Reply to What happens (legally) if an older person drives and ends up seriously hurting or killing someone?

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "What happens (legally) if an older person drives and ends up seriously hurting or killing someone?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I have two elderly relatives that had dementia and had bad near misses that caused their spouses to just hide the keys.  For one, he drove over a sidewalk and almost crashed into a store in a strip mall -- luckily no one on the sidewalk and I think he didn't break the glass wall into the store.  The other drove off the road onto a grassy field near an elementary school.  It was a weekend, but if it had been a weekday, there almost certainly would have been children playing.  Dementia is really insidious and the "comes and goes" aspect of it is really troubling because it's not predictable -- they can seem fine one minute and the next minute, they are irrational or out of it.

My father is elderly and still drives, but he doesn't have dementia.  Even for my elderly father, he bought a car that has all the safety features possible -- automatic breaking, correction when you start to veer off, etc -- because he realizes that his reaction time is slower than it once was.  He also always stays under the speed limit, and avoids things like left hand turns into traffic where there is not a turn arrow -- he'll just drive further to get to someplace with a turn arrow.  He also doesn't drive after dark.  If an elderly person can't have a rational conversation about the steps they are doing to compensate for their age, then they shouldn't be driving.  I think some states and maybe AARP also have some classes about how to change the way you drive to reflect your slower reaction time.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics