When should older adults stop driving? That decision often falls to their children

There were more than 50 million licensed drivers in the U.S. over the age of 65 in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was a 77% increase since 2004.

But the CDC also found more than 700 older drivers are hurt every day, on average, in car crashes.

In many cases, the job of figuring out when those older drivers shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel anymore falls to their kids. And many of those children say that decision can be an extremely difficult one.

That was the case for James Causey, a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a contributor at University of Southern California's Center for Health Journalism. He wrote a first-person account of his experience taking his dad’s car keys away.

The Show spoke with Causey and asked what he learned that surprised him while doing the research for the piece.

Full conversation

JAMES CAUSEY: What I learned is that — and it didn't really surprise me — but what I learned is that this is probably the hardest conversation for most children to have with their adult parents, because it's hard to do, it's a role reversal, and they don't know how to do it and do it right.

MARK BRODIE: In thinking about this, and I don't know how it was in your family, my dad taught me how to drive. So I would imagine it would be really difficult in that kind of situation to then have to sort of turn around and say, "OK, mom or dad, who taught me how to drive, it's time for you to stop."

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, think about this. So my father is from, was from Mississippi. He actually started driving at like 9 years old driving around in a tractor and things like that and for me it was like. For me, it was like, I still remember the road trips we would take to Mississippi from Wisconsin, and my father would drive the whole time with only stopping for gasoline, and he took pride in that.

So for my father, driving was a part of his life, and for me to take that away from him, I got to tell you, I cried a little bit when I had to make that decision. Because it was very hard for me to do that because I felt like I was taking away like some of the last of his independence, and it was tough for me to do that.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, well what was that conversation like? Because as you write, there were times when maybe you thought about it but didn't end up taking away the keys. What was the conversation like when you finally had to do it?

JAMES CAUSEY: Well, when we finally had to do it — and I say we because my wife and my mother were part of this — my father started — It started with fender benders here and there and unexplained scratches on the car. And then him saying that he would get turned around and he'd start coming home later and later, started having some issues with memory. And my father, it was one night he just did not come home, which was unusual.

And we went to the police station to try to file a missing person's report and they said, "No he's, you know, maybe there's nothing really wrong with him." You know, and he did come home the next morning and he said that he got turned around and we were scared to death and we were going to take his keys that time. But the time that we took his keys really occurred probably like a couple of months after that where he didn't come home and he was missing for three days.

Turns out he was in another state, he was in Morris, Illinois, and we live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And we were in a police station filing out a missing person's report when we got the call that he was found. And I knew right then and there that this was going to be the last time that he drove.

MARK BRODIE: Was he resistant to stopping driving at that point?

JAMES CAUSEY: Oh, my god, yes. When we actually went to go get him the next morning to pick him up from Morris, Illinois, my father was like, "Hey y'all, I just got turned around." And I was like, "No dad, do you realize what's going on? Man you were missing for three days, we had no idea where you were." On the drive home, he kept saying — and this is when I knew something was really wrong — he kept saying, "Why is this taking so long to get home?" And I'm like, "Dad, you were missing for three days, you can't drive no more."

And I could see him stewing in the passenger side like, "What are you talking about? I'm still going to drive." And when we got home, my wife said, "OK, honey, you need to take his keys." And I said, "Dad, you got to give me the keys." He said, "My keys stay in my pocket." And so I was just going to let it go, but my wife and my mother said, "Go to the hardware store and get a club to put on the car because he can't drive, it's just not safe." And that's what I ended up doing. And we put the car in the garage and he never drove after that. And it was contentious, he was pretty mean and bitter over that.

MARK BRODIE: Did he eventually understand why you had to do that?

JAMES CAUSEY: I think it took — it took us a good three months, because what we did we had to make some real changes in our lifestyle. My wife was, she started, became my parents' primary caregiver because my mother had some health issues and my father was having some early dementia issues. So she stopped working to take care of them full time. And one thing that she did she tried to make sure that he didn't lose his masculinity, so to speak.

So she would take him to McDonald's so he could still see his friends but she would just drop him off and pick him up. She would take him to go get his lottery ticket, she would do those kind of things and she wouldn't put a time frame on how long it should take. But we understood that he still needed a something else to replace that urge to drive. So we got him involved in a Veterans Administration program for men. And this program was like for a lot of men just like him, men who could no longer drive and who needed something else to do. It was like a veterans day camp.

And so he was-he got involved in this, and he was reluctant to go at first. But he made friends with men who he probably would have never met before in his life and he started learning other activities that he probably would have never got an opportunity to learn in his life, like he learned curling. My father and curling ... if I could tell you two things that should probably never go together, it would be my father and curling. He actually learned curling. He learned art, he started painting.

He got a chance to bond with men who he probably would have never met that way. So I think that replacement, when you do if you ever have to take keys away from your parents you have to find something to replace that that void that they're going to experience, and that's what we did.

MARK BRODIE: Did you guys ever have a conversation about this maybe later on after he'd maybe accepted it or been OK with the fact that he wasn't driving anymore? Like did he come to terms with it and maybe even appreciate the fact that you had done it?

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, I can tell you the time when I think he really fully accepted it. So one thing that my father and my mother what we used to do, my wife and I, they love going back to Mississippi to visit their relatives in the South every summer. And it was the year — two years after we took his keys. And we were taking him to Mississippi, him and my mother, they ride in the back seat and share their stories of growing up in the South while my wife and I would drive.

And I tease and I look back at my father and I say, "Hey dad, you want to try to hit this highway?" And he said, "No, no, y'all got it. The roads look a lot different than when I used to drive these roads back in the day. Y'all doing good, y'all doing good." And I knew right then and there he had accepted it.

MARK BRODIE: How did that make you feel that knowing that he was OK with it, knowing that he wasn't dangerous anymore behind the wheel and that even though it had been really painful —you mentioned you cried, I imagine there were some unpleasant conversations associated with this — that ultimately he was at peace with it, you were at peace with it, and everybody sort of acknowledged it was the right thing to do?

JAMES CAUSEY: Yeah, it's bittersweet in a way because even though this happened like two years after — he went about two years without driving — my father suffered from pancreatic cancer and died like a year after that. So he didn't get long — I guess I didn't really get a long time to enjoy that part with him, and so I feel a little bad about that part as well.

But one thing that I know and I know that he would have appreciated is that we did this because we love him and loved him. And even though my father's no longer with us, it was the best decision all the way around, and I wouldn't change anything else about it.