Planning for your retirement — from driving
Senior drivers need support, writes Lorraine Sommerfeld
Have you planned for your retirement from driving?
It’s not as crazy as it sounds, and yet it’s something few of us consider as we age.
“We think about RRSPs and pensions and living arrangements, yet few people plan for their retirement from driving,” says Tim Danter, a driving expert from Oakville, Ont.
As owner of a Drivewise school and head instructor on TV’s Canada’s Worst Driver, he’s seen it all. The result of that lack of planning can be devastating to individuals, stressful on families and have catastrophic results on our roads.
The law can stipulate ages or incidents that will trigger a retesting. In Ontario, if you have an at-fault collision after age 70, you could be required to take the G2 exit test — the one with highways. If you’ve never done a road test since the one you did at perhaps age 16, this is hugely stressful.
At 80, you will be required to do a written test that looks for cognitive lapses.
In addition to a vision test and watching a 45-minute video to update general information and new traffic laws, you draw a clock face and you cross out all occurrences of the letter “H” in a block of print.
You can see these tests in advance online. They are not testing your ability to cram for an exam; these are scientifically vetted ways to test cognitive function. It’s like measuring your height: You are what you are, and you can’t fudge it.
Draw the clock face, cross out all the Hs, and you’re good.
Fail to do so, and the ministry could be requiring further medical information from your doctor and could require a G1 exit road test, the one that doesn’t have highways.
An Ottawa reader, Des Gurnett, contacted me in the summer, understandably upset.
He was 90 years of age, had a perfect driving record, was active and involved in his community and family, and had somehow, on the required written test, missed an entire row of Hs.
He was upset with himself but angry at the system.
Now he had to go through all the hassle of a road test.
I asked him to consider it an opportunity rather than a punishment. I told him we all have lapses as we age, and our bad driving habits become ingrained long before 80, or 90.
An independent assessment can do a number of things:
Tell you in an unbiased way those things you need to improve;
Remind you that driving is a privilege, not a right;
Show you many tiny changes you can make to be a better driver, such as having the best seating positions and mirror settings;
Remove the burden from your family, where this discussion often becomes adversarial and emotional;
Let you know if it’s time to hang up the keys.
We’re not going to see regularly mandated retesting of drivers in any province any time soon. It takes political will, and seniors vote. Virtually everybody considers it insulting to be told they need to be retested for that at which they consider themselves to be competent (or excellent). No politician is going to put himself or herself in that particular line of fire.
The fact that the medical community notes 10 per cent of the population experience mild dementia by age 65 means a 15-year gap until any testing is done in Ontario, with similar timelines in other provinces. That’s a huge gap.
The American Automobile Association is even more pointed: “Seniors are outliving their ability to drive safely by an average of seven to 10 years.”
Which brings us back to Danter’s central point: How are you planning for your driving retirement?
Many of those seniors continue to drive into that seven- to 10-year gap because they have made no plans to not be driving. This is a family and community issue, not simply a personal one. We need support in place to keep seniors driving safely for as long as possible. What does Danter recommend?
Plan ahead. Don’t wait for a government-mandated age to assess your skills.
Make an appointment with an approved instructor (check your provincial website, such as the MTO in Ontario).
The cost for an hour should be around $75. A written report will cost a little more, and you might need a few lessons. They’re worth it. Keep in mind if this sort of evaluation is ordered by the ministry, the costs to you could be considerably more, in the $500-$600 range.
If you do fail the written test you can take the road test as many times as you want, and there is no cost. But to do this without some outside assistance would be a bad idea.
Des from Ottawa is a convert now. I recommended professional assistance to him, he sought it out and ultimately passed his test with no problems. “I would do the same thing again,” he says. “Seniors should always get professional help, as it points out many areas that you imagined you knew. As we grow older our skills diminish without us really being aware.”
Keep your mind open, like Des did. And plan your driving future, so you can control it.