When Older People Drive

As you become older, there are things that you need to be more cognizant of, and one of those things is how you are driving. I am almost ashamed to admit it, but one time while visiting my now 78 year-old grandmother, she was driving my boyfriend and I to visit my uncle a few blocks away from her apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. The drive probably only took somewhere between five to ten minutes, but those were the longest five to ten minutes of our life.

I am typically not a nervous passenger, but my boyfriend is horrible as he tends to get nervous with certain people behind the wheel. He had never driven with my grandmother before this night. We were both in her car, and it was nighttime, and my grandmother was grumbling about why my uncle had to have us over so late (it was 6:00 p.m.). As she was driving, she kept braking and then accelerating and was following a few vehicles in front of us a little too close for comfort. To top it off, it was raining as well. I glanced at my boyfriend who was nervously sitting in the back seat, anxiously on the edge of his seat looking out of the windows. No doubt, he was trying to be proactive and was ready to alert us if there was any sort of danger heading our way. I laughed nervously inside of my head.

I thought about offering to drive to my uncle's house, but we were so close that the point seemed mute. Then I thought about offering to drive on the way back from his house, but then after thinking this through, I thought it might come across as sounding rude. Since when did my grandmother's driving deteriorate so much? The last time I had driven with her, she had seemed fine. Later in the night, she admitted that she hated driving at night because it made her nervous as she couldn't see quite as clearly as she could during the day.

Truth be told, even during the day, her driving didn't seem to be quite as good as it once had. We were exiting a parking space, and I cringed in the front passenger seat because I was sure that she had cut the wheel too early and we were going to get into an accident with whom ever's parked car was parked beside us. However, we managed to exit the space ok but almost backed into another older person who hadn't noticed us backing out first. I could feel my heart racing- not just for my safety, but mostly at the thought of my grandmother's! Here she was driving around on her own during both day and night, but I felt guilty as I started to wonder how she was able to get around from place to place without getting into accidents left and right. There were other incidents similar to these that I haven't mentioned. It just seems that as we age, we tend to perhaps be more unsure of ourselves and our judgment tends to slip a little.