As the baby boomers head towards retirement, they are determined to redefine what it means to be an OAP. Today’s pensioners are more likely to be found driving Route 66 in a Mustang than pottering along the seafront at Eastbourne and stopping for tea and scones.
The proportion of the over seventies with a driving licence has leapt from 15% in 1975 to 47% in 2004. And by 2050 40% of licence holders are expected to be 60 or over as the population ages. But the natural desire to remain active, independent and mobile for as long as possible can have its downside.
How old is too old to drive? And if you are caring for an elderly person, should you report them to the authorities and force them to surrender their licence before they become a hazard to other road users? Michele Couston battled for three years to make her father John give up his licence as his driving became increasingly dangerous. When all the reasoning, pleading and increasingly acrimonious arguments fell on deaf ears, she took the difficult decision to report the 76-year-old.
The problems began when he was diagnosed with encephalitis, a condition that causes inflammation of the brain. “He was having these ‘minor absences’,” says Couston, a designer from south London. “For a few moments he just wasn’t there. There is no way he should have been driving.”
Before his retirement her father had enjoyed a high-profile career with the United Nations. “He was always the top dog in our family,” says Couston. “He was old-fashioned and for him driving was part of his manhood. It was a macho thing, as it is for a lot of men of his generation, I think.”
Couston, her husband and her brother all tried to persuade her father to give up. “I kept worrying that he would cause an accident. The doctors had advised him not to drive but his attitude was always, ‘What do doctors know?’ ” About a year after the diagnosis Couston’s father was near his home in Rome when he pulled out in front of another car. The other driver swerved to avoid his Ford Sierra and went careering into the central reservation. The driver later won substantial compensation. “I just don’t think my father was looking,” says Couston.
For a while he was persuaded not to drive but then he was spotted by a family friend driving at speed and
his children became increasingly concerned. “We did everything to try to stop him driving,” says Couston. “We’d take away his keys, his licence, but he just kept getting it renewed. And he kept putting deposits down on new cars. He was really determined not to listen to reason. We tried everything and in the end you just feel like a bully.”
When her father, a Canadian citizen, set off on his third trip to Canada to replace his licence, Couston and her family intervened. She spoke to the Canadian equivalent of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, gave them her father’s details and told them he was not fit to drive. “They listened to what I had to say and my father didn’t get a new licence. We’ve not spoken about it since.”
Couston now thinks it is time something was done to take the burden away from sons and daughters. “I think that after the age of 70 there should be annual medical assessments because you can’t always rely on people to know or admit to themselves when it’s time to stop driving.”
Alex Pell, a journalist from west London, agrees. When Edward, his 70-year-old car-mad father, was diagnosed with lung cancer, Pell faced the prospect of trying to persuade him to part with his licence. “He loved driving and was always coming up with excuses to go for a drive,” says Pell. “We always went on driving holidays when we were kids and my mum used to joke that he’d have driven up the aisle if he could.”
As his health deteriorated Pell’s father was prescribed increasingly strong drugs. Doctors advised him not to drive but he refused to give up his new Ford Mondeo.
“He was taking really heavy-duty opium-based painkillers,” says Pell. “It was frankly ridiculous for him to be in a car. He started to get quite erratic, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, reversing into walls. The doctors advised him not to drive but they didn’t exactly order him not to and he just ignored them. I kept dreading I’d get a phone call telling me he’d been in a terrible accident.”
