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IN YOUR PRIME
Drive Alive
Q. I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of giving up driving my car. However, I don’t want to
lose my precious independence. I find the whole idea abhorrent.
Still, I am well along in years (I’m 82, but don’t publish that.) and when I read about that
poor man with Alzheimer’s who killed a pedestrian, and kept right on driving, well, I too was
horrified.
No one wants to end his life a killer!
---Name withheld, Elgin, IL
A. We Americans speak in clichés, oftentimes because they tell a story. One of our popular
clichés teaches: “Demographics are destiny.”
Meaning, as a result of head-turning demographics, the United States presently faces a
revolution in transportation—largely provoked by its growing population of older drivers,
meaning those 65 and beyond.
Consider, by the year 2030 there will be 70 million older adults. This cohort will represent
about 20 percent of the population.
Now, not all 70 million will be rolling down the highways, but a majority will continue as
road warriors, hugging the slow lane at slightly under the speed limit.
Further, because drivers 80 years or older are generally frail, with bones susceptible to
breaking when involved in auto crashes, they are more then four times as likely to die as
their juniors of just 60 years. A projection of some 20,000 road fatalities for older
Americans is reasonable for the year 2030.
It may be reasonable, but it’s hardly an acceptable statistic. Not to this scribbler, and not
to the San Francisco-based American Society on Aging (ASA). In cooperation with the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the ASA recently named a 17-member bureau of
“Drive Well Experts.”
These senior-friendly women and men will actively promote the idea of change, of coming to
grips with the problems about to overwhelm cities and towns across the nation. “Communities
must change the terms of their discourse about older drivers,” says Jim Emerman, speaking for
the ASA.
For example, “People need to realize most seniors are competent…(but) for those challenged
with age-related changes, we need to discuss options…”
Yes, we need the discourse now, today, before still another dementia patient strikes an
unsuspecting pedestrian, severing a limb and thereafter driving three miles with the corpse
affixed to the windshield.
Activist Jim Emerman defends 70-plus drivers, stating they’re: 1) among the safest on the
road; 2) they post the highest scores for safety-belt usage; 3) and they have the lowest rate
of accidents due to alcohol involvement.
However, their traffic fatality totals and injury numbers are projected to grow—and
dramatically. One more tell-tale, even chilling, statistic, and this from the Alzheimer’s
Association of Chicago:
By age 85, approximately 50 percent of these older adults exhibit some signs of Alzheimer’s,
the mind-robbing anomaly. Moreover, the projection is by 2030 there will be 14 million
Alzheimer’s patients (a population equal to that of Texas), and unless disciplined a
significant minority will insist on getting behind the wheel, unhinged from reality.
Now, suppose your family is in that other car, believing they are perfectly safe traveling on
the opposite side of the white divider line?
Unquestionably, our time for deep thinking, for intelligent dialogue and timely city planning
is right this moment. At issue: “If the highways are to be kept safe for drivers of all ages,
how then are we as a society to care for our senior women and men? How will they get around?”
If they must surrender car keys what is best and fair for them?
Let the dialogues begin. For peoples of all ages.
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Outrageous Associations
