Our octogenarian dad had been driving for almost 65 years and he wasn’t about to willingly stop.
He’d always been a relatively cautious driver. But deteriorating reflexes, slowly progressing Parkinson’s disease (that he hadn’t disclosed to us), and general wear and tear had made him gradually less so.
We, his children, had urged him to reconsider driving. No way. Mum had always been a far worse driver than him (we’d been reluctant to get in a car with her since she was in her 50s!). He did the driving. For both of them, living unsupported in the family home into their final years, the car remained their key to independence.
The alternative, understandably, terrified them. So Dad insisted on continuing to drive. Never far. But far enough. To the supermarket. To the newsagent. To their local doctor.
One day, a few streets from home, he hit the accelerator instead of the brake. The car shot through a T-intersection, collided with a moving tram, did a 360-degree spin, careened through the brick fence of a house, crossed the yard and only stopped when it smashed through the front veranda.
The car was a write-off. The damage to the house extensive. Dad escaped injury. Unfathomably, nobody else was hurt.
Not surprisingly, Dad’s licence was suspended. He wasn’t drunk (he rarely drank) or drug affected. Just old.
He tried twice to get his licence back. To no avail. His wheels were gone (thankfully). But to my parents the end of his driving marked a dramatic transformation to their lives. Their independence was on the line. And so they had to move from the family home into a smaller place, walking distance from shops. They had to adapt to family taking them grocery shopping, to occasional deliveries, and to catching taxis (which they’d always considered a frivolous indulgence) to various appointments and for rare social outings.
Dad didn’t drive again (he died three years later). Our mother kept a car until her death a few years after that (but was self-aware enough to rarely drive). I lived interstate, so could help little day-to-day. But there’s no doubt that, if not for my sister and her family who drove them around and helped them with essentials, they both would have otherwise spent their final years in aged care (Dad had five months in a nursing home, our mother lived the final few weeks of her life in respite care).
So many friends in my cohort (late gen X-ers) have elderly parents who live independently and still drive. While they have many concerns about their folks (the myriad health problems too often associated with ageing, their negotiation of stairs and bathtubs, and their maintenance of old family homes falling down around them), the thought that usually worries them most is of their parents on the road.
Australia has an ageing population. Medical interventions (surgery and medication) mean we are living healthier for longer.
Research shows that more older Australians are continuing to drive. For example, 71% of people aged 80-plus were still on the road in 2019, compared with 59% a decade earlier. Australian government data from October 2024 also showed that more than a fifth of the 1,295 people killed on the roads in the previous year were aged 65 and above.
Older, more experienced drivers tend to be more cautious than those in their late teens and early 20s. But statistically, drivers aged over 70 had road death rates about the same as those aged 17 to 25. They were also at significantly higher risk of serious injury if involved in collisions. This had nothing to do with the way they drove. Rather, it indicated their susceptibility to injury due to greater physical frailty.
In Australia, a country with a terrible occurrence and societal acceptance of violent road deaths (would we, for example, be so lackadaisical about the death “toll” were we measuring killings, accidental and otherwise, involving knives or dogs or lawnmowers?), we are culturally imbued with notions of our “rights” rather than our “privileges” when it comes to motor vehicle driving. Something to do with our vast expanses and wide-open roads, perhaps.
But the truth is we spend far more time equipping young people (technically, physically and emotionally) to drive than we do to ensuring their continued safety (and privileges) as road users when they age.
While we nationalise the so-called “road toll”, the rules governing who gets to keep driving in old age vary greatly across the nation. Annual medical assessments for older drivers, for example, are mandatory in some states and not others.
More recent familial experience has illustrated just how devastating a blow to personal dignity and independence is the suspension of a driving licence due to impairment associated with ageing. It is emotionally charged and very fraught, like so many decisions about how families deal with the cognitive and physical challenges of old age.
Those moments when it is evident that we’ve switched roles, from the recipients of sage advice from our elders to our dispensing of it to parents, are painful and sobering.
But some of them, like when our loved ones should permanently vacate the driver’s seat, are also freighted with community responsibility – while also standing to save those who gave us life.
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
