MW Older adults live 7 years longer than they can safely drive: How to plan for 'driving retirement' on your own terms

By Jessica Hall

'The single biggest mistake is waiting until that moment of crisis'

Until three months before he died at age 97, Fred drove every day from his farmhouse to the local store in his rural New England town to get the newspaper, pick up some orange juice and check the mail.

That is, until he lost his license after a family member reported concerns about his driving safety to the state department of motor vehicles. The loss of driving independence pushed Fred into a deep depression; he didn't get out of bed for five days, and eventually stopped eating. He died three months later.

While Fred's situation may be an extreme case given his advanced years, having to give up the keys as you age isn't an unusual situation. Older adults typically live seven to 10 years longer than they can safely drive, according to AAA, a nonprofit motor-club consortium that also researches traffic safety. Preparing ahead for the days when you may not be able to drive independently can ease the transition.

"You have to plan for your driving retirement the same as you do your work retirement," said Jake Nelson, AAA's director of traffic-safety advocacy and research. "The single biggest mistake is waiting until that moment of crisis instead of talking to adult children, caregivers and loved ones and making a plan for what would happen and how would [you] like to handle it."

By 2030, there will be more than 70 million people age 65 and older, and about 85% to 90% of them will be licensed to drive, according to AAA.

"Everyone looks forward to retiring, but retiring from driving - nobody wants that. You get a really strong emotional reaction from people when they can't drive independently anymore. It's as if when you can't move, nothing else matters," said Katherine Freund, president and chief executive of ITNAmerica, a nonprofit that provides transportation services and advocacy for older adults and people with mobility challenges. "This is very sad stuff."

The number of traffic-related deaths for older adults is rising. The number of motor-vehicle deaths involving drivers age 65 and older increased 5% year over year in 2022, to 9,547 fatalities, according to the National Safety Council. From 2013 through 2022, the number of such driving deaths increased 42%, while at the same time the population of older adults in the U.S. increased 29%. That resulted in a 9.5% increase in the death rate per 100,000 people, the National Safety Council found.

Yet it is a person's driving performance, and not their age, that should determine their fitness to drive, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cautions.

Make a plan

Much like parents and teens create a plan or guidelines for a novice driver at the start of their driving career, older adults should have a driving plan created long before a crisis moment, Nelson said.

Under such an agreement, the older adult designates a specific loved one who will approach them if they have concerns about their driving ability. The conversation should be in private, and the trusted person should bring examples and incidents to the discussion to illustrate their concerns, he said.

"It shouldn't be handled like an intervention with the whole family in a room, surprising the older driver," according to Nelson. "That can create resentment, defensiveness and hostility."

Nearly 83% of older drivers report never speaking to a family member or physician about their driving ability, according to research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Of the small percentage of families who do have that conversation, 15% do so after a crash or traffic infraction has occurred.

Due to their potential physical fragility, older drivers are at greater risk of death and injury if involved in a crash. Drivers age 70 and older have higher death rates per 1,000 crashes than middle-aged drivers age 35 to 54, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the exception of teenagers, seniors have the highest crash death rate per mile driven.

"If you have an older-driver safety contract, it documents the plan and serves as a reminder to the older driver that they agreed to the plan and how they wanted it implemented when the time came," Nelson said.

As you prepare for a driving retirement, do research on how you'll handle life's daily activities - such as errands, doctor's appointments and socializing - without driving. That might involve getting rides from friends and family, public transportation, volunteer driving programs or commercial ride-hailing services. Many areas have ride-acccess services that offer transportation to people, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee. Contact your local area agency on aging for suggestions on transportation services and benefits. Rides in Sight, meanwhile, is a national database of transportation options for older adults and people with mobility issues.

"People don't want to ask favors. They will do without food, do without going to the doctor, skip events in their lives, rather than ask for favors," ITNAmerica's Freund said. "That leads to isolation and loneliness - which we know is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day - and their world can become very small, very quickly."

It can be complicated to find transportation, especially in rural or sprawling suburban locales that lack sufficient public transportation. About 45% of Americans have no access to public transportation options at all, according to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Ride-hailing app Uber $(UBER)$ announced in May that it was launching a tool called Uber Caregiver to help arrange transportation for appointments or to help restock essentials for a loved one.

Read: Uber launches service that can help with eldercare

"If I've done my homework, it becomes less scary to me because I know what my options are. I don't want to be a burden, so I have looked into the options available and have a plan," Nelson said. "Some families will experience a scenario where they're taking the keys, hiding the keys, taking out the spark plugs, because the conversations and the pleading have not been constructive."

Emotional loss

Giving up driving can be a practical hassle, as well as an emotional ordeal. So much of people's sense of independence and autonomy comes from being able to come and go as they please.

"Driving is tied to freedom and liberty and independence - less so in places like New York City where few people have their own cars, or European countries where driving is not the centerpiece of society. It's a very American thing to be so connected to driving," Nelson noted.

"It's traumatizing to anyone of any age to take that away. It's that much more pronounced for the matriarch or patriarch of a family to have to start relying on others for rides," he added.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that older adults who have stopped driving are almost two times more likely to suffer from depression and nearly five times as likely to enter a long-term care facility as those who remain behind the wheel.

"There's a social stigma to not driving. You've had decades of Madison Avenue telling you that operating this machine means you're independent, brave, strong," said Freund. "It feels like a failure, when actually you've made a decision for your own safety, your family's safety and the community."

Men and women who have reduced their driving report similar levels of care and emotional support from friends and family, but older male drivers find it harder to seek advice and guidance from others, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found.

If you're having concerns about your own driving ability, raise the issue with your primary care physician.

"Be your own best advocate. Bring your concerns to your doctor. The doctor wants to help you and extend your safe driving years - don't be afraid of that," Nelson said. "Someone may give up driving prematurely, when what they need is some medical help or other assistance."

There could be medical reasons - such as vision or hearing loss, arthritis, or neuropathy in the hands and feet - that make it difficult to turn the wheel or hit the brakes. Age-related changes in vision, physical functioning, and the ability to reason and remember, as well as diseases and medications, might affect some older adults' driving abilities, the CDC said.

"As people age, their bodies change and their minds change. It's just how it is - it's the normal changes of aging that make it more difficult to see, more difficult to judge the speed of moving objects," Freund noted.

Law enforcement or a primary care physician can report concerns about an older driver's safety to a medical advisory board of a state's department of motor vehicles.

Of course, the board's review doesn't automatically mean the loss of a license. The board could decide there's no issue, or request vision or hearing evaluations and modifications, or recommend an appointment with an occupational-therapy driver-rehabilitation specialist.

Such specialists do a comprehensive evaluation to identify any potential limitations and identify any potential adaptive equipment. The specialist would look at muscle strength, flexibility and range of motion, as well as coordination and reaction time. The older driver would also be evaluated for judgment and decision-making abilities, as well as the ability to drive with adaptive equipment, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Some state departments of motor vehicles place restrictions on drivers once they reach a certain age. Some states require in-person license renewal, while others require more frequent license renewals and vision tests for older adults.

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February 15, 2025 11:27 ET (16:27 GMT)

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