Driving While Elderly

~ Laura

On Wednesday night, Ruth finished her shift at Trader Joe’s and went outside to get a shopping cart for herself, so she could pick up some frozen pizzas for her family before going home. As she pulled the cart out of the cart rack in front of the store, an elderly woman backed her car out of a handicapped spot and lost control of the car. The car directly hit Ruth throwing her through the glass store front. Her legs became tangled in the metal cart rack and one leg was severred above the knee. An ER nurse who happened to be in the store at the time saved her life.

Ruth’s kids and Jonah were in the scouts together in our old town. I didn’t know her well, but she is very close with good friends of mine. It is devastating news for the whole community.

Ruth is the second person that I know who was serious hurt after getting run over by an elderly person who lost control of the car.

There are some very obvious fixes to this problem. Too bad they aren’t politically viable. #aarp

Published by Laura

34 thoughts on “Driving While Elderly”

  1. My mom drove for about a year after her diagnosis with Alzheimers. The doctor said she could go to the church and the store only, both trips of less than a mile that she had made many hundreds of times. She never lost control of the car, but one day she got off course. She couldn’t find her way home or tell anybody where she was so dad had to call the police to find her. That stopped the driving, which means my dad has to go to church much more often than he did before.

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  3. We were just discussing this issue at home — I see it as broader than just driving. We set rules for legal competence based on age for children, and, those rules are set independently of the functioning of a particular child (my kids certainly think they should be able to vote, and even my 10yo is a quite sophisticated analyst of political information).

    Like the cognitive sophistication that comes with growing up/development, the cognitive declines that occur with age can occur subtly and insidiously (that is, the age inverse of the insurance advertisement that warned of the undeveloped frontal lobe function of teens and young adults).

    We haven’t come to grips with the fact that adults also become legally incompetent and how to deal with it, and as issue that becomes a bigger deal as we live longer, healthier lives. I’d be intrigued on knowing what the obvious, but politically unfeasible fixes are. know that there ae legal implications to driving and stroke — when someone has a stroke, a doctor has to sign off before the person is allowed to drive again.

    And, with driving, the lack of public transportation is a big bar to people making rational decisions about their driving ability.

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  4. There are some very obvious fixes to this problem. Too bad there aren’t politically viable. #aarp

    Yeah. You said it.

    I mean, obviously, going by statistics from the Census, we should severely restrict the ability of people aged 20 – 44 to drive.

    Click to access 12s1114.pdf

    Matter of fact, we shouldn’t let anyone drive until they’re 55. Obviously.

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  6. And, they pay much, much higher insurance.

    The link shows that drivers 24 and younger and 75 and over are more likely to be in fatal crashes than their distribution in the population of licensed drivers. Interesting, actually, that the higher rate of accidnets for >75yo only holds for fatal accidents, though (28/100K, which is higher than rates for 25-74 yo, though lower than that for 20-24 yo, 36/100K). It’s a notable difference (rates of 4/100 v 28/100K v 14/100 v 36/100K for young drivers). Makes me wonder if older drivers aren’t reporting non-fatal accidents.

    To consider whether fear of older drivers is age bias, I’d also like to see those figures as a function of driver miles.

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    1. My understanding is that the rates for the elderly are so low only because they don’t drive so far. I was run into in a parking lot by a man who obviously had fairly severe cognitive impairment, and had been in accidents in the same parking lot two other times. The insurance company said they couldn’t determine fault, and I had to pay my deductible.

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  7. “Fatality rates for drivers begin to climb after age 65, according to a recent study by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, based on data from 1999-2004. From ages 75 to 84, the rate of about three deaths per 100 million miles driven is equal to the death rate of teenage drivers. For drivers 85 and older, the fatality rate skyrockets to nearly four times higher than that for teens.”

    http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-02-older-drivers-usat1a_N.htm

    and, there are apparently restrictions on elderly drivers (as there are on teen drivers), in some states:

    http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-01-elderly-drivers-table_N.htm. Interesting how different the requirements are. New Mexico, for example, requires yearly renewal of license for +75 yo with a note from a doctor. New Jersey doesn’t have any requirements and neither does New York (for elderly drivers).

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  8. As bj noted, the lack of public transportation makes this a really difficult conversation to have with elderly drivers. And by elderly, I am talking 80+. My father in law is 85, and I refuse to get in a car with him. I have nudged my husband several times about this, but also feel that I cannot make the call because he is not my father. Taking away his ability to drive would be the beginning of the end for him – living in the suburbs, he has nowhere he could go without a car. Seeing this, I have started talking to my husband about retiring to a city when the time comes. I don’t want to be in the position where I have to choose between potentially killing someone and being completely socially isolated.

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    1. “As bj noted, the lack of public transportation makes this a really difficult conversation to have with elderly drivers. And by elderly, I am talking 80+.”

      That is very true. But speaking as a former bus commuter, it’s also true that the bus requires quite a lot of physical hardiness and stamina. How many of us, when we are 80+ years old, want to walk to a bus stop, wait however long, walk up the steps onto the bus, fumble for change or card, not get a seat, stand up the whole ride, get off, walk from the stop to wherever you’re going, and then repeat this all backwards with the encumbrance of shopping bags? No thanks. (And no, people are probably not going to give you a seat if you live in one of the ruder, me-first parts of the country. I was pregnant in the DC area and a heavy public transportation user, and only 4 people ever gave me a seat, no matter how pregnant I got.)

      I’m waiting for Google Cars to solve this problem for us. I love this video, where a blind guy test-drives a self-driving Google Car.

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      3. The buses are free in Pittsburgh if you are over 65. The driver is supposed to ask for a card (because it’s only supposed to be for county residents), but I’ve never seen them do so with somebody obviously old. The new buses don’t have steps. The floors are much closer to the ground and the driver can (and always does) make the bus go lower if it looks like the person getting on or off is older. I’ve never seen somebody not move for a person who looked old or pregnant here.

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    2. My father and grandmother argued all the time over his refusal to allow my grandmother to drive. My mother drove 30 minutes to her house to take her to the doctor and CVS. My grandmother *hated* that. My grandmother died at age 86 but my father had taken away the car for some years before then.

      My mom is 68 now, almost 69.

      Btw, I was in a gas station/convenience store a little while ago, on my way between a doctor’s appointment (checkup–my BP is great, in case you were worried 😉 and picking up my son from school, and a woman came in losing her mind because she couldn’t figure out how to get from this convenience store to her son’s school, and her phone wouldn’t give her directions. LOL. She pulled up the map of the school, and we were on the same street as the school, just 2.5 miles south. But she couldn’t figure out where she was by looking at the map. I told her to follow me and the school was about a block further than where I was turning right.

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    3. A while back, I was behind an elderly driver who broke some minor traffic laws. I suggested to my daughter that the woman should take the train instead of driving. I said to my daughter, if you ever see me do that, tell me to take the train, and I’ll know that you mean it’s time for me to stop driving. It became a kind of running joke for telling me I’m being spacey. But, my husband and I have seriously talked about either moving to the city itself or into a walkable town that’s on the train line. We’re actually near the bus line where we are, but the train is better.

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  9. What a tragedy for Ruth and her family, and a nightmare for the elderly driver and her family. We are currently going through the very difficult experience of taking away the license of an elderly loved one. It is clear to everyone except her that she can no longer drive safely. The state is not very helpful, a number of health professionals have looked the other way, and without the fortitude of several family members and the help of one physician, this could be our family’s nightmare as well.

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  10. About five years ago, we sold my mom’s car (she was in her late 70s). It was traumatic but the pain was eased because there was bus service close by. She walks more now than ever — and can get a little stir crazy if she doesn’t get outside for her walk when the weather is bad.

    On the Canadian real estate site (MLS.ca), houses now come with a walkability score — a useful tool for anyone looking to give up their car.

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  11. My FIL would carry around $500 in cash when he still drove for all the times he would back into someone in the parking lot. We found this out after he failed his driver’s test at 85.

    He drove long after he was sharp enough to operate a vehicle – ending up disoriented and drove down the wrong side of a main street.

    It was easier for my MIL to give up driving but she kept her car until she passed away. It was a symbol of independence.

    I think for both of them, driving was a status symbol as well as independence. They both grew up poor and to own a car was a huge deal. Also, changing their routine (cabs and Handi-darts vs. a car) was really stressful. Their world became much smaller.

    Big cities with good transit are great for retirees. A city like Vancouver that’s oriented towards the outdoors with spotty transit? Not so much.

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    1. “My FIL would carry around $500 in cash when he still drove for all the times he would back into someone in the parking lot. We found this out after he failed his driver’s test at 85.”

      Oh my goodness.

      “He drove long after he was sharp enough to operate a vehicle – ending up disoriented and drove down the wrong side of a main street.”

      A relative I’m not going to further identify (but who was not old at all when they started doing this) used to wind up on the wrong side of the road a lot through sheer absent-mindedness.

      “I think for both of them, driving was a status symbol as well as independence. They both grew up poor and to own a car was a huge deal. Also, changing their routine (cabs and Handi-darts vs. a car) was really stressful. Their world became much smaller.”

      Yes.

      “Big cities with good transit are great for retirees. A city like Vancouver that’s oriented towards the outdoors with spotty transit? Not so much.”

      I have a rich old great-aunt who lives on Seattle’s Capitol Hill who has done very well without driving for at least the past several decades, but it helps a lot to 1) be very well-off and able to afford as many taxis as she wants and 2) to live in a densely populated area.

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  12. Hmm, Cranberry’s table actually changes my mind. A fair extrapolation from the data is that yes, people over 75 are slightly worse drivers, but this incapacity is counterbalanced by the fact that most of their driving is local and slow. So overall, they aren’t a social problem requiring a response.

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      1. Selection. Some of the terrible old drivers may be persuaded to give up driving by family members. Older people are more likely to drive routes they know well–to the grocery store, to the doctor, to visit their children.

        I fear middle aged men in minvans. They drive very aggressively.

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  13. The difference between the under 24 drivers and the over 75 drivers is that in every state, the under 24 driver has been assessed for driving skills in the last eight years. So we’ve done what we can with the under 24s to weed out the incapable driver. A similar evaluation seems reasonable for over 75s, with their increasing accident/fatality rates.

    True we could institute delicensing for everyone. But that seems a waste of money, given that driving records improve on average as people age, until we reach the over 75 bracket.

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  14. I very much look forward to the self-driving cars AmyP brought into the discussion. McMegan has discussed the liability problems our tort-mad society will surround them with. My mother was a model, I think: went to several State of Calif classes for old drivers, used some criteria they provided to decide when to stop driving long distances, at night, to new places, etc. I think she gave up her license at the right time, maybe kept it a little longer than she ought have because so many of her friends were depending on her. Never had an accident, nor as far as I know any near misses. So the classes were helpful. I think shaming would be good, widely report bad incidents. And probably a citizen report (“Geezer driving erratically in CVZ-137 at Wal-Mart”) should trigger a compulsory assessment of said geezer for continued competence.

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  15. My grandfather drove until he was 90. On one of his last trips, I was in the car, and he drove the wrong way on a one-way street and also ran a stop sign. If the driver of car with right-of-way hadn’t had quick reflexes, we would have had a possibly serious accident. When he was 84, he had to get his license renewed. It was renewed for 10 years. If we hadn’t have had a pro-active family and a somewhat cooperative elder, he could have been on the road until his death at 92, and who knows what would have happened. I definitely think yearly check-ups after 70 or 75 sounds like a good idea.

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  16. “I definitely think yearly check-ups after 70 or 75 sounds like a good idea.”

    Every year starting at 70 sounds kind of harsh in our environment, but every other year at 70 and then every year starting at 75 sounds good to me.

    One of my octogenarian great-uncles has dementia. It’s very challenging for his wife to deal with him at home at this point (I personally think it’s well past time for the nursing home), and one of the problems is that he does want to grab the car keys and drive. Of course, lack of a license would not deter him at all at this point. Some sort of bio-ID on the car ignition would be extremely helpful in this situation.

    My grandpa just turned 92 and is still driving. The number makes me queasy, but I saw him driving a year and a half ago, and he drives as well or better than I do (I got my license in my 30s, so low bar). As a matter of fact, when I finally got my license five years ago, he gave me my first field drive (which was in a field, of course) and his theory is very sound. He and my grandma see their sees doctor lots, grandma is a worrier and a noticer, town is very small, and I’ve noticed that over the years, he’s dropped certain kinds of driving (after dark, snow, long distance, etc.). Also, not unimportantly, two very dear elderly friends of theirs were killed in an accident a few years ago while trying to merge with faster traffic.

    http://www.komonews.com/news/local/96696209.html

    I have concerns purely because of calendar age, but I haven’t actually seen or heard anything bad, but I am not geographically close and I know that cognitive function can decline very rapidly.

    If I were able to buy them a Google Car right now, I would. Grandma, who hasn’t been able to drive because of her vision, would LOVE a Google Car.

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    1. Snitches! Citizen Snitches! Ads: “Unsteady Geez-mobile? Turn ’em in!” Most of the time, of course, it will be the children, doing it anonymously, but it will lead to less family friction.

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    2. Speaking of cognitive decline over 70, here’s Nancy Pelosi, age 73, attempting to explain Obamacare grandfathering to David Gregory on Meet the Press.

      http://minx.cc/?post=345051

      If you take what she’s saying at face value, she really doesn’t know what’s in it or what’s going on right now.

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  17. “Most of the time, of course, it will be the children, doing it anonymously, but it will lead to less family friction.”

    Yeah, I know. On the hoarder shows, it’s always that an anonymous somebody has turned in mom. Who could that possibly be?

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      1. I have a neighbor who I’m pretty sure is a hoarder. She got new windows two years ago (the stickers are still there) and didn’t put the blinds back up. One of her bedrooms has been packed with storage boxes the whole time. And I know she has a whole garage that she cannot get a car into because during a snow emergency she kept her car on the street and pleaded to no place else to put it, just like the people who don’t actually have off-street parking.

        She’s still under fifty, so I’d bet she can move the boxes, but she doesn’t look too spry.

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