Summary
At 85, Vonciel Gray decided to stop driving after a stressful experience, joining millions of older Americans facing a loss of independence. Her son, Kurt, a traffic safety expert, helps families navigate the difficult conversation about when to stop driving.
With an aging population, experts warn of a “mobility gap” as older adults seek alternatives to driving.
Joseph Coughlin’s MIT Age Lab explores how vehicle technology can aid or distract older drivers, yet acknowledges that tech can’t always replace the need for older adults to relinquish their keys for safety.
The flip side of the headline: “How society is grappling with older drivers refusing to hang up their keys”
On a related note, I’ve been thinking lately about how many older men have gone absolutely batshit on me for suggesting that they may not be able to safely pee standing up anymore. Its so hardwired in some of them that sometimes even bilateral amputees with enough dementia will insist that they need to stand up to pee. I’ve literally pulled back the blankets to show them their missing legs and they look right back up at me and keep yelling at me to get out of the way.
It’s happened so much at this point that I’m very desensitized to it. They’ll be threatening to kill me and I’m just “ah yes the good ol’ standing piss argument.” It’s practically as developmentally normal as a toddler not being able to share toys or a teenager having an unstable personal identity. Not sure what the female equivalent is, most of the violence I receive from that population seems to relate to trauma / fear related to sexual assault; they have difficulty calmly accepting assistance toileting because they’re worried I’m going to hurt them vs it being less common to be a pride issue with women. Although I suppose the pride just boils down to a fear of being taken advantage of for being weak.
TLDR; loss of independence is rough and in addition to the driving thing there’s a few other interesting manifestations.
I’m a reasonably fit dude in his 30s and I sit down to pee because I’m lazy.
Also I got a shower bench because those fuckers are comphy.
My grandfather was allowed to drive a car in Florida after a stroke he never fully recovered from, while still nonverbal. And my grandmother, who couldn’t drive, had him keep doing it.
That should not be allowed, no matter how hard it is to get around without a car. There have to be better solutions for seniors in public transportation deserts than Uber/Lyft.
It’s a tough call. Last bit of independence for someone feeling their world getting smaller. Anecdotally, both my father and father-in-law damaged their cars (one hit the highway median after dozing off) and their wives told them they couldn’t afford to replace the cars. Fortunately, nobody got hurt but it could have been a lot worse.
Having seen my mom, and now the mom of my ex, devolve into dangerous drivers, I will trust my kids on this. If they say I am not driving well, I will not drive. Luckily everything is nearby, I haven’t needed to drive much since we moved close to my work.
Walking distance to hospital, doctor, restaurants, dentist, bank is online, driving has become a convenience not a need, thankfully.
We need to give road tests every 5 years or so, to everyone who holds a driving license. My road test was literally more than 40 years ago, how do they even know I can still drive safely?
Yet you appear to be willing to stop driving when it’s clearly a problem. There’s a good sized segment if the population who will do the right thing, given a chance. How do we give people a chance? How do we get more within walking distance, improve accessibility, find reasonable cost transportation, affordable delivery services? How do we establish “third places” where people can exercise a social life without driving there?
Not sure. For me, I have a large family, and do yoga classes in person, work at the office, not from home, go to get coffee always at the same place so see the same people, and have need for more alone time than I ever get, so it hasn’t been an issue yet. Transportation would help a lot here. I used to see old people at aerobics classes downtown when I did those, so group exercise I do think is valuable.
Not to get political but not sure what will happen now with the large family, as Florida gets ever more backwards the kids may get more distributed in other places. We have a house I love in a neighborhood I love, in a blue-leaning city, and don’t want to abandon it. They are second generation but instead of the progress I saw during my adulthood and their childhood, but as they reached adulthood now the pendulum is swinging back.
I’m just thinking of that helmet cam clip of the race car driver. “I’m keeping the pedal all the way down until I see a checkered flag or God.”
