I once went out on a date that I didn’t really want to be on, and the guy was a seriously dangerous driver. Driving too fast, cutting people off and blaming them, suddenly turning around and going the other way. He was one of the first people I knew to have a car phone, and he was a menace with it. I hope he still survived out there somewhere.
We don’t. Everyone refused to ever get in a car with my ex’s friend, telling her flat out that she was too dangerous as a driver. Plans would be cancelled rather than let her drive anywhere. No one could stop her from running errands with her parents’ car. But all her friends were adamant about never letting her behind the wheel (at the very least to save their own necks).
At home she was totally oblivious and had no idea what everyone was talking about. When she moved from her “flat” home-province to one with hills, she realised that she could not manage the new challenge and started taking the bus.
I really hope that’s still the case. (After breaking up with my ex, I have no idea what happened to this disaster-girl.)
Oh, and on a related positive note: I’m really impressed with the way my mom has been imposing ever-increasing limits on her own driving.
She realized a few years ago that her macular degeneration has affected her ability to see at dusk and later. So she set daylight hour limits for the use of her car – time that would generously allow for the unexpected, so even if she was running really late she had an extra hour or two of daylight.
As her peripheral vision started to go a little, she learned all the bus routes and takes the car only for short trips to pick up “heavy things” (laundry detergent, jugs of milk) from the grocery store which is 4 blocks away.
She never drives on the expressway or dowtown during rush hour. These days she takes the car out only for the aforementioned “heavy things” and to go a little tour of quiet neighbourhoond once in awhile to make sure her driving skills don’t get rusty and to let the car engine run a little bit.
She is the classic “little old lady” that weasely car salesmen talk about.
Legally her vision is still okay for driving. She doesn’t drink. Her hearing is good. She always signals and never straddles the lane. She doesn’t speed or stop short. No real bad habits. Her driving is actually quite decent! Although when I visit, we go on “practice drives” and last time she practiced parallel parking and squashed one of the orange cones I’d set up. Nonetheless, in this time when everyone drives 60 kmh when the speed limit is 50kmh, she doesn’t have the confidence that she can keep up with modern drivers. So she opts not to drive if she doesn’t have to (and even prefers it when someone else drives so she can pick up “heavy things”.)
She has no illusions about her age and how it affects her driving skills, and she appreciates that the driving climate has changed. People is SUVs zipping around with cellphones in their hands? No thanks. She prefers the days when compact cars ruled the road and the bad drivers were the ones who fling cigarettes out the windows.
She is contientious about her self-imposed restrictions. If she has any doubts at all, she takes a cab. She presently loooooves the bus system in her town and that’s what she relies on for travel.
Thanks for the horror stories, guys. I thought my tailgating friend was bad, but these tales take the cake.
Just my own observation, but it seems to me that women drivers are more likely to recognize and accept that driving skills deteriorate with age, and to allow for that. Just two examples:
My late father refused to accept (or admit) that he could no longer drive safely, despite having at least one fender-bender every year for the last few years of his life, having never had a single at-fault accident or traffic ticket before. My sister and I tried to get his license pulled, but without a court order of incompetence or a serious at-fault accident, there was nothing we could do. His doctors advised him not to drive but he ignored them. I guess it’s fortunate that other health issues got him hospitalized before he killed someone.
My MIL, OTOH, at 88 recognizes that her reflexes are slow, despite still having good eyesight and hearing. She is literally the little old lady who drives to church on Sunday. Actually, she drives up to 3 miles in one direction to the grocery store and up to 3 miles in the other direction to the church, doctor or drug store. Always in the daytime, never at rush hour. She drives slowly and keeps to the right.
Your MIL and my mom should car-pool.
(Well, as long as they live within a 3 mile radius of each other…)
My dad developed Parkinson’s, and kept driving several years longer than he should. To make matters worse, he would insist on driving with only his left hand – which was the one that had the hugest tremor. Plus his vision was damaged by bad old glaucoma surgery. I kept begging my mom to stop him driving, and she kept insisting he “didn’t go far” and “they were fine.”
A neighbor one day saw him weaving down the street and almost called the police on him – then saw she knew him and didn’t. Damn. It took another six months to get his license taken away after that. Which was at LEAST three years too late.