When Our Elderly Mother Refused to Stop Driving, We Took Drastic Action
When Stephen Petrow’s mother turned 80, she rewarded herself with a sporty, fire-engine-red Lexus. Petrow’s high-spirited, feisty mother loved fast, high-octane cars and despite her diminutive 5’2” frame that could barely see over the steering wheel, she drove with a passion that matched her fiery-red Lexus. The results of her impassioned driving began showing up as dents and dings on the exterior of her vehicle, adding to the mounting concerns her children had regarding her ability to drive safely.
Petrow and his brother had both witnessed their mother’s near-collisions with bicyclists and pedestrians on numerous occasions. Petrow’s brother had actually been forced to grab the steering wheel out of his mother’s hands while sitting as passenger in order to prevent a collision. Petrow, and others, had confronted his mother on numerous occasions to no avail; she refused to acknowledge any fault and did not want to sacrifice her freedom to travel where she wished. After a series of semi-serious incidents and in the face of their mother’s absolute refusal to recognize that she was clearly a danger behind the wheel, Petrow and his siblings anonymously turned their mother in to the New York Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The New York DMV maintains a driver reevaluation program that allows individuals familiar with another’s bad driving to report them for a specific reason. Subsequent to the report, Petrow’s mother was required to take a driving test. Though she successfully passed the written portion, the instructor of the driving portion failed her, writing: “Extremely dangerous!! Turns wide into wrong side of road! Poor late braking. No observation at all backing. Completely unaware of surroundings. FAILED.” The DMV revoked her license. While Petrow knows this was the right thing to do, he wonders if he will have enough wherewithal later in life to give up his keys voluntarily if he becomes a danger to others.
See Stephen Petrow, When Our Elderly Mother Refused to Stop Driving, We Took Drastic Action, The Washington Post, September 2, 2017.
Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.