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Safety Tips
What Should We Do About Grandma's Driving?
Taking Away the Keys Isn't the Only Solution
By Dale Buss, Contributor
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Many remember the awful bloodshed in 2003 when an 86-year-old man accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brakes on his Buick LeSabre. It hurtled horrifically through a farmers' market in downtown Santa Monica, California, killing 10 people and injuring more than 70 others. A judge sentenced the feeble senior driver to five years' felony probation and $100,000 in restitution and fines in 2006.
Now, many Illinois residents are afraid that the same sort of wrist slap awaits the 84-year-old woman who killed an 8-year-old boy and injured two other kids in February, after she plowed through an elementary-school lunchroom in Shiloh, Illinois. Ironically, she was on her way to a driver-rehabilitation class.
But far from being isolated incidents, these examples of fatally bad driving by older people are supported by a growing body of evidence — both anecdotal and statistical — that has fueled an unprecedented urgency around the problem of unsafe driving by seniors.
In this first installment of Edmunds' new senior-driving series, we'll outline the challenges posed by shaky senior drivers on American roads. In subsequent articles, we'll explore:
- Why intersections pose the greatest difficulty for elderly drivers
- The types of self-limitation, occupational therapy and regulatory rigor that can ease the senior-driving problem
- Which suitable vehicles and accessories can help senior drivers improve
- Hanging up the keys: how seniors can adjust if the transition is handled with sensitivity and practicality
- How Florida can teach other states how to address the challenge of senior driving
The Dimensions of the Problem
"Overall, older drivers are safer drivers because they're more cautious," said Anne Dickerson, chair of the occupational therapy department and a geriatric-driving expert at East Carolina University. "But there is a certain point at which someone shouldn't be behind the wheel anymore."
There's certainly no arguing with the numbers and trends:
- People age 65 and older suffered 18 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2000 even though they constituted only 13 percent of the U.S. population. Though their crash rates are about the same as for teenagers, more seniors die because they're more fragile.
- Both licensure and mileage have been going up among seniors: 75 percent of people 65 and older were licensed to drive in 1995, compared with just 63 percent in 1983, while rates for drivers of other ages remained stable, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
- Older drivers are much less likely than younger ones to be involved in crashes related to high speeds or alcohol. But they are much more likely to crash at intersections, where their limitations often create a "perfect storm" of indecision and vulnerability.
The Inescapable: Death, Taxes — and Bad Driving?
Elderly drivers inevitably become poor drivers because of three close companions of old age: fading vision, diminishing physical dexterity and deterioration in cognitive abilities. Layer on top of those endemic problems the challenges faced by many individuals that are related to acute conditions and diseases, ranging from Alzheimer's to diabetes to arthritis. For a good number of seniors, the medications they take to combat such conditions can pose their own challenge to competent driving.
But simply taking away the keys isn't a panacea; it creates different problems. For a clear-minded and otherwise competent adult, hanging up the keys can seem like walking into a prison of immobile dependence. It can also put tremendous pressure on family and friends to provide transportation.
Elinor Ginzler, director for livable communities for the AARP in Washington, D.C., said, "We put immense emphasis on driving, because it has not only a symbolic but also a very real connection to independence." So while most states recently have put into effect rules that restrict driving for the youngest teenagers, it isn't as simple to put the clamps on drivers later in life.
Societal Response Begins To Catch Up
One unfortunate aspect of the problem is that American attitudes and institutions haven't kept pace with the mushrooming of the population of senior drivers. "Structures in society, from whole communities down to individual families, simply haven't caught up with the new reality and adjusted and figured out ways to deal with it," said Elizabeth Dugan, assistant professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Grassroots pressure — much of it arising in the wake of recent high-profile accidents around the country — has prompted some state legislatures to stiffen license-renewal requirements as drivers get older and lose faculties. But more efforts are being trained every day on senior driving and related challenges such as elder independence. Much of them are aimed at the improvement of aging motorists.
Still other progress is being made in the research-and-development laboratories of automakers, as engineers find ways to make vehicles more senior-friendly. And as this problem appears on the radar of more policy-makers and politicians, government and not-for-profit agencies are making some gains at the community level.
Next Behind the Wheel: Old Boomers
Yet this problem surely will get more acute before it eases: The baby boom generation is just now beginning to reach retirement age and to see deterioration in its own physical and cognitive capabilities for driving. Today, one in seven licensed drivers is 65 years old or older, but within two decades that ratio will be almost one in four.
This huge demographic wave will compound today's senior driving problems, just as boomers have dramatically altered nearly every other collective experience. Safety analysts predict that boomers will be responsible for 25 percent of all fatal crashes by 2030, when all will be at least 65 years old, compared with 11 percent of fatal crashes involving drivers 65 or older in 2005.
"This is a huge number of people, and they are people who were all born and raised with cars in their families," notes Eero Laanso, human-factors engineer for Ford Motor Company. "They've led active lifestyles involving cars. And just because they reach a certain place in their lives, they're not going to say, 'I'm too old to drive now.'"
Below are links to all of the installments in this series.
What Should We Do About Grandma's Driving?
Aging Drivers: Intersections Are Danger Zones
How To Improve Seniors' Driving Skills
Better Cars, Equipment Assist Senior Drivers
When It's Time To Hang Up the Keys
Florida Paves the Way for Senior Drivers
Dale Buss is a journalist and author based near Detroit.
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