^ @bajamm I understand how you feel. I am in a similar situation with my parents. My Dad is experiencing memory issues and is still driving. My mother, who was never a good driver due to her poor sense of direction, gave up driving years ago. She swears that as soon as she sees a decline in his skills she will insist he stop driving but I’m not sure I can depend on her to be objective since that will really curtail their independence. They live in a lovely CCRC in Maryland that certainly has options for getting them where they need to be but giving up that last bit of independence is hard. And none of us, my siblings and I, are local. Closest one is 4-5 hours away. Still, we’re going to have to devise a way to evaluate his driving skills. Best of luck to you.
I told my dad that my son needed his car more than dad did, and I had a driver to take him to dialysis. I’d be there at n weekends to drive him to places. Here in Se FL, there is one story after and their about elderly drivers losing control and killing innocents, one elderly driver drove,his,car straight into a Publix supermarket and killed the youngish husband of friends of mine. Even if I don’t know the victim, someone else does.
I said this up thread, but the best way to test driving is to drive with your parent. If you feel unsafe, that parent should not drive. I tell my elderly patients that no child has taken away a license from a parent for anything but concern because it makes it so much more difficult. Sometimes, saying that someone else needs the car makes the elder feel marginalized. But, it is not easy, and preventing an unsafe elder to drive should be done by any means possible.
@bookworm That was my biggest fear!
For those of you with parents experiencing dementia, make sure you take all keys and if there is a spouse or someone else who still drive drives make sure those keys are hidden. My great uncle’s wife started showing signs of dementia so much cousin finally told her she couldn’t drive after many protests. Fast forward, my aunt hadn’t driven in close to two years and her old car had been sitting in the back yard. My uncle went outside to get something out of that car and left the keys out, so she “decided “ she would go for a drive. My family had to call the police and after many hours they finally found her far away from the house,and the cops had to basically cut her off and force her off the road. She was driving on flats!!
I heard this story last week when I went up for her funeral which made me even more determined to take my grandmas keys. We have informed my grandmas sister that she cannot leave her keys lying around!
Just a little more food for thought.
My mom slowly lost her eyesight but was very good at hiding it. It was several years after the fact that I learned she had had three accidents within her last few months of driving, and that in one of them she had my young daughters as passengers! They weren’t hurt, and she convinced them not to tell Mommy or Daddy about the incident.
It still terrifies me to think what might have happened. Would you be so lucky, and would you be willing to take that chance by letting your parent continue to drive?
My MIL failed the road test, but continued to drive. She was so convinced she was okay she actually doctored her license. (Which is when we stole her car, since my FIL still had his license, but was a terrible driver so he would let her drive even though he knew her license was no good.) Her dementia rapidly got worse, but every day while she could still speak she would complain that she should be able to get her license back. It was interesting to me how much driving meant to her. I’m pretty sure I’d be happy to take Lyft or cabs or busses.
We were just using Lyft last weekend, and I noted to DH that this would have been a wonderful solution to the problem for my parents, had it been around at the time.
My father just agreed to give up his car! I have the green light to arrange donation asap.