By B.J. Roche

Another day, another 80-year-old driver takes out a pedestrian in a crosswalk. At least that’s how it seemed in Massachusetts recently, when a spate of accidents involving elderly drivers drew lots of media coverage and sparked calls for more regulation of senior drivers.

Bring up the topic and your mother, like mine, who is still driving in her mid 80’s, will probably say that it’s just a few bad apples, and she is not in said basket. Weirdly enough, there may be something to that. There were, in 2006, after all, more than 20 million licensed drivers over age 70.

A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent non-profit research organization funded by automobile insurers, noted that crash deaths among drivers 70 and older actually fell 21 percent between 1997 and 2006, despite an increase in elderly drivers.

The theory is that older drivers are increasingly self-limiting their driving as they age. The institute notes that the rate of fatalities per capita among older people has decreased 35 percent since 1975 and is now at its lowest level.

Still, another study by the AAA showed that drivers over age 65 were 25 percent more likely to get into an accident than middle-aged drivers. And the institute notes that, per mile traveled, crash rates and fatal crash rates increase starting at age 70 and rise markedly after age 80.

In Massachusetts this year, victims included two children under the age of five, one of whom died after being while in a crosswalk. More than 183,000 of the state's drivers are over the age of 80; one proposal would require drivers over 85 to take a road and vision test when they renew their licenses. Another would provide legal immunity for doctors who report impaired drivers to the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

Many states have enacted more stringent requirements of older drivers, like vision tests, more frequent renewals after age 70, or in-person renewals. But nearly half the states do nothing to regulate older drivers.

No, dear reader, if  your parents are not be the drivers they used to be, the more likely scenario is that you and your sibs, will face the job of getting them off the road.

Taking the keys away from your parents is one of those reverse-life-milestones that reverberates; you're "taking away" six decades of independence, after all.

How old is too old? It depends on the individual parent and the parent’s health status, but it's like talking about sex with your kid: don't wait for The Big Conversation. Sprinkle the topic into everyday yacks.

Some experts advise writing up a contract about topics like driving and independent living when the parent is doing well—it’s one more bit of backup when you need it. And it helps for the entire family to keep talking.

In a telephone interview, AARP spokesperson Nancy Thompson offered some good tips. Go out driving with your parent to see how they do, and so you have hard evidence to cite when you speak with them about driver safety.

Check the car for dings and nicks to see if they’re missing turns. “Adults need to do the research,” she said.

If you are super-concerned and need some back-up,  you could arrange for a formal driving assessment by an occupational therapist, who will measure response times and other indicators of driving ability.

Again, ideally, the conversation about driving takes place long before there’s a problem: “You ask: How do you want things to go when you can’t do things the way you do it now?” Thompson said.

It’s touchy business taking the keys away from mom or dad, but you can start by reframing: you don’t take them away, you ask your parents to give them up.

“One of the important things when you have the conversation is that it should be about them hanging up the keys, not your taking away the keys,” Thompson advised. And it doesn't have to happen all at once. You could ease into the process by limiting driving to certain times of the day or certain geographical areas.

 “Often families get caught up in the all or nothing and that’s a recipe for a power struggle,” Thompson said.

Another tip: find out exactly what it costs your mom to own and operate her car and translate that into what she can spend on other transportation. You may be surprised to find how much she’s spending, and frequent taxis may not look like such a luxury.

“It’s important that you can prove to them that there are alternatives,” Thompson said. “Some locations have alternatives to personal driving in the form of the senior bus, church outings, or a local transit system program for people with disabilities. The adult child needs to research all these opportunities in preparation for the conversation.”

Get your siblings on the same page so your parents are hearing the same message from everyone in their orbit. Get some coordination to spread out the labor on who’s going to transport mom where and when. (Oh, you live too far away to help?  Support in other ways. Send cash. Also: This is why God invented Coldwater Creek gift cards. )

“We get a fair amount of calls about this,” said Thompson, “because it’s like the other life stage changes. You go into it unprepared and each person has to educate him or herself. It’s not unlike finding daycare.”

True that. And it’s if the job is falling to you, it's not fair that you’re in charge of one more thing, but our motto here at Fiftyshift.com is this: what are you gonna do?

AARP is much, er,  kinder: “We argue that it’s an adult’s responsibility to make sure of their own driving skills,” said Thompson, “but it’s also your responsibility to look out for the skills of family members, whether they’re older or younger.”

                                                      
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AARP and AAA both have resources on the topic, including online driver refresher programs.

The National Highway Transportation Agency publication, Driving Safely While Aging Gracefully.

The Hartford Insurance company has teamed up with MIT's AgeLab for a terrific array of resources on older drivers.