If your parents thought it was stressful when they taught you how to drive, you’ll probably all come to realize those were fun, heady days, compared with telling your parents: It’s time to give up your keys.
Asking — or telling — your parents to give up their car is not only an emotional decision, but a financial one, too. Because you may not only have a car to sell. You may end up taking on a part-time, unpaid job as a chauffeur, a role your parents once took on for you. Like the wheels on that car, what goes around comes around.
But if that’s where you are on the highway of life, it doesn’t have to be the worst road trip ever. Consider these issues, if you want to reduce some financial and emotional costs.
Put yourself in their shoes. You may be dangerously close to an outburst if your elderly father parked in your garage when the garage door was down, but think about what you’re about to do.
“Giving up one’s independence is absolutely one of the most difficult transitions that the elderly have to go through and baby boomers caring for their parents have to handle,” says Lynette Whiteman, executive director of Caregiver Volunteers of Central New Jersey, a nonprofit organization in Toms River, New Jersey. “When we spoke to my father about his inability to drive, he said, ‘You might as well put me in the grave.'”
“There’s the potential for depression and isolation when you take somebody’s ability to be mobile and engage productively in society,” says Lydia Manning, an associate professor of gerontology at Concordia University Chicago. She particularly likes an idea that was put forth in the book, “The Driving Dilemma: The Complete Resource Guide for Older Drivers and Their Families,” by Elizabeth Dugan.
“Before you ask your parent to give up their car, try giving up your own car for two weeks to get an idea of what you’re asking them,” Manning suggests.
Even if you aren’t willing to do that, or simply can’t, Manning says that just the thought of how you might get around for two weeks sans wheels should make you more empathetic and creative when trying to devise ways for your parent or parents to remain mobile without a car.
And keep in mind that your parents may be safer drivers than you think. At least they’re probably not texting behind the wheel like many of their younger counterparts.
“Are you being hyper vigilant? You want to make sure you’re making a fair assessment of their driving abilities,” Manning says, adding that tools exist to help you make that determination. For instance, AAA has a website that offers tools and resources for evaluating an older person’s driving ability.
Remind your parents of the cost of having a car. Yes, your parents may have to hire the occasional cabdriver, or pay a relative or go with a ride-sharing service like Uber, but they’re about to save a small fortune, too.
“The cost of insurance, depreciation and related auto overhead is much greater than hiring a driver,” says Walter Zweifler, a senior financial appraiser in New York City.
He knows of what he speaks. Zweifler is 83 and very active — still working and playing racquetball and horse riding every week. But he says, “After a series of automobile accidents, we decided that we owed it to our environment as well as our survival to give up the car.”
Zweifler admits that not owning a car is inconvenient, “but like a lot of things in the aging process, you make accommodations and get on with your life.”
And, again, you save money. According to AAA’s just-released 2015 “Your Driving Costs” study, it costs the average car driver $8,698 ever year (this is assuming you drive an average sedan and are still making payments).
You also may be able to find free transportation, depending what’s available in your area. For instance, the Caregiver Volunteers of Central New Jersey offers free rides for medical-related visits to the elderly who can’t drive.
And your parents will have an easier time adjusting than their parents or grandparents did.
“The Internet allows one to shop for anything while never needing to leave home,” says Lynda Shrager, an Albany, New York-based occupational therapist who has specialized in geriatrics for over 30 years.
Your parents’ car may help someone else in the family. Mona Wood-Sword, a publicist in Honolulu, says her 91-year-old mother recently gave up driving. It was a tough decision because she is pretty healthy and sharp, Wood-Sword says, but her mother has macular degeneration developing in her eyes.
Since then, Wood-Sword says she and her husband and sister have been shuttling her mother around.
“We have yet to decide what we will do with her car,” Wood-Sword says. “We often use it to take her on her errands and appointments, so we’ll probably keep it for now. Eventually, I think we’ll give it to my sister, as it is in much better condition than hers, and her car can go to her college-aged kids who are always borrowing the car anyway.”
Bringing the topic up early might save time and money. Manning suggests having a “what if?” conversation with your parents as early as 10 years before you think they might have to quit driving.
Samuella Becker, a public relations professional in New York City, wishes she had had that conversation with her mother sooner.
“My mother has dementia and now lives in an assisted living community,” Becker says. “So while finding affordable transportation wasn’t an issue, locating the car title was. Without it, the car cannot be sold and the ownership transferred.”
Becker eventually was able to get a new one. Your local or state Department of Motor Vehicles should be able to walk you through the steps to get a copy. But she recommends knowing where your parents’ important documents are — beyond the car title.
You might also consult the DMV for something else. See if your state offers an identification card as a replacement for your parent’s driver’s license, if that’s a concern of theirs. Speaking for how New York handles it, Shrager says: “The DMV Non-Driver ID Card has the same personal identification information, photo, signature and special safeguards against alterations as a photo driver’s license.”
And having a plan B early on might help you spot potential pitfalls to your parents giving up their car keys, assuming, of course, that your mother or father is stubborn. Many elderly drivers are going to recognize, maybe long before you do, that they no longer belong behind the wheel.
Manning’s parents are driving around and about, but her Cincinnati-based grandparents, who are in their 90s, no longer get behind the wheel. But talking her grandfather into giving up the keys to his truck was a challenge, she says. The family ultimately got him to agree to give up driving after taking him to his physician, who checked him out and recommended that he stop. It was then that Manning’s grandfather finally accepted the inevitable.
“He respected a professional’s opinion more than his adult children,” Manning says.
But before going to the doctor, the adult kids had the conversation about giving up his wheels, and afterward, Manning’s grandfather gave up the keys pretty easily. A little too easily, but nobody suspected why.
“He had a set of spare keys,” she says. “It took us a while to realize that he was still driving.”
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The Costs of Asking Your Parents to Give Up the Car Keys originally appeared on usnews.com
