Life After Mother — Danger to Yourself and Others

My mother never accepted, after her stroke in 2017 and a diagnosis of dementia (which she never accepted, either), that she was no longer capable of driving safely. Even in her final weeks in a care facility, she lamented, “I’ve got to start driving again.”

The potential danger of an incapacitated senior’s refusal to stop driving was demonstrated in Santa Monica in 2003, when an 86-year-old man admitted he got confused between the accelerator and brake. He drove for an entire block through a farmers market, hitting stands and pedestrians, killing 10, injuring 70. 

The man was found guilty of 10 counts of manslaughter. “Hitting the accelerator instead of the brake seems to me to be a clearly negligent act,” the judge said.

Much driving advice for seniors focuses on safety, including alternatives such as ride services, but there’s little attention on getting an incapacitated person to admit the potential for danger.

Only some twists of fate stopped my mother’s denial from having more severe consequences. A doctor and the DMV had to clear her to legally drive again — her license was suspended — and she tried and failed to get clearance 

Also at just the right time her Prius’ battery died, and a replacement cost several thousand dollars. My mother, a great procrastinator, balked, but kept threatening to buy a new battery — or a new car. I feared she might stop procrastinating long enough to find an unscrupulous car salesman. 

I chauffeured her for two years, while she spun sob stories to healthcare providers about how she “had to” drive because I couldn’t be expected to “drive 40 miles” to drive her. When I tried to explain the distance was more like 20 miles and distance wasn’t an issue, the professionals responded as to some trivial irrelevant family quarrel, instead of the evidence of dangerous delusion it appeared to me to be.

My father also lived in denial about his dementia, and about his impaired driving skills. He lived on the second story of a stairs-only apartment, so his physical inability to get down the steps was what mercifully kept him off the road. “I just need somebody to help me to the car!” he’d rage.

“You need to see and hear well to drive,” I’d try to explain.

“I can see! I can hear!” he’d bellow. He complained he couldn’t hear even with two hearing aids turned up full (he always blamed the aids and batteries) and he couldn’t see even halfway across the room — but just try and tell him that impaired his driving.

I asked several resources if my mother could be counseled about her failure to accept her impairment, only to hear variants on, “She has dementia, so she’d just forget anyway.” She had times, though, when light broke through the dark clouds of dementia. Someone may have been able to cast some light on why she was so reluctant to admit the truth.