Whenever the subject of elderly drivers makes the news – like this week, with the announcement of a more rigourous licence renewal process for those over the age of 70 – I cannot help but feel a shudder of flashback, even PTSD. I find myself saying, sometimes out loud: “Yes! Yes, do it!”
I do so for the simple reason that I’ve witnessed the effects of elderly driving up close. I’ve seen just how difficult it can be for older drivers to accept that they may not be quite as effective behind the wheel as they once were, and likely never will be again.
In much the same way that Joe Biden found it impossible to countenance that, at 81, his age might hamper his ability to run for a second term as US president (Donald Trump at 78, of course, countenanced no such thing), so my now late-grandfather could never accept that he had become too old to drive. He’d been driving for almost 70 years. Why stop now?
I held a contrary opinion: STOP NOW!
He was in his mid-80s when I visited one summer with my girlfriend. They lived in a dowdy suburb of Milan, somewhere no one sane would go out of their way to visit, and so I suggested a little day trip to Lake Como for lunch.
Both grandparents were blindsided by the very suggestion. Lunch at a restaurant! We could eat at home, surely? I explained my radical idea by stealth, over several days, and eventually, goaded in no small part by his wife, he conceded. I suggested that I drive, but he scoffed. It was his car, and he alone drove it. He went to fetch his driving gloves – blissfully unaware of what Alan Partridge had done to the reputation of driving gloves – and then he went downstairs to “warm up” the ancient Fiat 127. My grandmother, meanwhile, applied perfume, and fetched her pearls and a silk scarf.
The journey should have taken 45 minutes; Como is nearby, and difficult to miss. But after 90 minutes of hurtling down what my grandmother tried hard to convey to me in a series of urgent whispers was a new motorway, one they were unfamiliar with, we were beginning to see road signs for Switzerland. “We’ve gone too far,” I called out. But my grandfather was by now deaf to everything, lost within the caverns of his own confusion. He complained that all the road signs had changed, and I watched him peer through foggy glasses in utter incomprehension. “Look,” I pointed out. “The Alps.”
The more stressed he became, the tighter his grip on the steering wheel got, and the more he pressed down on the accelerator. We were now speeding with a lunatic onward momentum, my grandfather adamant to see this through one way or the other.
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It is easy, in retrospect, to exaggerate a dangerous journey survived, and ham it up for effect. And so all I will say here is that never have I been more afraid for my life. My girlfriend, reliably the calmest person in any room, sat pale and shaking beside me, while upfront my grandmother cracked the window open for some air, and breathed deep.
We’d missed Como altogether, and eventually arrived into a small town every bit as non-descript as their Milanese suburb. The few restaurants had long since finished their lunch service, and were preparing for dinner. We would not be staying for dinner. I suggested a walk, and bought ice cream in the hope of lifting the collective mood. I watched as my grandmother gripped her husband’s arm, conveying comfort to him by touch. He looked desperate, and frightened. I felt such tenderness for him then.
“Forgive him,” she pleaded. “He’s old.”
It was he who needed reminding far more than me, but to my grandfather, who had a habit of shooting the messenger, she said nothing. Who wants to hear such unpleasantness, such a blunt reminder of mortality?
Thing is, we all have to, one day. And so I welcome this “rigourous licence renewal process”. Bring it on. I just hope that if I manage to reach a similar age, I’ll relinquish my keys far quicker than he did.
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