My experience of this is very mixed in the extreme. My grandfather continued to drive right up to when he died aged 92 (15+ yrs ago).
He only drove locally and I used to regularly travel as a passenger, quietly assessing his competence. In fairness to him he was
on point, keeping up with flow of traffic, quick enough reactions and could still parallel park, straight in, no messing.
MiL gave up driving 18 mths ago at 82 largely for financial reasons. She was however getting more anxious in traffic and wasn’t willing to drive above 40 anywhere.
However another situation we encountered in my extended family perhaps 10ish yrs ago was horrible. Long story short… A 75yr old man (with underlying health problems) lost control of the car on the drive way, knocked over his wife and ran over her leg. She can now barely walk.
Police decided not to press charges as he was devastated and gave up driving immediately.
An unexpected and very difficult situation arose from marketing post from the main dealer my Dad had bought the car from.
He had been a customer for years, having bought two cars from them and getting every service and MOT done by them.
He subsequently ended up on a number of different databases with them.
The problem was that every time a letter arrived from them, (MOT reminder, marketing etc) my Dad said “My car must be ready, I will go and pick it up” It opened up the whole driving thing again and caused a lot of distress.
I forget how many times I phoned them and explained the situation , to be assured that the data base had been updated and he wouldn’t receive any further comms, only for another letter to arrive.
In the end it took a formal letter to their Head Office to their Data Processing Officer quoting GDPR (I learnt something from all those work courses) to get it resolved. Their Company Secretary rang me and she was very helpful, she had a parent with dementia and understood what was happening.
She did a full search and over the years my Dad had been added to five different databases and she got him removed from all of them and the letters stopped.
Being able to easily manage without a car as a key factor for me as we are in process of buying a new gaff in Norfolk and with luck we could manage for the next 15 years - 1/2 mile to nearest supermarket / Doctors and a decent bus connection.
I had to give up recently for medical reasons, it’s a hard pill to swallow for lots of reasons, I get why older people might hang on longer than common sense says they should
