Dilemma, should Dad still be driving?

I have just given up driving at 90 but only as my old car gave up first. Newer cars are very different to handle and so have decided to call it a day, After 65 years of driving without any real accidents.
Its a pity as I am still a volunteer with charity which I have done for over 40 years after 4 years as a WAAF during the war.
Taxis are not the answer but the only alternative/ So I keep going or wobblying along Alice

Lovely post lacwhedy.
My mum is not quite your age, but is thinking about replacing her car with as near a replica of her old one as she can find. Might that be an option for you?

My car was recently written off as Total Loss after it was hit by a "nearly ninety"driver, who joined the main road from a side road and said she didn't see me.
A couple of years ago, while waiting to park in a shopper's car-park, an elderly driver reversed into my car, despite my frantic car-horn tooting, he didn't even slow down.
I'm now wondering when the next elderly person's going to drive into me, having survived a near-miss when a driver turned off main road. I'm wishing I'd taken the registration number, since someone told me recently about an acquaintance, known to be blind in one eye and only able to drive as his wife sits in passenger-seat giving him instructions.

Another friend told me of an elderly gentleman who was visited by police after an accident, and asked him to step outside and read a number-plate - he failed, and was stopped from driving.

I'm over 70 and disabled myself, with sympathy for elderly drivers, but I think we should all be aware that we may have to stop driving before we'd like to, and particularly if someone mentions it, otherwise it's dangerously selfish.

One of the worse 'unsafe' older drivers scenarios I've experienced was when visiting a couple as a DN.
On their driveway was a totalled new Jag. He'd had a stroke paralysing his left side, she was blind in her right eye and had had a stroke also affecting her left side so......
He sat in the driving seat operating the accelerator and brake and steering, she sat straddling the central console on a cushion with her right foot on the clutch and she changed gears.

They would happily drive around Bath until the day they couldn't negotiate a keep left island, and so they drove right over it and into a bus coming towards them. Both had fairly serious injuries hence my visiting.

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard this, it had been going on for 4 years and no one had ever stopped them - they were well known in the village and considered 'eccentric'!

They'd written off two other cars in the previous three years! Why on earth hadn't the family/police done something!

After my first cataract operation I was very careful driving until I got new glasses because, although the surgeon told me the prescription lens now in my eye corrected my short sight as well as the cataract and meant my eyesight was up to standard, I still worried a bit.

When I had my eye test and described my fears to the optician he dismissed them telling me that I could be blind in one eye and have tunnel vision in the other and still be able to drive if the tunnel vision eye was strong enough to read the eye chart satisfactorily.

I found this rather frightening.

Selling a car and not having to pay insurance and road tax pays for a lot of taxis if no other public transport available.....

Depends how much the car is worth, of course. If my car was written off by the insurance company, the savings in tax and insurance in my case would be around £1 a day. Which would possibly get me to the supermarket and back once a fortnight...

FlickertyB I cannot believe what your optician said. As I said before, I was diagnosed with glaucoma, I had to tell the DVLA this. They said I couldn't drive again until I had the all clear from their appointed optician. I took them 3 months and several phone calls to get it sorted. They returned one form because I hadn't answered a question on one page that I had already answered on the previous page, that took 4 weeks. This needs standardising, with an eye test of all drivers over 75 and an assessment of the drivers capabilities. I know that sounds harsh, to loose the freedom driving gives but we have to consider other people using the roads too. It is a dilemma.

Let us see this in perspective. The results of a research project published recently showed that older drivers are far less likely to have accidents than drivers younger than them.

This was even true when the figures were adjusted for the lower mileage driven by the average older driver. Accidents involving older drivers were more likely to be serious, but given that they have far fewer accidents anyway they still, overall are less likely to have a serious accident either.

It is fine to say that the money invested in cars and spent running them will pay for a lot of taxis, but this assumes that all one's car journeys are single destination journeys; home-supermarket-home, home-surgery-home. Living in a rural area my weekly journey to my local town will go: visit tip, which I pass on the way, to get rid of some rubbish, deliver box to charity shop in town, park at supermarket, shop there and in town, drive to small retail park on outskirts of town to visit shed there, call in at farm shop to buy local organic meat, home. We both always try to cram in as many errands as possible on each car journey.

It is worth also remembering that taxis are VERY expensive. A round taxi trip to my local town (5 miles away) will cost over £20.

I did the figures for my mum fairly recently. I had cheerfully assumed, calculating the trips she actually did, that the money saved on everything to do with running her car[not including the money from selling it] would pay for at least two taxis a week. I didnt. It came out to about 1 and 3/4 journeys a week in her particular case. One factor that influenced her to carry on driving.

So what to do then? Keep driving even though you know its potentially dangerous to others? What did people think would happen when they could no longer drive? Get organised in advance. Think about joining with others and sharing transport or get your children to help a bit more or move house before access to shops etc becomes a big problem. We're all getting older. Make plans! Sorry to seem harsh but its not an unforeseeable issue.

As has been said, many elderly drivers are less dangerous than their younger counterparts.
My mum isnt dangerous. Just older. That doesnt make her dangerous. No bumps or scrapes etc for decades. All health aspects ok to drive.

I think the bottome line to all of this, is that we dont trust doctors to decalre someone fit to drive. I am beginning to think that we should.

Jane10, you are assuming that all of us will automatically have to stop driving when we get old, why? My father drove safely and extensively until the brief illness that led to his death at 92. He is one of many.

I am not suggesting we keep driving regardless of whether we are safe or not, although the implication of your post is that this is quite acceptable while we are young and it is only elderly dangerous drivers that should be taken off the road. The elderly do not have the monopoly on becoming dangerous drivers.

The IAM runs an excellent scheme for assessing older drivers and more of us should use it and listen to its recommendations, even if they are unpalatable. I also see no reason why older drivers should not be expected to provide the results of a recent eye test when renewing their licence and a medical certificate, say every 3 years.

But remember, people always highlight when elderly unfit drivers are on the road and extend their problems to all elderly drivers. There are, proportionately far more dangerous drivers in younger age groups. Sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.

Jane10. You are also assuming that children are nearby, and are willing to help. And that by sharing transport, everyone wants to go in the same direct! At the same time!

As I said this is not an unforeseeable problem. None of us knows what could happen to us in the way of degeneration. Short illness then death or long slow loss of faculties. Either way we can't simply count on definitely just continuing to drive. We may be able to but we may not. This is an unwelcome truth but truth nevertheless. Make plans. Do it before it becomes an issue rather than complain when it does.

The chance of me being hit by another elderly driver or a woman is quite high. Most of my driving is around our village and into Tesco's car park. During the times I drive most, I would guess that 90% of the drivers are either retired or mums, so if I am involved in an accident it will most likely be one or the other.

Jane10, but surely one does that anyway. At any age any disaster can hit from sudden death to a disabling illness. In the words of the (first) Duke of Welllington, 'If anything went wrong, I tied a knot and went on ' that has certainly been one of my guiding principles.

When we moved to our current home we made sure we bought in a village with facilities, not with old age in mind, but with general convenience at any age. We did the village with a two mile drive to buy a paper and 8 miles to the station when the children were young. It wasn't convenient then, it isn't convenient at any age. On the other hand I do not intend to sell up and move to the centre of a town with everything within mobility scooter reach just in case I might need to live like that in 1, 5, or 10 years time.

The number of taxis calculation is very variable. Tax + insurance + MOT plus service is a start. And then there are repairs that usually come in at a few hundred a year if you are very lucky. If you happen to have a rather new car there would be fewer repairs but depreciation is significant. We just sold a 13 year old car and it has depreciated a couple of thousand every year on average. Newer the car, faster it depreciates. Then there is the location - living in a rural area will obviously incur much greater taxi costs. Getting groceries delivered might help to offset.
My sister lives in a rural location and has had no car for a few years. She seems to cope pretty well - she's got good at scrounging lifts and has a local taxi company that give her a discount as a regular customer.

So far so good then for some (but not others). Hope the fingers crossed attitude works for you but you can't count on it. Alternatively try fingers in ears and saying la la la it'll all be fine (somehow)!

It is not fingers crossed, fingers in ears etc, it is having plans A - Z thought through and discussed but not implementing them until needed. It certainly worked for the Duke of Wellington! Most of the things that went wrong he had anticipated might do and he immediately put in place his contingency plans.

On your basis, Jane10, the sensible thing to do on retirement would be to sell up and move into a care home just in case you needed one some time in the future.

Plus sometimes the solution for a never may be needed plan, can be worse than if you didnt do anything and didnt even end up needing it.

What are your plans Jane10?
[no point asking me by the way, I am still very young!]

What happened to your mum is not that usual I dont think.
Plus I also think that what elderly drivers did in your area, is not that usual either.

I get your point of being prepared. And bearing it in mind. But.. [I am losing the point here, I will come back later].

We moved to a flat fairly centrally located but quietly situated with good local transport, shops that deliver and near to family members. We're not that old. We did this quite deliberately having seen elderly people who left it just too late to make a move. Its not a retirement home just a planned move for our own and other's convenience. I would hate to put family to any bother in the event of accident or illness and its better than whistling in the dark like some.

Oh I see! You did it so you are irritated when others who haven't done it express their worries on here...

No that's not it ana. Of course people can express worries. Why not offer suggestions for overcoming them? These are problems that can be seen coming!