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Picking up keys is hard when older parents and loved ones aren’t supposed to drive

Pirineus
Picking up keys is hard when older parents and loved ones aren’t supposed to drive

When I asked my mom if she wanted to talk about not having a car, she gave me a dirty look.

The subject made her furious.

“When you lose your independence, that’s it. You live in a completely different world,” she said, leaving the room.

I followed her, asking her to continue sharing her thoughts.

“You immediately enter the twilight zone and become a child. Life as you knew it is profoundly transformed,” the mother said. “You no longer make decisions that affect your life. Other people make those decisions for you. You seem to have surrendered your sense of privacy.”

We sold your 2015 Toyota Corolla in 2020.

And it’s still not okay.

Even today, at 94, my mother is upset that she doesn’t have a car to drive.

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I talked about safety, statistics and the reality of a driver with vision, hearing and mobility problems that directly affect her ability to operate a 1,377 kg vehicle.

None of that mattered.

“My driving record was clean,” she said, noting that she was not cited after an accident that left her passenger door shattered and thousands of dollars in damage.

To be frank, your concern for the safety of others ends where your freedom begins.

“I’m probably not like other people,” said the mother.

The thing is, I think she is.

The issue of seniors and their car keys is highly contentious, often led by the children and siblings of elderly drivers, said Thad Szott, co-owner of Szott Auto Group in Michigan.

Families will try to sell those vehicles that are no longer needed.

“It’s a very heavy and emotional situation for families,” he said. “We have these discussions when people lose their ability to drive, and families come to dealerships looking for solutions and often end up selling it to us. It’s like a trade-in, but without getting a new vehicle.”

Taking away the keys: tricks and threats

When asked about his experience as a car dealer, Jeff King chose to speak as a son.

“My sister took the keys to my mom’s car, so my mom went to my sister’s house in Bristol, Tennessee, with the extra set of keys and stole the car back. Then she got into an accident,” said King, vice president and general manager of Bozard Ford Lincoln in St. Augustine, Florida.

“Mom, she was a real estate agent, she must have been in her 80s. She went to the doctor and he was talking to her about driving. She wouldn’t tell us the fact that he said she couldn’t drive,” King said.

“For the last 10 years of her life, she made my sister drive and Mom would tell everyone that my sister was going into real estate and wanted to learn the business. She was just helping Mom get around. People didn’t drive with her anymore.”

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Eventually, King flew to Tennessee during hurricane season and told his mother he couldn’t return to Florida unless he drove her Toyota Prius.

King sold the Prius when he got home.

Shopping with an ‘accomplice’

When it comes to customers buying vehicles, King said the clientele in Florida routinely includes people of all ages. That’s not a red flag.

But every now and then, a person walks into the dealership with a secret plan.

“For example, they have their 89-year-old boyfriend, an accomplice,” King said. “The kids will call later. The purchase was made in someone else’s name. Family members will come in and say, ‘We took their car.’ People will try everything.”

Taking away car keys from adults hurts deeply because people can no longer do what they want, when they want, with whom they want, he said. “You take away mobility, you take away independence. I mean, my mom was strong-willed. She wouldn’t wear oxygen in public because someone would see her. She wouldn’t let my sister celebrate her birthday because then someone would know how old she was.”

Risks for seniors behind the wheel

Accident rates per mile driven increase around age 70, said Aimee Cox, a researcher at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington, Va., an organization that provides data to insurers.

As people reach their 80s, the risk of accidents — and death — increases, she said.

Older drivers don’t get into more accidents than younger drivers, but they are involved in more multi-vehicle crashes at intersections, Cox said. Newer vehicles have more safety features that benefit everyone, she said.

Still, “crossovers can be particularly tricky,” Cox said.

More people on the roads are older, and more seniors are holding onto their driver’s licenses longer, but they need to focus on how many prescriptions they are taking, their medical conditions, vision impairments and mobility, Cox said.

“My grandmother was a nurse, so she had the ability to say, ‘I can’t do this anymore,'” Cox said. “So it was a will-do situation rather than a forced one.”

Data junkies point to 1997 because that’s when the number of motor vehicle crash deaths per population peaked for people 70 and older, Cox said. Since then, the number of licensed drivers 80 and older has jumped 92%, according to the most recent government data, which is from 2022.

An Ann Arbor man who retired as an automotive industry analyst said he worries that raising the topic of car keys could potentially threaten their status in his father’s will. So he will leave the issue to his siblings to handle.

A spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State could not be reached for comment. And a spokeswoman for the American Association of Retired Persons said no one was available to discuss the matter and referred people to the group’s website.

When a marriage is at stake

Anne, a retired pharmaceutical saleswoman from Highland, Mich., who asked to be identified only by her middle name, said dealing with driver’s license issues can be exhausting and sad for younger family members accustomed to independent parents.

She watched her mother-in-law struggle with confusion while driving but still insisted on going where she needed to go, Anne said. “She would often complain about the poor design of the roads. She would go 35 in a 55 mph zone. She would turn left from the lane going straight.”

The woman, in her late 80s, would brake sharply when the lights changed color and wouldn’t move when they turned green, Anne said. “I decided that my children, who were in elementary school at the time, were not going to ride with her anymore. I said something to my husband.”

Being the bad guy

As seniors lose friends and pets, adding the loss of transportation is unbearable.

“In this country, we don’t have the infrastructure and support to care for people who can no longer drive,” Anne said. “If you can’t get around, you can’t go where you want to go. You can get someone to drive you, but how do you do the things you love to do? Even if you don’t want to go somewhere, knowing that the vehicle is in the garage and that you can go if you want matters.”

Anne never took the keys out.

“It would have cost me my marriage,” she said. “I was the villain. I was the evil daughter-in-law.”

One friend, she said, took a more subtle approach and simply disconnected something in the engine so it wouldn’t work for a parent, Anne said. “They said, ‘Let me take it in to get it serviced.’ And they never brought it back.”

Father had an accident before handing over the keys

Terri McCoy, 65, a paralegal from Ann Arbor, said she and her brother told their 82-year-old mother that her brother’s car was broken down. He needed to borrow her Saturn.

“She kept asking about it,” McCoy said. “But we told her, ‘We’ll run errands for you,’ and ‘We’re here if you need anything.’ She believed that until the day she died.”

Meanwhile, McCoy’s father, a retired economics professor who taught at the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University and Western Michigan University, gave up his car at age 80 after crashing while making a left turn on the way to the doctor.

Symptoms of dementia began.

Hurt feelings

William Chopik, an associate professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, said family members cannot turn a blind eye when public safety is at stake.

“Families have to deal with this,” he said. “You want to have harmonious relationships, and this is a big source of discord. Some people have (disabled) the engine … and said the car is the problem. This is called compassionate care because it’s a way of preserving egos and family dynamics. Attributing the car to being broken is, in a way, a blatant lie, but it can be beneficial.”

Everyone is getting older, and dealing with this issue legislatively is “radioactive,” Chopik said. “At some point, we’re going to have to get our feelings hurt.”

Trying to get help from a family doctor

Adult children, seeking to avoid conflict, can seek guidance from their family doctor.

In Anne’s case, the doctor determined that his patient had reached an age where she needed to prove her ability to drive and ordered a driving test at the Secretary of State’s office.

“When my sister-in-law took her mother, they never gave her a medical certificate,” Anne said. “And she found a new doctor.”

This strong-willed woman worked in the family business and went to Pearl Harbor while it was still burning to help the American Red Cross. She taught herself to drive at age 14 in rural Michigan. She lived to be 100.

She had her Chevy Equinox until the end, Anne said. “She said she would make my life hell if I did anything to take it away.”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Phoebe Wall Howard, an automotive reporter for the Detroit Free Press for nearly seven years, now writes a column on car culture, consumer trends and life that will appear twice a month in the Freep.compart of the USA TODAY Network. These columns and others will appear on his Substack in https://phoebewalhoward.substack.com Contact her at [email protected].

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