I love driving, always have...
@ 59 I'm no where near thinking of giving it up.
But as I said once you live through a parent that won't give up the keys it has an impact on you.

I should add to my above statement about moving to a place (small town) walking distance to food and shopping another possibility would be a city with good public transportation.

If we did move to a small town near some nice low traffic roads I might keep a Boxster (or something similar) in the garage for Sunday drives.

Flawed poll

I am a better driver than I was 10 years ago

My Mom at 80 got breast cancer. After a horrible surgeon butchered her and removed way to much to get rid of one very small lump they put her on a medication that is supposed to keep the cancer from returning. It did that, however the medication caused two strokes and the following post stroke dementia (very similar to altzheimer's) before I could get her off of it.

I became her full time care taker. As her faculties declined with the post stroke demential I tried to keep her car available to her as long as possible. She was aware enough to realize when she wasn't capable of driving and didn't attempt it. BUT having the car around, specifically knowing she could drive it if she really needed to and having familiar things around helped to slow her mental decline. She would try to re-learn things with the goal of being able to drive her car again.

My family was not any help either. As an example I let Mom handle her own finances, but I watched over them. Sometimes it took her two or three days to balance her checkbook. She would get frustrated, but felt like she had accomplished something great when she finally got it balanced. Well, one day while she was trying to add the numbers up my brother came to visit. He saw the trouble she was having and took her checkbook and took over managing her finances. It wasn't long after this that Mom started getting lost driving. Not really lost but could not find some of the places she wanted to go. She still drive well, but just couldn't find places.

My sister came in to visit from out of town and had not visited for a year. Mom hadn't even attempted to drive in that year because she "did not feel she was up to it." My sister convinced my brother to take her car and sell it. She left anddidn't come back to visit for another year so she didn't see the effect it had on Mom. The result of this was Mom got really depressed about her situation, not the car in particular and declined a huge amount in a very short time. She basically gave up trying to improve herself.

My sister came to visit on other occasions and treated Mom like she was already dead, going through her stuff and getting rid of things she thought Mom didn't need anymore. After every time Mom declined further and lost more of her drive to fight losing her mental abilities. Mom even made the comment that some of her things were disappearing.

The last time my sister came to visit, about a year before Mom passed and tried to "clean out" more of Mom's collectibles and nik naks. I took my sister aside and told her she could visit, but was not allowed to go thru, clean up, and specifically to not take or get rid of anything. My sister got pissed, went home a week early, and stopped visiting. Just couldn't make her understand that by removing the familiar objects from Mom's surroundings she was killing her mentally.

I know that circumstances are different for each person, but in my Mom's case it was devastating to take away her perceived option to drive her car. Especially since Mom was trying to improve herself enough to drive again. The last time she drove, she did fine driving. The problem was she couldn't find the store she was wanting to go to. She got upset about not being able to find the store and went to visit a friend instead. Which she didn't have any trouble finding despite driving all over the city looking for that one store that she hadn't been to in a while.

I've seen a couple of other friends go through similar situations with one of their parents. They both were forced to removed their parents from their long time residence and familiar surroundings and put them in a care center or home. While I understand the why and where fors, I also noticed their parents go thru a much quicker decline and pass away within a year or two of being put in a "home." Mom lived for 13 years after her faculties started declining.

If she would have attempted to drive when she wasn't capable of being safe I would have put a secret kill switch on the battery I so I could decide when she could drive and have her have me "charge" the battery if she wanted to go somewhere.

I was doing pretty good till that 2nd stroke.
I've had to give up autocrossing.....it don't work no more. I am more conscious of the acts of driving.....they work, but not as well as a year ago.

The effects of the stroke are (apparently) long lasting. I won't go into all the shyte that happens, but they show only a marginal improvement over time.....a few steps back don't help.

I am still vertical (Most of the time) & fighting. This may be as good as it gets.