Senior driving safety still taboo subject

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - The number of senior drivers is expected to soar by 70 percent in the next 20 years but many adults are reluctant to talk to their aging parents about their driving abilities.

They would prefer to discuss and plan their parent's funeral rather than question whether their mother or father should still get behind the wheel, according to a new survey released on Wednesday.

"As the number of seniors on the road increases, so does their exposure to fatal accidents, so we really need to deal with some of the issues seniors are facing on the road in terms of impaired eye sight and mobility," said John Kennedy, executive director of National Safety Council (NSC) Defensive Driving Programs.

"All aspects of highway safety will be impacted by this," added Alan Hoskin, manager of research and statistics at NSC.

Approximately 40 percent of 1,011 adults with an elderly parent questioned in the survey commissioned by the Web site Caring.com and released in conjunction with the NSC said they feel uncomfortable talking to their parents about their safety behind the wheel.

"Adult children are just ill-equipped to deal with this conversation because it means coming to grips with their parents' mortality," said Andy Cohen, the CEO of Caring.com, which provides information about caring for aging parents.

"Taking away driving abilities is a symbolic step towards end-of-life, and it also marks the beginning of the adult child stepping into a caretaker role," he said.

Yet more than a third of the people said there should be restrictions on their parents' driving, including limits on night driving and long distances.

But taking away seniors' driving privileges has broader implications.

"When you take a person's car away, you're doing more than just affecting their mobility, you're affecting their independence," said Dr. Elizabeth Dugan, a geriatric expert at the University of Massachusetts.

"We've never before had people live this long and be able to drive, and so this concern about aging drivers really marks a demographic shift," she added in an interview.

Over the next two decades the population of people over 75 in the United States is expected to grow from 18 million to 31 million. The number of elderly driving fatalities could surge to 100,000 over the same time period, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The United States has varying requirements for senior drivers and few states mandate full road tests. In Washington D.C. vision tests are mandatory starting at age 70 and drivers may be asked to complete a road test at 75. But several states have no such requirements.

Cohen said the study also points to a dearth of public transportation options for seniors who may not have the physical abilities to board a bus or train.

"Society isn't set up to serve the transportation crisis that's about to hit in the coming years," he said.

Seventy-one percent of the people questioned said they were in favor of mandatory driving tests for drivers over 70, while 80 percent felt testing should be done every one to two years.

(Reporting by Lara Hertel; editing by Patricia Reaney)