Elderly Drivers in Tennessee – Dangerous or Not?
Thanks to the wonders of medical science. our lifespans just keep getting longer and longer. A man’s average lifespan is 75 years and a woman’s is 80 in the United States. The added years, plus the benefits of technology easing our lives, has given older people the ability to live on their own and enjoy their independence much more than in the past. However, with this added independence comes the risk of an elderly person driving their cars on our roadways. People on average seem to do pretty good until they reach about 75, then their accident and fatality rates start to equal that of young teen-age drivers. By 84, their accident and death rates have quadrupled over that of teenagers. While excessive speed and single car accidents are the callings cards of teenage car wrecks, side impact crashes (t-boning) appears to be the one for the elderly. They don’t stop for a red light or a stop sign, or pull into oncoming traffic. Rarely are they speeding, but the results are just as deadly (see graph).
It came home to my family several years ago when my grandmother was about 82. She lived by herself and did very well in her little house. We checked on her by phone several times a week, stopped in to see her, had someone take care of her yard, but she still drove herself around Hermitage, mostly on Central Pike and Highway 70 (congested and dangerous roads) to go to the grocery store and sometimes to the doctor. It was never more than a 10 mile round trip on roads she’d driven on her whole life, but we still worried since she seemed to be increasingly more forgetful. My father, an only child, received a call from my very angry Grandmother about a nice looking policeman who had pulled her over “for no reason at all” and wanted her to leave her vehicle in the parking lot while he drove her the 2 miles home. The policeman got on the phone and told my Dad that my Grandmother was doing 78mph in a 40mph zone. Needless to say, Grandmama got to ride home with the policeman. When Dad and I went to get her car and asked her what in the world she was doing, she explained that the men putting a new roof on her garage had gotten sawdust all over her hood (and windshield) and she was just trying to blow it off and she didn’t know what everyone was making such a fuss over. Then a week later, she got lost going to the doctor she’s been going to for 15 years and ended up at Percy Priest Lake.
This started the long process of taking her keys away. We did everything people advise to do and it was so unpleasant for her and for us. For starters, my Dad felt guilty about taking her car keys away. Once we asked her to voluntarily give them up, she vehemently protested and said no. We unhooked her battery and told her the car had broken down. She called the local garage and paid them an extra $50 for a housecall and got it fixed. We stayed worred and she stayed angry. But fate intervened when she forgot to pay her car insurance. They were about to reinstate it when we went behind her back and told them the truth about her driving challenges and that she had recently been diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s (which was also true). They refused to renew her license, Dad explained that she couldn’t drive without insurance, and we quietly took the car keys with us on a visit. She called 5 times a day for weeks and, for months afterwards, she was very angry. But now, she’s forgotten about it, and the car sits in the garage covered in dust and with 4 flat tires, but also not a danger to my Grandmama and not a danger to any innocent driver on the road.
In the past few weeks, we’ve talked about the dangers of driving with certain medical conditions or on certain drugs and in the next article we’ll cover drowsy driving, teenage driving, and everyone’s new favorite – texting while driving. Stay safe!