How to Take the Keys Away From an Elderly Driver: A Step-by-Step Guide

Our Parents ^ | February 24, 2024 | Staff

[DoodleBob]

1. Look for signs of unsafe driving

There’s no specific age to stop driving, but accidents resulting in injury or death do increase with age.[01] If you question your loved one’s ability to drive safely, consider riding with them occasionally and keeping notes of your observations. Be on the lookout for the following warning signs:

Increased accidents or tickets

Canceled car insurance policy or increased premiums

Signs of scrapes and minor collisions on their vehicle

An inability to turn their head to see behind the car and check blind spots

Trouble seeing at night

Driving the wrong way

Speeding on residential streets or driving too slowly on highways

Stopping at all intersections, regardless of signs and signals

Drifting across lanes

Forgetting to wear their seatbelt, turn on headlights, or use turn signals

Forgetting where they’re going or getting lost

Using the brakes instead of the gas pedal, and vice versa

Driving anxiety

Slowed response time

Trouble making decisions in the moment

…

Know your options if your loved one refuses to stop driving. Some families may take drastic action, like hiding a senior’s car keys or immobilizing their car. These steps may keep them off the road, but they can spark additional conflict and may be illegal. In some states, you can request a driver review with the DMV regarding elderly driving concerns. In some cases, speaking with the local police force about how to legally stop someone with dementia from driving may be necessary to keep your loved one safe.

[Loud Mime]

Good Information, Thanks!

[DoodleBob]

Let’s expand upon this analysis. Raw data miss the full picture, and age categories need to be fixed across analyses.

First, the fatalities must be adjusted for the size of each group.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2023/dl20.cfm

25-34 year olds: 17.3% of total drivers, 18.8% of deaths per World Traveler’s data. Deaths/ drivers: 1.09x.

65+ drivers: 22.2% of drivers, 20.1% of deaths per World Traveler’s data. Deaths/drivers: 0.91x.

On this simple metric, old people look “safer.” They punch below their weight.

However, this skips other salient data like miles driven data, as well as sex of the driver, if they’re drunk, and city vs highway driving patterns.

To avoid this becoming a doctoral dissertation, I will only integrate miles driven by age (circa 2000, so caveat emptor). https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

We see that 20-34 year olds’ average miles driven at 15,098 is about double that of the 65+ lot of 7,646.

If we apply the youths’ average to the number of drivers data (assuming the inclusion of 20-24 year olds and the differing time frames don’t cause too much bias), we find that 25-34 year olds drive 619 billion miles annually, about 1.5x more miles than the 65+ group at 404 billion miles.

However, the 25-34 year olds don’t have 1.5x more auto fatalities than the old folks. Indeed, the youngsters/oldsters deaths metric is 0.91x.

Put differently, 25-34 year olds die on the road for every 95 million miles they drive, versus every 55 million miles driven by 65+.

Adjusting for miles driven and number of drivers, older folks die more often on the road than youngsters.

[rlmorel]

I completely get this dynamic. It is a difficult situation.

My dad always came across to me as a very good driver, because he drove our family everywhere, and he seemed to be able to drive forever without having to take a break, and I never felt unsafe. We drove up and down the East coast as kids, drove all the way across the country on our way to California where we would take a plane to his next duty station in Japan, and he drove us through a tour of Europe, and he seemed superhuman to me. He could just drive and drive. No head nodding. No weaving. He was like an iron presence.

We all slept in the back with the seats down, and so many times I would wake up, and everyone else in the car was dead asleep, but I could see the back of my dad's crewcut head, unfiltered Pall Mall cigarette dangling out the side of his mouth, radio on low, and green highway signs appearing momentarily before disappearing into the blackness of the road traveled behind us.

I felt completely safe in that car.

In his entire life, I never recall him ever putting even so much as a dent in the family car, never had an accident that I know of.

The only time I ever felt alarmed with him was when I came home on leave one time when I was maybe 19-20, and my dad called home one night and needed someone to pick him up because his car had been stolen. He worked in Cambridge, MA as an operations manager at a bank (this was his job after he retired from the Navy) and had stopped at a shopping center to get a pack of cigarettes, and when he came out, his car was gone. (this was about 30 miles from where we lived)

For me at that time, before GPS, driving into Boston was like Columbus sailing the Ocean Blue in 1492. There be dragons. I didn't have any experience, and Boston, with its aggressive, rude, unforgiving, nasty drivers, and byzantine roads that were, rumor has it, developed from old cow paths, was fearful terra incognita for me.

And Cambridge, on the perimeter of Boston, was just as bad as the core city.

But I dutifully jumped into my beloved 1966 Doge van that had a automatic shift stick that protruded from the dashboard, and drove towards the Fresh Pond Mall, a high crime area in the city of Cambridge where my dad was stranded.

I picked him up, and pulled back out on the road and entered an awful, hideous two lane traffic circle adjacent to the mall. (We call it a rotary, others may call it a roundabout)

It was the height of rush hour, and in 1978-79, it was absolutely clogged with cars. No quarter was asked from drivers, and none was given. It was not driving for people who were inexperienced navigating it, or who were faint of heart, and I was both in that situation.

When I got to the rotary, I could not get into the rotary. The rule of thumb is that the people in the rotary have the right of way so you have to yield to them, but with traffic that congested there was never an opening. And by God, people were damn well not going to leave a space or wave you in. I don't know how long I sat there at the mouth of the rotary, but people behind me began honking their horns at me.

My dad sized up the situation and said "Let me drive."

In the middle of this huge, nasty traffic snarl, I jumped out of the driver seat and ran around the van to the passenger seat and my dad took over. I watched in astonishment how when he got behind the wheel, not looking left or right, he just pulled into the rotary traffic in a horribly scary and perfunctory way!

I would have never been able to do that, and my dad knew it. He had been navigating that stretch every single day for years.

When I later mentioned to my dad that I couldn't believe how he pulled into that traffic, he simply said "You have to do it. You have to see them in your peripheral vision and not even turn your head. You can't make eye contact with the oncoming drivers, because they take that as a personal challenge and will make it impossible for you to pull in. So you look at them out the corner of your eye, and when you see the slightest opening, you look straight ahead and go for it."

I never learned that rule in Driver's Education.

My Dad was a high-functioning alcoholic for most of his life, and I never remember him driving intoxicated until he was older and we were all out of the house, but I didn't realize he was an alcoholic until I was in my late teens and early twenties, so I may simply not have been seeing it.

But when he reached sixty, it was clear his alcohol was taking control of him in a way it had not before, and I was living at home after I got out of the Navy and had to drive to various bars in the towns to find him and bring him home, which was sad and humiliating to me, because I hero-worshiped my dad.

That was very tough for me, having to go into bars and convince him to go home. My parents were close to divorce at that point (my mother had a lifetime of his alcohol abuse) and my entire family was very alarmed that he was going to kill someone, or himself.

We had a family intervention and he understood, entered an inpatient alcoholism program at a nearby hospital, and became sober. But he was a solid driver until he died at the age of 75.

My mother, however, was another story.

My dad was at sea a lot when we were kids, and my mom had to raise six of us all by herself, and it made her crazy. As kids, we fought like all families (even more so) but sometimes the physical attacks on each other would get too much for her in that enormous white 1965 Chrysler New Yorker with that huge 400 cubic inch engine in it, and she would stomp it to the pedal and accelerate to speeds of up to 100 mph as we cried in terror for her to slow down.

Her hair, nearly standing on end because we were driving her so crazy, would yell "I'm not slowing this car down until you kids behave yourselves!"

To which we would sobbingly assent to get her to slow down. He dangerous and scary driving was a lifetime experience. We used to call her behind her back "Old Leadfoot" and her seeming ignorance of road conditions or traffic was always alarming to us. When I was in high school, she was driving me over to Fort Devens to get a new pair of glasses, and as we navigated this curvy back country road in our 1972 Plymouth Cricket (a manual transmission) she was...knitting! While she was driving! I watched the unfolding road in front of us in terror as I stole quick glances at her behind the wheel knitting, and at one point the car began to drift towards the non-existent shoulder where there was a huge 6 foot high boulder. As the trajectory of the car began to point us inexorably at the large boulder, and it got closer, I said "Mom...Mom...MOOOOMMMMM! and she looked up over her granny glasses, steered back to the center of the road and went on knitting!

On a funny related story, back in the late Seventies when we had the gas crunch of 1978, mopeds became a big thing, and my dad purchased one. I have no idea why he got it, because he sure as hell was not going to ride it. One day in 1980, my mother wanted to take it out for some reason (she was maybe 50 years old at the time, and I never once in my life ever saw her even ride a bicycle!) so...she got on the moped, had my brother show her how to start and use it, and got my sister-in-law on the back, and off they went! (This picture below memorializes the "priceless" event!)

We lived on an extremely busy main road into town, and sometime later, we noticed that traffic was light to non-existent. We walked out to the road, and there she was coming down the road at maybe 15 mph on that moped with my sister-in-law on the back. Behind her was a huge caravan of cars being impeded by her slow moped! To this day, I can see all those cars behind her as if in a parade, her sitting bolt up right on the seat of the moped, her hair being pushed out sideways on each side by the airstream (as if it meant to turn her hair into airfoils to make her go faster) and her granny glasses on her nose!

My sister-in-law was so frightened she never drove with her again.

What made me decide to insist on driving if I went anywhere with her was an experience I had as she drove me somewhere in my father's large 1979 Chevrolet Caprice Classic. She was doing her classic "old granny driving" as I anxiously scanned the roadway ahead. Suddenly and without warning in the middle of a moderately busy roadway, she simply stopped the car in the milddle of the road and said conversationally "I don't feel like driving. Would you drive?" and opened the door and got out.

If you have ever seen the movie "Jurassic Park", there is a scene where the passengers are in automated vehicles (going through the dinosaur preserve) which you aren't supposed to get out of (for obvious reasons) and Jeff Goldblum's character (Dr. Ian Malcom, a celebrity hipster scientist) who, being divorced multiple times is always on the lookout for a future Ex-Mrs. Malcom) is flirting with Dr. Grant's girlfriend, to whom he is explaining "Chaos Theory"...

ELLIE: I'm still not clear on chaos.

MALCOLM: It simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems. The shorthand is the Butterfly Effect. A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine. (Ellie waves her hand over her head, indicating that explanation went right over her head.)

MALCOLM: [laughing] Did I go too fast? I did a fly-by.

ELLIE: I missed it.

MALCOLM: Here. Give me your glass of water. We'll perform an experiment. [and tries to get a better look.]

MALCOLM: The car should be still, but that's okay. It's just an example. Put your hand flat like a hieroglyphic. A drop of water falls on your hand. Which way will the drop roll off? Which finger?

ELLIE: Thumb, I'd say. [Malcolm places the drop of water on Ellie's hand. It rolls off the back.]

MALCOLM: Ah ha. Okay, freeze your hand. Don't move. I'll do the same thing, start with the same place again. Which way now?

ELLIE: Let's say back the same way. [Malcolm drops the water again, and gasps.]

MALCOLM: It changed. Why? Because tiny variations... The orientation of the hairs on your hand...

ELLIE: Alan, look at this. (She says this nervously to her boyfriend Dr. Alan Grant, as Dr. Malcom is holding her hand in an intimate manner as he gazes suggestively into her eyes. Grant’s attention is outside the vehicle. He notices something and isn't paying attention to his girlfriend)

MALCOLM: ..The amount of blood distending your vessels... Imperfections in the skin...

ELLIE: "Imperfections in the skin"?

MALCOLM: Oh, just microscopic... Microscopic... That never repeat and vastly effect that outcome. That's...what?

ELLIE: Unpredictability. (Grant’s curiosity finally gets the better of him, and he opens the door of the vehicle and jumps out.)

MALCOLM: There! Look at this. See? I'm right again. Nobody could predict that Dr. Grant would jump out of a moving vehicle.

ELLIE: (getting out as well Alan?

MALCOLM: (talking to himself in an empty vehicle) And there's another example. See, here I am now by myself, um, uh, talking to myself. That's Chaos Theory.

That scene exemplifies exactly how I felt when my mother just stopped that car in the middle of the road and just jumped out. I suspect my mouth opened and closed a few times like a landed fish, but I scooted over behind the wheel and off we went.

Both my parents passed away before someone had to take the keys away from them. It has been 20years now since she died (he went five years before her, and they are both buried in Arlington National Cemetery) and I miss them terribly. But their driving behaviors still stick in my. mind, and make me laugh with pleasure at the memory of them! (Well, mostly pleasure)

[PGR88]

My mom drove until she was 93, although only to church, and the grocery store. She insisted on it, as I believe it was the last connection to her youth, and her own personal freedom.

By chance, I saw her driving through town once, and it was a bit nerve-wracking.

She finally agreed to give up driving on her own volition after a case of shingles blurred her vision in one eye.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

This is an interesting question because as others point out, young people are dangerous drivers too. In a perfect world, the answer would be to retest everyone periodically and more stringently if they get into accidents. But that would have a large cost associated with it.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "Adjusting for miles driven and number of drivers, older folks die more often on the road than youngsters."

No problem with your analysis. Older people do die more often than the young, and some are passengers in vehicles, so the data need be even more granular. Generally, I go with the insurance companies whose profits are generated by making the safest bets possible.

[nomorelurker]

“Had to report my father to the DMV due to his dementia. His wife was putting him in the car and telling him where to turn etc. So unsafe”

That was my wife and me personally. Except I let her drive my eyes were so bad. She was actually a very safe driver, stopped at all signs, looked both ways, did not speed or drive too slowly etc. Problem was she could not remember where we were going so I would have to tell her turn left at the next intersection, etc. We would going to a Walmart she had been to a thousand plus times and she could not remember the way and this was less than a five mile trip.

I am not sure if I will renew my DL when the time comes.

[Go_Raiders]

I remember my 89 year old dad gleefully telling me about some poor guy that drove into a Trader Joe’s in the San Francisco Bay Area. I told him that was a pretty odd thing to be happy about because it could very well be him doing something similar in a few months.

Six months later, my 88 year old mom snatched the keys from my dad when he got his foot stuck under the brake pedal and ended up barely tapping the bumper of the car stopped in front of him. He meekly accepted, because he knew that it could have been worse.

Six months later, my dad was in a skilled nursing facility, and my mom half tore the bumper off her car backing out of the visitor parking.

When I saw the car a few days later-

Me: What happened to the car mom?

Her: Oh, it was already loose before that. It’ll just pop right back in.

Me: Seems like you made dad stop driving for a little scuff mark. Don’t you think this is far more serious?

Her: I only drive to the store, the bank and the post office.

Me: So it’s okay if you only put the people between home and those places at risk?

Her: I’m a careful driver.

My two brothers took her side, parroting her talking points faithfully. Completely in denial. Soon thereafter, my father passed, and we eventually convinced her to move to a really comfortable full service senior community, and leave the car for her granddaughter who bought her old house.

[navymom1]

I appreciate your sharing, and I’m so sorry about your eyesight. I hope God blesses you both immensely

[DoodleBob]

Agreed. Many younger folks die with parents behind the wheel.

Insurance and all products’ prices reflect not just risk assessment but what price the market will bear, as well as state regulators’ mandates. And other factors. Indeed, the rich premiums paid by youngsters who “must” drive likely offset loss-leaders in other brackets; if junior picked Allstate because pop picked Allstate, dropping pop likely has a ripple effect.

Have a great day.

[wintertime]

This is so sad to read.

[willk]

Have them buy a Tesla with Full Self Driving. As a bonus, if they croak while on the road, the car will turn on its flashers and slow to a stop. Seriously, Tesla Full Self Driving is amazing. Just say “Take me to Safeway” and it will take you there. It will even park itself. You still have control over speed and aggressiveness.

[AlaskaErik]

[Openurmind]

“I’m 77.

Traveled 2,000,000 road miles over 40 year span. ZERO accidents.”

So did they give you any just reason for making you wait until you were 37 before they would let you have your license?

[catnipman]

and yet in high school, kids were taking their brand new muscle cars full of young girls and ramming them into oak trees, killing everyone in fiery crashes, or racing trains to the next crossing and not making it, or getting high on dry cleaner fluid and blowing red lights ...

[Openurmind]

No disrespect meant, just trying to do the math with that?

[AlaskaErik]

If you calculate the annual cost for owning a car, add the cost of operating it might turn out that Uber is better.

I consider Uber/Lyft to be a very poor substitute for having your own vehicle. Wait times can be long and you have to go outside to get in and out. I can go into my garage and leave without ever stepping outside. I can also unload my purchases in the comfort of my garage. I don't care about the cost. I made financial decisions a long time ago that ensured I would have a comfortable retirement.

A better solution is to have a vehicle with all the safety technology available today. Even the oldest vehicle in our fleet is loaded with safety technology such as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert, pedestrian detection, automatic emergency braking, rear automatic emergency braking, just to name a few. But too many old people want a land yacht from the 90s because it doesn't have any technology.

[DoodleBob]

Or, the Tesla will see you’re old, and euthanize you.

/sarc, sort of.

[Tennessee Nana]

In New Zealand years ago drivers use to have to take a physical and a psychological test at age 70 to continue driving...

They were issued a new license if they passed the tests ...

[DoodleBob]

New Zealand was also one of the worst nations with regarded to Covid.

Further, Euthanasia became legal in New Zealand when the End of Life Choice Act 2019 took full effect on 7 November 2021.

Mebbe they’ll off grandpa if he fails the driver’s test!