New safety features advised for seniors

don’t react quickly enough; you mistake a statue of the Hamburglar outside a McDonald’s for your late husband and drive into some shrubbery. These things happen. Then the kids conclude (probably correctly) that it’s time for you to give up the keys.

What these advanced safety features do is help you avoid those “incidents” and delay the time when you have to give up driving and lose a big piece of your independence. Isn’t that fantastic?

At some point, if you can’t see or can’t operate the pedals, you’ll still have to give up the keys, Shirley. Although, within a decade or two, if you can hang on, technology might solve that, too, with totally self-driving cars. But for now, the crucial technology to have, in my opinion, is city- and highway-speed forward collision warning with automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and rear cross-traffic alert. And you can get all that stuff in a Subaru Impreza for less than $25,000.

I recently drove the new Impreza, and it’s probably the most comfortable small car I’ve driven. It’s practical, affordable and, unlike a number of other affordable cars on the market, you can get it with all the good safety stuff.

Either trade in the Civic, or bestow it on a ne’er-do-well grandchild, and buy yourself more safe years behind the wheel. And tell all of your 81-year-old water-skiing and kayaking friends to do the same.