5 Tips for Getting Your Aging Parent to Stop Driving

Every single day, an average of about 500 elderly adults are injured in auto collisions. With over thirty million elderly drivers, that is a lot of injuries and potentials for injury. Not only that, but death is a real threat too. Oftentimes, older drivers don’t have the all the same capacities that they used to have, which frequently puts them into precarious situations. These accidents are not only costing lives, they also cost a lot of money – millions of dollars. Usually, it is the family that has to bear the brunt of the costs, especially when it comes to medical and insurance bills. So, if your elderly parent isn’t quite able to drive anymore, it may be time to take the key. Here are five tips for getting your aging parent to stop driving.

1. State the obvious. There may be a number of obvious reasons why your elderly parent isn’t safe to drive anymore. These reasons could include poor eyesight, poor hearing, slower reflexes and a number of other problems that affect the elderly. Moreover, if your elderly parent’s car insurance is getting more expensive – and your Arizona car insurance quotes or California car insurance quotes are astronomical – it may be time to to take away the keys. So, just state the obvious and it should help in getting your elderly parent to realize that it is time to stop getting behind the wheel.
2. Get your parent’s friends to support your decision. There is a good chance that your elderly parent has a number of friends or a close-knit circle of support. If this is the case, you may want to get everyone in on the campaign to have your parent turn over the car keys. It may hurt at first, but if there are more people on your side – people your parent trusts – it will be a lot easier.
3. Show them the statistics. It may be hard for your elderly parent to stop driving after decades of being behind the wheel, but there comes a time when it just isn’t safe anymore. If you show your elderly parent the news, statistics and other information about how dangerous it is, it may just jolt them into coming to the realization that it isn’t safe for them to be behind the wheel.
4. Hide the keys. This may be an extreme effort to stop your elderly parent from driving, but it may be necessary, especially if dementia or senility is starting to rear its ugly head. Sometimes an elderly parent won’t remember that they shouldn’t be driving, so your only option is to hide the keys. The truth is, those keys need to be hidden very well, and ideally in a place that hard – or even impossible – for your parent to reach.
5. Pull the ignition cord. Another extreme measure is to pull the ignition cord, because that will render the vehicle unusable. This measure should only be taken if all other measures fail. If your parent insists on driving, your only option – besides taking the car away – is to make the vehicle inoperable. Hopefully this extreme gesture will get your point across. At the end of the day, it is your parent’s safety at stake.