What to do when driving skills decline
Published in Health & Fitness
Focus on the risks posed by other drivers. Aggressive or unpredictable drivers can pose more danger to older drivers with slower reaction times.
How else can families or friends of older drivers be helpful?
The bottom line
In the future, safe, driverless cars may be a solution to the challenge of waning driving skills among older drivers. But we’re not there yet.
Right now, we should all acknowledge that it’s not easy to address concerns about impaired older drivers. My best advice is that older drivers and their loved ones try to talk about ways to remain a safe driver and put a plan in place. Ideally, we all would start the conversation well before any driving problems are evident.
And it may take more than one conversation. Many more. But let’s face it: sooner or later, most drivers will have to stop driving. For some older drivers, that time may be now. For the rest of us, recognizing this eventuality could help when our time comes.
(Robert H. Shmerling, M.D., is a senior faculty editor and an Editorial Advisory Board member for Harvard Health Publishing.)
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