I’ve just been out dead-heading at the front of the house, and seen a couple of my elderly neighbours totter out unsteadily and ease themselves into their cars before gingerly heading into the traffic.
Frankly in terms of vision, hearing, reaction times and even reasoning there is no way that they’re safe to drive.
I guess up to a point the congestion here mitigates the worst of it. It’s difficult to get over 15mph so the eventual inevitable crash is less likely to be lethal.
A few years ago my next door neighbour’s Fiat Punto suddenly developed a dent at the front and a panned-in driver’s door. I wondered how he’d managed to do both. It turned out that he had run into a larger lady, who wasn’t really hurt but was so enraged she kicked the door in, accounting for the second dent.
It was at this point he gave up his license.
So what are your experiences with stopping driving? Or experiences with older relatives.
My mother had several shunts which of course were everybody else’s fault and the GP told her to hand in her license. We refused to get in the car with her - it was downright bloody terrifying. Eventually license renewal time came along with a questionnaire and I told her that she could say that she hadn’t had a stroke but that we both knew that it would be a lie.
Similarly MiL tried to hang onto hers “in case there was an emergency”. In reality she really struggles to even get into a car and eventually DVLA talked to her GP and immediately took her license off her.
As for myself - I haven’t driven in a couple of years, and what turned out to be my last journey involved a cock up where I was lucky to get away with a fine rather than driving into something / someone. TBH I doubt I’ll drive again given the lack of practice and my increasingly wobbly presentation.
My experience with my Dad was quite difficult.
His dementia was getting worse but he had no realisation of that, as far as he was concerned he was fine.
The car got a bashed wing mirror (Someone did that with a trolley at Sainsbury’s) and a myriad of scratches and dents. He was going through 3 to 4 clutches a year and blamed the garage.
I couldn’t get him to even talk about it.
I the end I rang his GP who had been my GP and I had a good relationship with.
The GP contacted DVLA and his licence was revoked.
He hid the letter.
I took away the keys.
He knew.
It was horrible, eventually his dementia solved the problem most of the time.
But the moments of clarity were quite acrimonious.
The car and driving was one of the worst parts of his disease.
Sorry if I sound flippant but haha, my mother used to do that as well.
She had a footstool with a cushion on top of it and anything that she didn’t understand or that gave her the fear got hidden under the cushion. I’d have to poke around there occasionally to dig out bank cards, unpaid bills and so on.
All my grandparents stopped of their own volition, although I suspect in the case of my grandad, it was a little later than would have been ideal. My one remaining grandmother did recently voice the idea of driving again, just within the village, but I think the reaction from various folk has made her reconsider.
Now I look back on it, during the period where I had both undiagnosed sleep apnoea and undiagnosed ADHD, I must have been a massive liability without really realising it either. I suspect the fact that my reaction times have always been fairly good has probably saved my bacon on a few occasions.
My mother is 83. Prior to my dad’s death a couple of years ago, she hadn’t driven for about 5 years.
She wanted the mobility benefit of driving, but I was convinced that it would be a bad idea, as was my sister. She’s had health issues, mostly cured, and also some cognitive decline.
I put her into my Uber account, and buy her National Express tickets as she can’t internet - they just get sent to her phone. This gives her reasonable independence.
Despite being reasonably financially secure, she struggles with the idea of getting taxis - me showing her how much cheaper 4 taxis per week is compared to getting a car didn’t help at all! What actually really helped was getting an account with a local taxi company rather than Uber - she trusted that more.
The other thing that really helped was the fact that my parents downsized about 20 years ago, and live urban rather than rural. Having a few shops etc walkable is huge for the elderly. My in-laws don’t have this, and they are struggling with a lot of things now.
Reading this thread makes me grateful not to have had to deal with this - my dad died young enough (and drove well enough) not to be an issue, and - THANK FUCKING FUCK! - my mother never got a driving licence.
I see people driving every day who very clearly have already died and just refuse to lie down. One old girl recently drove into the back of a parked SUV in the village - hit it so hard her car was nearly flipped on its side, absolutely wrecked the rear offside quarter of the hit-ee:
She just drove off.
CCTV only filmed it side-on and no-one got her number, so she hasn’t been traced… Still out there, probaby still driving.
If you know someone like this - fuck their fee-fees: get them off the road - they kill.
Thankfully my late mother gave up driving about 5 years prior to developing dementia so that was one issue that I didn’t have to deal with.
My best friend’s mum never forgave my friend for selling her car from under her. She was fond of a tipple and still driving in her late eighties. She moaned about it vociferously for the rest of her life.
I also had a friend who only gave up driving in her late eighties after numerous bumps and scrapes. I think it was the ridiculous insurance renewal costs that finally convinced her to give up the car.
Sam’s grandad kept driving despite severe cataracts - “I’m fine - other people drive too fast and get too close…”. Kept at it well into his 90s, the selfish old cunt.
The usual excuse I hear is “I’m not using/there’s no/ public transport!” - apart from that being a fairly shit excuse if you live anywhere non-rural, motherfucking TAXIS are a thing you senile fucks!
Sam’s mum won’t use them because they cost, like, money n’everything - never mind the fact she’s not short of it, and buying and running a car costs more…
At least she doesn’t drive any more, instead she just moans fucking endlessly about how she never goes anywhere and can’t get to the shops…
Like all old people, her chief joy in life is moaning about stuff.
I feel there’s a smidge of a difference between moaning you can no longer be a danger to the public, and moaning about people who try to insist on being a danger to the public.
I don’t relish the day when I have to tell my parents to stop but they are beginning to self restrict in a way that means I don’t think it’ll be a family destroying fight.
My maternal Grandmother continued to drive until she was 91 but she was something of an edge case as all signs suggested she made some sort of faustian pact with some dark entity for a life of near perfect health followed by everything failing at once. Her daily was one of these until she was nearly seventy;
My paternal Grandfather on the other hand was a dreadful driver for his entire life (worth noting, as he was born in 1909, he never formally passed a UK test) and only got worse as he got older. He drove my brother and I back to school once. The highest speed we attained on the trip was 42mph and it ranks as one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. My father and Uncle took the car away about a year later.
I wonder if an element here is that before our grandparents, driving was much less common, and often happened at much slower speeds (plus life expectancy was shorter). Most of us have likely seen at least one parent/grandparent keep driving way beyond the point they should have stopped, which at least gives an awareness of how fucking terrifying it can be when someone like that gets behind the wheel, and so some are at least a little more amenable to stepping back at a more appropriate point.
It might be more accurate to say there are fewer physical restrictions that force people to stop. A ‘modern’ (by which I mean last decade or so) car- even cheap ones- have power assisted controls and plentiful availability in automatic form. They can be driven by people who would be physically unable to drive an older car with less power assistance. This means in turn that awareness and vision issues become more apparent as an issue.
My step-dad drove for a living from, I think, his late thirties to his late seventies. I don’t remember ever seeing him take a bus or a train. He was still driving when the vascular dementia that would eventually kill him began to show. My mum was dreading trying to get his car keys off him. Then one day he ran a red light. The traffic was light and he was travelling slowly and I don’t think there was even a collision - the cross traffic just had to stop for him. It brought home to him how inattentive he’d become and he just quit driving without anyone having to say a word.
Similar story to N’s Dad. He had become a poor (but not yet dangerous) driver. I had to have the conversation on one of our trips to Oz. He had plenty of options; free taxis, good public transport, not to mention saving on ins and running costs. He said that he would consider it.
A few weeks after having the chat, he ran a red light at a large intersection. No collision but he ended up with two wheels jammed into a gutter, with damaged rims/tyres.
He called his son to pick him up and dispose of the car.
I haven’t driven for several years now. I was on anti-nausea medication that made me excessively drowsy so making it impossible to drive. I’ve since changed my medication regime but never really felt ready to drive again so I’ve retired.
I find the common refusal to get taxis (experienced on both sides of the family here too) very interesting.
I’m sure economists have a phrase for the misguided belief that taxis cost money, but the never-ending stream of bills for a car (purchase, petrol, insurance, MOT, service, breakdown, road tax ad nauseam) is somehow free.
A few years ago (maybe Sept 2020, during ‘eat out to help out’) C and I went to a country restaurant for Saturday night dinner. It was a place we’d been before. We got the bus to the nearest stop and walked in twilight to the restaurant, planning to ask the place to order us a cab home once we were done eating and chatting. When we tried this though, around 22:30 I think, they came back and said they’d tried the three local firms and a couple rather further away and no-one would offer us a ride before 00:30 by which time they (the restaurant) would have been locked up for half an hour.
Sure, it was a Saturday night, so the hardest time of the week to get a cab. And we could probably have pre-booked one (but we didn’t know how the evening would go). And we would be drinking so our own car was never a viable alternative (although C might have volunteered to stay sober).
But the restaurant told us that cabs were simply very much harder to get than they had been 2-3 years previously. I have little experience of them (I use buses and trains a good deal) but do other out-of-city people find their local cab availability has come under pressure from driver shortages in the last 5-10 years ? Before that I can’t ever remember having to wait more than 30-40 mins for a cab from an eatery, even on a Saturday night, and they could often be there in less than 15 mins.
Think they’re nearly all working for Uber now, during lockdown most taxi drivers switched to Deliveroo/Ubereats for work. My local cab company (radio taxis) was always great for cars on demand but is now nigh on impossible to call up for one that same night.
