I gave up driving over five years ago, but that does not mean I don’t miss it. In the past few days I have been daydreaming about going to visit a friend on a small Caribbean island. When I inquired about how I could get around when she is working, she said I could rent a golf cart. Could I actually drive a golf cart around the island?
Pitiful to say, but I got all excited with the idea of being independently mobile. I got almost giddy with thoughts of driving myself to the store and to the beach. How fast can a golf cart possibly go? I certainly could drive a golf cart!
The next thought was wondering if I had given up driving too soon. Maybe I could have gotten another year behind the wheel.
Although dry age-related macular degeneration is not supposed to act this way, it seemed as if I lost my second eye overnight. Would I have decided to give up driving so quickly if my vision loss had been more gradual? When and how do we know to stop driving?
I found an article from Caring Home entitled Seniors and Driving : A Guide. The statistics quoted in the article are a few years old (2015) and they are scary. In 2015, 14 million Americans were in an auto accident caused by an elderly driver and 19 elderly drivers were dying in an accident every day. This does not assume every one of those elderly folks was visually impaired but certainly some were.
We slightly older folks all have good ideas of what factors make it harder for us to drive. In addition to our vision loss there are things like chronic health problems, hearing problems, and drug effects and drug interactions that can limit our ability to drive safely.
But since this is a blog on AMD, let me focus on vision for just a second. The article quotes Elizabeth Dugan, author of The Driving Dilemma, who says 90% of the information that is needed to drive safely comes to us through our eyes.
And what happens when we are not getting that information? How do we know when it is no longer safe to drive?
The article suggests the police and the insurance company may notice before we do. Are you getting traffic tickets when you never had any before? Have those “little” fender benders resulted in a jump in your insurance premiums?
And even if you have not had any fender benders, how about scratches and dings to the car? In the months before my mother and her siblings took my grandfather’s keys, there were multiple “mystery” scrapes and dents on his car that my grandfather always insisted had just appeared out of thin air.
About that time I was a teen with a job but without my own car. I was reluctant to have my grandfather drive me to work and white knuckled it all the way. The man was scary behind the wheel, and I was always grateful to get there alive.
And speaking of reluctance, have you been recently reluctant to do the driving? Quite frankly, have you scared even yourself a few times?
Lastly, the article talks about your tension when you are driving. Do you lean forward and strain to see? Do you feel overly tense and come home exhausted? Does driving seem like a chore?
If these things are happening, it might be time to think about giving up driving. But don’t want to give up driving? There might be a reprieve for a little while. Next, I will review some of the driving rehabilitation services that may be available to you.