It is curious that when you Google “What you need to do to keep driving in your eighties”, you get all these links about what you and your family should be looking for, to suggest you should be handing over your keys. A pretty depressing search, but what I was looking for came up on a website called “Grownups NZ”.
For many older people, having to stop driving is a source of anxiety and terror. An international review of 16 studies reported in 2016, concluded that: “Driving cessation often causes a decline in general health and physical, social and cognitive function with greater risks of admission to long-term care and mortality.” The message from that is, to keep driving for as long as you possibly can for your own health and wellbeing.
Grownups NZ suggest a checklist of factors to ensure that you can keep driving for as long as you can.
· Keep fit. It’s great to see the number of oldies at the gym but it needs to be part of your “to-do” list.
· Have regular health checks. Both you and your car need a regular WOF and it’s a chance to check out your medications.
· Pick your time to drive but, every day is a Saturday and there’s no need to rush.
· Plan your road trip by sharing the driving and with plenty of breaks.
· Take a driver refresher course. The AA has a member course for over 74s, which gives an independent non-threatening assessment and coaching about driving capability.
· Avoid in-car conversation so that you can concentrate on driving, with the assistance of a navigation app to tell you what to do.
· Go alcohol-free - I was asked at the bowling club this week, “Do I drink?” My response: “Sure, but I don’t drink and drive”.
There are some things that I have learned from experience in progressing through life’s stages, most particularly about physical factors which modify the way we do things. So here we go.
Always carry spare batteries for your hearing aids. I was speaking at a public meeting when mine went ping. “I believe I have some in the car”, I said. But no, and I apologised to the meeting that I couldn’t hear a thing. I’m deaf, you know.
Always have a plan for when your e-bike has a puncture 20km from home. The AA now has an e-bike rescue service, but when this happened, our son with his ute was called. You can’t push an e-Bike up Maunu Hill.
Ladders are the leading cause of home-based ACC claims and now I’m banned. We were waiting for Channel North to interview after the 2013 election. I decided to climb the ladder to clear some spider webs off the spouting.
The ladder slipped backwards and I rode it down on my face to a broken ankle and smashed elbow. The interviewer arrived five minutes later, and I said ‘Let’s do this tomorrow”. Marg said” You’ll look worse tomorrow than you do now” so we did the interview before heading to ED. Two black eyes, a swollen nose, a moonboot and elbow in a sling. It had been a tough election campaign!
Finally, it’s okay to have a snooze in the middle of the day. My father did that all his working life, and it’s great for setting up the rest of the day.
I’m told the virtue of late adulthood is wisdom – Amen to that.
