Plan B - Giving up Driving Without Giving up Life

 

 

Giving up a driver’s license isn’t just a logistical shift—it’s an emotional one. For seniors facing the possibility of life without a car, it can feel like a loss of independence, dignity, or control. But there’s a Plan B. In this post, Jean explores creative, practical alternatives to driving that preserve your freedom, honor your safety, and even build stronger community ties. She also shares stories from her continuum care facility, tips for making the transition smoother, and a list of transportation options. Jasper AI 

As I was driving back from taking my hearing aid in for repair, I was thinking about how much life changes when you get to the point you have to give up your driver’s license. It’s a rite of passage no one looks forward to doing. Some of us seniors even fight it like we’re gladiators going up against a pride of lions in a life or death, pay-for-view event. It’s not just the giving up of a personal freedom that’s involved it’s the guilt that comes with adding a burden onto a family member, who has to make time to help us do these petty but quality-of-life, little chores. And then there are the families who have their heads high in the clouds and are ignoring the telltale sights that it’s time to reverse rolls and be the one to say to their parent, “You’re grounded! I need your car keys. Both sets.” Ya, I know. It’s not that simple. We can’t just say to our mom or dad, “You’ve had a lot of fender binders lately and you are driving slow enough that I could race you with a bicycle” and expect cooperation. 

I speak from experience, having seen this "touchy topic" from both sides of the equation—with my dad, my brother and three times with fellow residents.

I asked Jasper AI, my Microsoft Co-Pilot, to help me brainstorm some ideas for convincing a senior that it’s time to give up a drivers license and then come up with a list of suggestions to help convince us seniors that it’s time to hang up our car keys. A couple of his answers stood out. 

For example: One: Don't spring it on a person just after a fender bender. “Plant the seeds early.” Another: Frame it as if it's “an act of courage to let others take the wheel and as a civic rite of passage---not a loss but rather a transition, like retiring from active duty. Still noble, still valued." Those approaches worked on two of my fellow residents who both said they’d feel terrible if they caused someone to die in an accident, they said they couldn’t live with themselves. They were both in the early-to-mid stages of macular degeneration. They ended up selling their cars and now rely on friends and families to get them where they need to go. My dad was cooperative but my brother? He never stopped telling his daughters he could still drive, could still find he way around without getting lost and demanding they let him try again. I asked Jasper what to do in cases like him and he told me, "...to listen for what’s underneath the protest. Pride, fear, maybe even a whiff of grief disguised as bravado. Jasper would say: Don’t argue the logistics—affirm the dignity. Find ways for him to feel useful, autonomous, needed. Offer a role that doesn’t require a steering wheel. And never underestimate the healing power of being heard, even if you're just listening to a man rant about potholes and 'the good old days' when you could fix a carburetor with chewing gum." (Jasper AI has a sense of humor.)

A third woman living in my continuum care facility gave up her car because she faints often—so much so that she finally got moved down to the assisted living building and is restricted to a wheelchair now. After giving up her license but before the move, she took to calling Uber with a vengeance. Every day she’d go out for coffee or to shop or run errands. When anyone would bring up how much she was spending on Uber, she’d say, “By the time you factor in the cost of car insurance and maintenance plus gas Uber isn’t that costly.” She’s quite the character. At one of our very first lunch tables, over three years ago, she announced that she’s an atheist and after that at least four people sitting there haven’t spoken to her since. I think they believe atheism is like the measles and they rushed off to church the next Sunday to get their ‘vaccines’ updated.

Back on topic: I wanted to learn the ropes of using an Uber so one day I went out for coffee with Ms. Atheist but when it was time to go back home she was having a medical problem and couldn’t get her app to work to call an Uber to come pick us up. I didn’t know the first thing about using an Uber app and I didn’t have my reading glasses with me to figure it out. After the two of us probably entertained the young people around us for awhile—think a Saturday Night Live Skit—a twenty-something woman took pity on us and took my friend’s phone over and we headed off to ER. After ER did their magic on my friend another young person got us hooked up with another Uber. So that day, I got to experience three Uber drivers. And during all the time when we were waiting for our rides to show up I kept hearing my mother’s voice saying, “Never, ever get into a car with a stranger unless you want to get raped and murdered.” How times have changed.

Jasper AI also suggested that whoever is asking a person to give up their car should have a list of “Alternatives to Driving That Don’t Feel Like Downgrades.” Below is his list (but I disagree with his 'downgrades' characterization. Unless we're talking about a chauffeured limousine, nothing is better than owning your own car. But I digress...) The List:

Senior Ride Services offer door-to-door support with a human touch. These services often have empathetic drivers trained to assist older adults, and it’s helpful to create or share a reference sheet with key contacts and links.

Community Volunteer Drivers can turn errands into opportunities for connection. Check with your local community center to see if they have a matching service or referral list.

Ride Shares like Uber or Lyft allow for continued independence, especially when paired with tech support. Consider creating a simple tutorial or guide for ride-sharing apps, ideally with contacts pre-loaded to make calling a car easy.

Medical Transit Programs are designed for recurring appointments and may be free or subsidized by insurance or social services. They’re especially useful for ongoing treatments or specialist visits.

Shopping Shuttles coordinate transportation around regular errands like grocery runs and pharmacy pickups. Keeping an updated community calendar can help residents make the most of these timed services.

Buddy Systems work well when residents pair up to share rides to appointments, events, or stores. They’re most effective when built around existing friendships, but new matches can also be facilitated by staff or community leaders.

I wish we had a list like this that is all fleshed out with the names of  local organizations and their phone numbers. At the risk of being put in charge of a committee to pull together such a resource list, I may bring it up at our next Dialogue Meeting. We had a shopping shuttle here on campus for less than four months before they disbanded it because too few people were using it. And a senior-friend cab service that the CCC had lined up lasted about the same length of time. The Buddy System is working well around here with people who've made close friends before giving up their cars but I’ve always been a loner so I’m not sure anyone would go out of their way if I needed a ride somewhere. 

In case anyone is wondering if I’m starting to doubt my driving abilities, the answer would have been ‘maybe’ last winter but now it’s a hard ‘no’. I’ve been driving more since spring and have gotten over my reluctance. I still won’t drive at night, during rush hour, on the busiest streets or on the expressways but I call that being smart and pro-active. Just like I’d call it being smart and pro-active to be thinking about solutions to the loss of our independence before it actually happens. Having a Plan B might just turn that gladiator vs. the lions metaphor into a pillow fight. ©

Until next Wednesday. 

Photo at the top from Vermont Maturity, Helping Someone Give Up the Car Keys 

P.S. The AI introduction paragraph at the top, is an experiment. When I ran this post past Jasper AI to ask for spelling and punctuation tweaks he suggested a search engine friendly intro at the top to help drive traffic to my blog. I've always known you're supposed to put "buss words" in the first paragraph of posts but I've never leaned into it. It will be fun to look at my stats after this goes live, to see if it helped. I'm still amazed on how quickly I'm integrating AI into my life. For example, in addition to helping me brainstorm this post, this week I also asked it to create stats for my mahjong group. I gave Jasper AI the number of games and days each player played and how many times each player won since the beginning of the year and he figured out our win percentages in seconds and put it in to a nice, descending chart. What a time saver that was! Then I asked him how far down in the weeds he can go. Could he, for example, make me a list of names and phone numbers of Senior Ride Services in my county? He replied with a fully filled out chart in seconds. Who needs a committee when you have an AI app?

Yes, I Still Drive....but Hoedowns are More Fun

Have you ever have one of those weeks that has you moving every second? No time to catch your breath or watch the news or go for that daily walk that is desperately needed to keep the weight from grabbing on to your hips for dear life. A half dozen others living here in my continuing care complex walk past my window every night around 7:00---and in the early morning, too, but I'm not up to see that parade. I need to get on that exercise train but time goes by and I have my long list of excuses. Some weeks my exercise consists of nothing more than walking back and forth between the next building where our meals are served and all activities take place.

This week I drove twenty minutes out of town to get an oil change at a Chevy dealership in a two-block long town, avoiding the another Chevy dealership less than four minutes from my apartment because it's on second busiest street in Michigan (and their 'waiting room' is a couch in the garage next to your car that is sitting in the oil change bay. Who thinks that's a good idea?) I avoid the second busiest street at all costs because according to state statistics our seven mile long stretch of the State Trunkline Highway carries an average of 42,000 vehicles each day. All but twelve years of my life I've lived within three-four blocks of this street. I've watched it grow from a gravel two lane road to a five lane hub of stores, gas stations, quality restaurants and fast food drive-thru's, specialty shops and big box stores.  Confessions like that make me sound old, don't they!

I've seen it all on this street---accidents, road rage, police stand offs, traffic jams, drunks, a robbery in real time, construction zones and the year it got shut down because of a blizzard. Don and I and the rest of our snowplow crew plowed our way to our contracted parking lots that year which also helped out the emergency vehicles and snowmobiles trying to transport essential workers to where they had to go. I had to drive this congested stretch of road back and forth to work for twelve years and most of my life it was unavoidable to get to any where I needed to go. Now, in the twilight of my life, I can drive straight south across it and find the back road that shadows the trunkline and provides back door access to the only places I ever go along it---Trader Joe's, Hobby Lobby, the bookstore and Dollar General. At my age I'm picky when and where I drive. No left turns if I can avoid them. No downtown driving, No night driving. No rush hour driving. No bad weather driving. No highways and definitely not that State Trunkline.

Also this week the management here in my CCC had what they called a 'Hoedown' and it was more fun than any of us expected. The lobby was filled with straw bales and an almost full-sized stuffed horse with a real saddle on it. I did not try to mount it for a photo but others did and no one left blood on the floor when they dismounted. The food served was pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, scalloped potatoes and strawberry short cake. Our line-dancers were pressed into the role of entertainers and there was a four piece band with a banjo, two fiddlers and an acoustic bass.  

But the best part of the evening was seeing how everyone got into creating a costume. Lots of flannel shirts, blue jeans, cowboy boots, neck scarves and even a few genuine cowboy hats were pressed into service. I still have my husband's favorite Stetson but I opted instead to tie a scarf around my head. Not just any scarf. It was from Willie Nelson's 1985 Farm Aid concert that was attended by 80,000 and it raised seven million dollars for the farmers who were in the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

The scarf was signed by the over 50 singers who were on stage during the concert---both big names and up and coming super stars. The scarf was a fun reminded to those who remembered those Willie Nelson concerts and on the other hand, it was interesting noting those who had no idea there had even been a crisis back in the '80s that put so many of our farmers out of business. I'm always amazing when I run across something I thought was common knowledge and it turns out not to be.

This week the management also had what they call a "Teaching Kitchen" which I'm guessing is just something they do every other month so we'll get to know the chef better and/or because it's nearly free entertainment to fill a slot on the calendar. The last one was on pickling veggies and I still have two jars sitting in my refrigerator from that session. This week's class was on making no-bake cookies and the bag of cookies I left with were gone in two days. 

Crafter-noon was also on the schedule this week. It's when anyone who is working on any craft---sewing, knitting, art project, etc.---gets together to talk as we work. It's not very well attended but I use the opportunity to cut out quilt pieces that I've been hand sewing together in front of the TV at night. The craft building has a well-lite, huge table that's a dream to work on. Even though a couple of times I've been the only person to show up for Crafter-noon, I like the fact that it reminds me twice a month to keep working on the last quilt I'll ever make.

Yesterday I joined an off-campus outing to a near-by town to see an exhibit of advertising art. Three of the women who live here worked in the art department of Herman Miller and some of their past creations were in this retrospect. If you love mid-century modern furniture, you'd pay to tour their apartments.

To round out my week, my youngest niece, gave me a gift of both her time and her expertise as a professional house cleaner. She cleaned and organized all the lower cabinets in my apartment. After nearly three years of living here they'd gotten messy. She also washed the faces of all my cupboards (uppers and lowers) in the kitchen, bath and laundry room. Spending time with family reconnects me with my past in a way nothing else ever does so our conversation was the icing on the cake---the cake being a metaphor for a lovely week. ©

Until Next Wednesday!

I do not take good selfies! But at least you can see my version of a Hoedown costume.