When is it time to surrender your driver's license?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My grandfather died when he ran his car off the road.

My grandmother had her keys taken away the same day she entered a nursing home with advanced dementia. She’d been driving around and around the facility where her husband lived, attracting the staff’s attention even before she finally stopped by the front door and laid on the horn. When the staff came out, she said she didn’t understand why the bank wasn’t open that day. (My dad says that was the first time he knew how bad she’d gotten.)

My mom’s housemate caused a serious accident when she pulled out into a busy highway without looking; she continued to drive and continues still. One day she will get lost while driving, and hopefully that will be the end to it. Other than the cops, there is no authority who can stop her. Some of her friends, and my mother, will not ride in the car with her.

My mom scared the crap out of me as a passenger about 5 years ago. She was all over the road, driving like a serious drunk. I tried and failed to convince her to stop driving then, but shortly afterwards her car stopped working due to a persistent battery drain. A mechanic tried to fix it 2 or 3 times, and it would work for a day then the battery would drain again. She simply gave up on the car, and does not plan to drive again. I am 99% certain the mechanic made sure the car didn’t work, and I owe him big time.

Those of you who think you’ll take your parents’ keys away – really? Literally out of their hands, while they fight you for them? You may have less power than you think. But I should have called the cops on my mom 5 years ago, and she, or her friends, should call the cops on her housemate now. Yet they don’t. Frankly I think the cops themselves, and doctors, and the DMV, err badly on the side of letting people drive unsafely, rather than risk riling up all the senior citizens.

I can see the end of driving for myself even now. My night vision is so much worse than it used to be, I have to creep around corners to make 100% sure there’s no one in dark clothing in the crossing. In winter I now plan for any trips to be done by 3pm or so.

22

You talk as if unsafe drivers are guaranteed to have an accident every time they get behind the wheel. In reality, it is perfectly possible for something to be unsafe and yet have a safe outcome in one particular situation. I cite the fact that some people have managed to manufacture nitroglycerin without blowing themselves up.

23

And yet you can get into a bit of trouble if authorities find out you are manufacturing nitro.
Funny, that.

24

Of course it’s possible - but you won’t know if you will have a safe outcome until it’s too late to do anything about it. I mean, that drive my grandfather took, on surface streets a few blocks from home could have had a safe outcome - if only that motorcyclist that Gramps didn’t hear wasn’t going through the intersection at the same time as Gramps ran the stop sign he didn’t see

25

You strike me as a very conscientious and thoughtful person! I think you’ll know when the time comes without having to ask. :heartbeat:

26

Do you have anything like cataracts that can be treated? Before my cataract surgery in 2018, I’d quit driving at night.

Your comment on the lack of transportation is very valid. Where we live, we can generally manage to get a Lyft or a taxi, if the buses aren’t running (and my area does NOT have good bus service except weekday rush hour).

Where my daughter lives (small town in Vermont), backup transportation is basically nonexistent: there are several taxi companies but good luck getting hold of someone in the evenings. Hell, one time I wound up walking from the train station to my hotel, at midnight, because despite trying to reach someone for several hours while on the train, I was unable to arrange for a ride.

My in-laws live in Florida - a fairly populous county - and had trouble getting a taxi back home after an ER visit (at 10 PM, not that insane a time of night). I had similar issues when trying to get a taxi in Phoenix, Arizona - admittedly, that was around 2 or 3 AM, but it was also due to an ER visit.

Bottom line is: you have to do what’s safest, but where you live, this may pose a greater burden, which really sucks. Manhattan, I would never be worried. Anywhere else, yeah.

Yeah, that’s gonna be tough as hell. Sometimes it’ll be necessary - but if the parent does not WANT to give up driving, and there is no order in place declaring them incompetent, that might not play out well.

In our case, it wound up being the economics. Both in-laws still have their licenses, but MIL had stopped driving some years before. She just did not feel comfortable driving, given that she’d developed some mobility issues (she worried about needing to get out of the car in a hurry in an emergency, or at least that’s what she told us). FIL thus did all the driving - with his terrible (but apparently correctable to legal levels) eyesight and terrible hearing. His judgment was not ideal - they were driving us somewhere and MIL told him “do not stop on the railroad tracks!”. He ignored her (or simply did not hear her) - and stopped on the tracks. Luckily, the traffic light changed before a train came along. He had two at-fault accidents in their last car.

What stopped them from driving was the fact that they could not afford a car on their own. SIL (and BIL, and occasionally us) were making the payments on a leased car. When the lease was up on that, the purchase price if they’d wanted to keep it was, per MIL, higher than it would have cost to buy the thing new (I think she misread the contract when I asked, to be honest).

So they leased another one - without discussing with the family.

When THAT lease was up, SIL and BIL told them flat out that they would not make the payments on a new car. And that was the end of that,

They still have their licenses - in case of emergency, they could in theory rent a vehicle. FIL planned to do just that a few years ago when they wanted to evacuate for an impending hurricane. This terrified us all - so I flew down to FL the next morning, rented a car, and I drove them up north. FIL kept harping on wanting to help drive. Oh darn, you’re not on the contract, Dad, so you cannot drive it.

27

My father has alzheimers. He’s been in a memory center for about 6 months now. We (my siblings and I and our mom) decided that he should not drive alone about 6 years ago. So we gave his car away. He fussed initially, but realized in the end it was for his own good. He knew how to drive, but due to his cognitive issues, he may become confused and drive away and into a lake or something like that. As a result, my mother had to hide the keys to her car from him, which was okay, as he wasn’t sure who she was most days. My mother, only a year younger than dad, has no such similar cognitive issues. She’s just not as comfortable driving on highways or at night. She therefore self limits her driving to daytime and city roads. They both still have their licenses for ID purposes.

28

An emergency in which the consequences of immobility are likely to be worse than the consequences of riding in the vehicle of a less-than-excellent driver. It’s trivially easy to imagine cases that would qualify.

29

This is another example of why retiring to a low cost of living area is not always as easy as people think it will be. In early retirement, it may be fine, but there is definitely an age range where you could live alone in a city, with ubers and taxis and delivery services, but not in a rural area. That, plus access to good medical care, are two very compelling reasons not to take your pension and head to BFE.

30

Early stage of cataracts, but my eye doc says to wait a few more years before surgery. I’ve also got astigmatism, which leads to the starburst effect around all lights at night. That’s why I only drive in daylight hours. Lots easier since I retired 3 years ago.

31

Why is that? Is it because they are not clinically bad enough to qualify for surgery? (I was told “can’t get to 20/20 with glasses” or “more than 2 diopters worse than the other eye”). If the doc is doing the “wait until they ripen” line, find a new doctor, as that’s very old information. In my case, I qualified by the “2 diopters” rule basically immediately, but the doc kept delaying things - in a year, my rapidly-developing cataract in one eye had gone from “can’t see as well as with the other eye” to “best not drive at night, at all” (made driving to Vermont, in November, a real treat).

Note that if you got any kind of progressive lenses, you might experience some starburst effect at night anyway (I do, but my brain learned to work around / ignore that fairly fast).

32

Yep!!

We have seriously considered moving to near where our daughter lives (for cost of living, weather etc. reasons) but our experiences with transportation there are not promising. There isn’t even really any bus service to other towns - basically one intercity bus that runs from Albany to Burlington (and vice versa) twice a day, and one train.

The other places I mentioned (Florida, Arizona) are both large enough metropolitan areas that you’d expect to have SOMETHING available, but clearly not. It needs to be a place that has a fairly substantial 24-hour-a-day culture.

33

It definitely worked for me. I had three living grandparents at the time, all of whom lived close by, and my grandfather’s eye sight went downhill. He gave me his car, not a tit for tat exchange, (more like Mom saying that your grandfather gave you a car, so the least you can do is save me the trip since I am paying for your food) but even as a teenager, once a week I would take all three of them to the grocery store, bank, or other errands. I didn’t complain. We would all eat out afterwards and they would pay (and give me 5 whole dollars for gasoline. :))

Looking back, that allowed us to spend a lot of time together in their golden years and I look back on it with fondness. I think they enjoyed it as well. I also got a car out of it. Seems like a win-win.

34

Nice story. It dies sound like a win for all.

35

I figure it’s only fair - right now, I’m babysitting both of them and taking them to the playground and the library! :rofl: But, yeah, that’s kinda what I’m hoping, tho it’s still 12-ish years away (granddaughter is 4 right now.)

36

For those who live in places where it’s hard to get a taxi sometimes.

My father and stepmother lived in rural Cambridgeshire. When the time came, they set up a contract with a local taxi (a one-man band as it happens). They used his services once or twice a week for shopping, social calls, etc. It worked well.

37

It’s also kind of irrelevant whether you would or would not have retained the licence. If you’re in one of these McGuyver situations where only you can save the day by driving, even though doing so is heroic and dangerous but there is no choice because not driving will release the Hitler Chemical, does it matter whether you retained your licence?

38

I’d thought about something like this - a contingency if the grandkids plan doesn’t pan out.

39

You did well!! A number of years back, an older colleague’s mother was 76 and afflicted with the disease. Unfortunately, none of the family realized the situation until, one day, she decided to drive to a friend’s house about 8 miles away from her home. She ended up 4 hours away in East St. Louis, completely lost and totally confused. She pulled over in a very bad area to ask for directions and got robbed. The East St. Louis police got his contact information and called him. It was a harrowing affair and could have ended tragically.

40

We’re not talking about a “less-than-excellent” driver, unless you consider a plate of broken glass and arsenic a “less-than-excellent” dinner. We’re talking about someone who is considered an unsafe driver under any circumstances - not even just a mile in broad daylight in light traffic to church & back. In that case, yes, I think emergencies where you would want that person to drive are exceedingly rare, even if they are easy to imagine.