alzheimers began it took a whole new demension. Finaly the DMV took is licence away and it was a good thing. Once a few years later with advanced alzheimers he found my mom´s keys, slipped out and drove off. At this time he normally could not recognize anyone or anything. We called the police and were rather worried. He ended up coming home an hour later with no idea where he had been or how he found his way back.

My mom gave up driving when she felt her vision had deteriorated too much.

I was sitting on my motorcycle at a red light once and a elderly woman who could barly see ploughed into me from behind. My bike was totaled and I was lucky to only have fairly minor injurys.

[Hemlock140]

It's definitely something that depends on the person, and their families. No one size fits all. My mother in law stopped at age 83 after her second hip replacement, just as we were about to persuade her she thought of it on her own. My parents both still drive at 85 and 82, without problems though they don't drive at night. I have an aunt that just stopped driving at age 99, and she's in the San Francisco Bay area. Her older sister (deceased) drove until 92.

[AZDesertBrat]

Originally Posted by Escort Rider

That was funny! Thanks for posting it.

On the more serious side, I wonder what percentage of people over, say, 80 give up driving on their own at an appropriate time and what percentage ignore the urgings of their adult children and perhaps others in a stubborn delusional belief that they are still fine with driving. (I do not mean to imply that everyone over 80 needs to give up driving - I am wondering about the subset of people over 80 who are truly impaired).

I know a lady who is an example of the former, and I applaud her rationality. She is about 86 or 87 and has macular degeneration. She had given up driving at night a few years ago, and decided about six months ago that it was time to give it up totally. Her life is a lot less convenient now, but she contributed to her own safety and that of other road users.

We've all heard stories of the stubborn ones, whose adult children are sometimes frantic about how to force the issue. My own mother continued to drive past the point where my sister and I were concerned, but finally gave it up on her own before we had to play hardball about it.

My mom started talking about not driving anymore when she turned 85. She wasn't going to renew her drivers license but then gave in and got it anyway. She drove for the next two years but it was very rare. I either took her to run errands or did them for her. She went, once a month, to run her important errands and if I had to work she drove herself. She quit driving at night years ago. She had a big huge station wagon and I tried to talk her into downsizing. Said she needed to keep it in case she had to haul stuff from Home Depot! In order to drive it she had a BIG stack of cushions to sit on and had to put the seat all the way up to reach the gas and brakes. She was barely 4'11". Every time I watched her climb up on that pile of cushions I thought about The Princess and the Pea. lol