Monday, April 2, 2012

Giving up Driver's License for Seniors can be like a Death Sentence


Senior drivers worry about giving up the car keys

By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

Updated 30m ago
Reprints & Permissions
Almost half the nation's older drivers worry about losing their freedom and mobility when it's time to give up driving, according to a new survey by auto club AAA.
Eighty-eight percent of drivers 65 and older said the inability to drive would be a problem, and 57% said it would be a somewhat serious or very serious problem.
"By 2020 — just eight years from now — it's estimated that nearly one in six people will be age 65 or older," says Robert Darbelnet, president and CEO of AAA. "No matter how active and healthy seniors are today, it's evident that giving up the keys is still a top concern."
Perhaps helping to dispel the notion that older drivers are more dangerous, AAA found that drivers 65 and older often "self-police": 61% don't drive in bad weather, 50% avoid night driving and 42% don't drive in heavy traffic.
The national telephone survey of 2,017 adults, including 512 aged 65 and older, was conducted in December for AAA. It has a margin of error of +/-4.9 percentage points.
As 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, the findings show a high level of concern among one of the fastest-growing groups of drivers on the roads. Anxiety about losing their mobility is justfied, says Amy Levner, AARP's manager of home and family issues. "On any given day, half the people who no longer drive are stranded at home," she says. "For most people, when they stop driving, they simply slide over and become a passenger."
Levner says most seniors who give up the keys either have no access to public transportation or are reluctant to use it. The anxiety reflected in the AAA survey reflects the reality of a society built around the automobile, she says.
Communities used to be designed around individual pedestrians, and roads were meant to be shared by all users — before the era of suburbanization, Levner says. "Now, folks are graying, and growing older, and getting stranded in the suburbs," she says.
AARP recommends that families with a senior who quits driving set up a regular schedule of rides with family and friends for activities such as doctor's visits and shopping trips.
Catherine Sinclair-Williams, 77, of Elmont, N.Y., says she's been a licensed driver for 6o years and expects to keep driving for at least an additional 16. "My dad drove until he was 92," says Sinclair-Williams, who's retired after careers at a telephone company and as a third-grade teacher. "I think maybe I can outlast him."
Sinclair-Williams, who drives about 200 miles per week, says she has cut back on driving at night since being diagnosed with glaucoma. She says she hasn't had a citation in more than 10 years and drives as well now as she did at 30. "I'm an old young woman," she says. "I go into Manhattan every other week."
She says losing her car would be devastating. "My car is very, very important," she says. "I must have a car."

End quote from: 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-02/senior-drivers-AAA/53955116/1

When my mother gave up her driver's license it was the beginning of the end for her. Within one year of voluntarily giving up her driver's license she began to enter Senile Dementia. Within 2 years of giving up her driver's license she had tried to burn down her apartment and we had no choice but to put her in an Alzheimer's and Senile Dementia facility. To say she tried to burn it down is actually incorrect. She used the electric Stove like we all had told her not to and then set a plastic Tupperware bowl on it while it was on. When the flames began to cascade down the side of the Oven with burning plastic she sat at her kitchen table and prayed the flames would not burn the Apartment building down. 12 hours later we found her praying at the kitchen table and realized she was now a  Potential threat not only to herself but to others and realized she could also burn our home down or worse when we weren't looking and we had a 5 year old daughter. The point where the problems began was giving up her driver's license. Without her driver's license her social life ended. All she had was TV after that and that was not enough to keep her mentally well and she began to slip away from us. I took her with my then 10 year old daughter to see the old country where her parents grew up near Glasgow, Scotland and then we met my son in Germany and drove through Austria and Switzerland all the way to northern Italy. But then when we flew back to London for our London to San Francisco flight she wouldn't come out of the hotel room in London for anything except to board the plane home to San Francisco. It all started when she gave up her license. She died from Senile dementia in a Coma in an Alzheimer's and Senile Demental facility in 2008 about 10 years after she gave up her driver's license.
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