Maybe it's time

[morgana]

When Mom started missing the curb and things like that, we waffled a little bit; same as a couple of you have mentioned, we didn't want to upset her.

Then she missed a curb and hit the side of the assisted living building. And still, through her tears, insisted she could drive, she was just having a bad day!

So my younger brother just got in the car and drove it away. . .

[Terza]

My dad has pretty much stopped driving at night, since he says that he can't see past other cars headlights - he says that the lights throw out rays across the road and he practically has to stop as they go past. When he was explaining this to me, we were looking at car headlights as they came towards us, and I could see little rays around the lights (like little dashes radiating from a drawing of the sun in kids' drawings) so I could understand.
Luckily, my dad is sensible enough/still in full possession of his wits that I'm not worried about having to take his car away. I'm more worried about what we'll do when he gets to the point of having to stop driving altogether, since it will impact his work and ability to visit family! At the moment, he lives 30 mins drive away from me, there's limited public transport and I don't drive myself so getting to see him will be a bit of a problem!

[nutraxfornerves]

I knew a 90-year old man, “John,” who was doing an amazing job of living alone. He drove short distances around town, without a problem, everyone thought. His kids lived out-of-town, but called and visited frequently. Whenever they visited, they did the driving, so did not know that John had lost his sense of direction. He could drive to familiar places, like the grocery store, but couldn’t find his way to anyplace new (He was so hale and hearty that he only saw his doctor about once a year, accompanied by his daughter, so the doc had no idea, either.)

Anyway, John set out to drive to the DMV to renew his license, got lost in a residential area, decided to park and ask for directions, and promptly forget where he’d parked. Fortunately, he blundered into into a nursing home. The staff there called John’s daughter who called a family friend to get John home. The family friend also asked the police to be on the lookout for the car.

When the car was found, John’s daughter discovered that it had some unspecified damage she wanted to have her own mechanic look at, and made off with the car. She also arranged for a part time caregiver/chauffeur. John lived comfortably at home for 3 more years.

It could have had a terrible ending had John gotten lost in some seriously insalubrious neighborhood.

[Catwoman2965]

I'm very lucky my mom, who is 83, in a wheelchair but drives with hand controls, is quite practical. She now only drives locally, and not at night, and lives in a retirement community, where pretty much all her social life is, so she doesn't have to drive to any of it. She drives locally to the dr., grocery store, and so on, but "bigger" trips I go with her.

And she brought up this past weekend, WHEN she stops driving, it might make sense to transfer her chair topper to MY car, so i can drive, but she can still get in and out, and store the chair, since as she said "the chair is heavy and you're not getting any younger" I had never really though about that; just figured i'd end up driving her wherever when she stops.

[Minflick]

SO nice when people are able to be sensible about things...

[Pixelated]

Yes. I'm hoping that I will be sensible as the years go by!

[Ironclad Alibi]

If I get more sensible as the years go by, does that mean I can't yell at them to get off my lawn anymore?

[skeptic53]

Alas, my patient who injured a man, was sued and lost, was driving very carefully in broad daylight on his usual route to his grocery store. it's a false sense of security for older drivers and their families that they are not driving at night or in unfamiliar terrain. If they are over 85, the accident-per-mile rate is really terrible, worse than teenagers. I'm hoping they will perfect self-driving cars by the time I'm 80!

[SpyOne]

If you ask me, the family in the OP here just doesn't want to take responsibility for taking their elderly family member wherever he has to go.

It seems the family is in the same situation as the poster: they can't seem to make this elderly person understand what happened or what that means.


My maternal grandfather retired at 68 and bought a car he expected to last the rest of his life.
21 years later he admitted he might have miscalculated, so he gave his old car to charity and bought a new one.
A couple of years later, he decided to sell his car. He said that the only times it had been driven since he bought it were occasions when my mother had driven to him and then drove him somewhere in his car. He said he was simply too scared to drive and it made no sense to own a car anymore.

[SpyOne]

For example, when my paternal grandfather started having mental issues, he was still allowed to drive. Even though he wasn't a great driver, he could still go to the store, the post office, etc. Then his mind started failing, and he got lost coming home. He knew where he lived (same house since 1958), but couldn't remember how to get there. He ended up some 25 miles away. Luckily, he was with it enough to pull over and have someone call the police. They ended up giving him a lift home.

This was very lucky.

My Mother's cousin was not so lucky.
He had occasional episodes of confusion where he would temporary not understand where he was. I believe these started with a stroke.
One day he left the house to drive to a restaurant where he often got breakfast. He never got there.
His car was found a few hundred miles away on an access road in a State Forest. It had run out of gas. His body was not very far from the car.
There are worse ways to die than freezing to death lost in the woods in the winter with no idea where you are. But it definitely is way down on the sucky end of the spectrum.

Not looking for sympathy: it was years ago, and I didn't know him well. But I am sharing the cautionary tale: there are worse outcomes than your relative dying in a spectacular crash, and worse than them killing a few people you didn't know on the way.