Alzheimer's disease compounds the physical changes that accompany aging, which can undermine driving skills. Yet, studies from Brown University and Washington University indicate that patients can drive through the very early stages of the disease. The August 2008 Harvard Mental Health Letter (HMHL; sub) reports the Brown study of 84 patients with early Alzheimer's and 44 healthy older controls. All of the latter passed an initial driving test as compared with 88 percent of those with "very mild" Alzheimer's and 78 percent of those with "mild" Alzheimer's. Time to failure of the driving test was a median of 324 days (~11 months) for those with mild Alzheimer's, and nearly twice as long, 605 days (~20 months) for those with very mild disease. To handle the situation, HMHL recommends broaching the issue early, "while discussing other aspects of care," and documenting the patient's driving patterns. "Although patterns of behavior are what matter, citing specific incidents [?] to make the case may help convince a patient to surrender the keys," according to HMHL. The newsletter also recommends having a third party, such as clinician or friend present during conversations about driving.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
Having witnessed Alzheimer’s first hand with my grandfather, I don’t doubt that many people could drive through the whole ordeal (barring any physical degradation that often comes with it).
Repeated tasks like brushing your teeth, driving a car, etc, often don’t suffer much.
It’s the “did I already brush my teeth 8 times this morning” and “why am I driving and where are we?” that bother me. But functionally, I’d bet most Alzheimers patients are no worse than most cell-toting teens in terms of actual driving safety.
Bad link for me.
As someone who has participated in “searches” of Alzheimer folks who’ve gone out driving, I think I can attest to their driving ability. We always look around locally, but they typically end up 100’s of miles away before asking for help/directions/found by cop. The car typically has no damage, which in my estimation, is pretty impressive for someone who didn’t have a clue where they were going or thinks JFK is currently President.
What scares me are the otherwise mentally sound elderly who constantly are damaging their cars/getting into accidents/claiming not to know where car damage came from.
Alzheimers runs on my dad’s side of the family, and while my dad seems very mentally sharp for 78 years old, he does sometimes try to get in the wrong car if it’s the same color as his. It’s not a vision problem. My aunt, who is older than him, used to go out driving, and always end up at a gas station/diner/whatever that has been around for 40 or more years. Then she knew who to call for help, but if they let her drive still, that would not be the case anymore.
I can also attest to the driving skills of Alzheimers’ patients. I know of a driver that left Western Tennessee and showed up the next day in downtown Chicago. The police found her sitting in her car parked in the city. Based on receipts she had in her purse, she had stopped for gas and food twice, along with a hotel bill in Central Illinois. She couldn’t remember why she left the house. Her family said she probably left for the grocery store or bank and ended up hundreds of miles away.
It is a bizarre, cruel disease… no doubt about it.
I had a neighbor years ago that had Alzheimers, and his wife had to hide everything from keys to his wallet, as local thugs knew that he was an easy target if they found him outside his house with anything of value (which happened more then once). He was otherwise strong and healthy. Such a sad disease…
Thats terrible, I hope no one in my family ever gets this. Im only 19 and I can’t remember where the keys are or where my wallet is half the time anyways!
But it is a case of organization for me.
i guess the old bird in my complex who backed her nissan into the side of an illegally parked benz doesn’t have alzheimer’s. that she could walk right past the benz before she got into her petrol donkey & still blithely back into it bespeaks some other cognitive failure …
don’t want my kid anywhere nearby when that old bird heads out into the carpark!
I have heard or read of many of these cases, where the person ends up getting lost in a city hundreds of miles from home or becoming stuck because they took a left turn ONTO the railroad tracks.
It is a cruel disease.
My brother was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimers when he was 59. He drove for five years and I became concerned after two when he overfilled the oil in his pickup, forgetting that he had already done so the day before. My brother-in-law, a former police officer, was good enough to drive with him from time to time and even at five years said “He may not necessarily remember if he put oil in the car, but his driving skills remain far higher than the average person. My brother drove race cars for several years, and thus likely had great body memory about driving.
We finally took his keys from him after he had gone out several times, parked and then totally spaced on where the truck was parked. He would call, panicked and lost somewhere to tell us that he thought it had been stolen. He still was sufficiently in denial about the disease that he was terribly embarassed (as if it was his fault) about his inability to remember where the truck was parked. A therapist told me once that denial is one of the common defenses the individual uses against the disease, and suggested it was probably healthy since it did no good to ponder its course during those periods of lucidity which every Alzheimer’s afflicted person seems to have.
It is a tragic disease, but from my observation the Alzheimers patient is probably far less hazardous to his fellow drivers than the woman in Suburban juggling coffee and a cell phone.
Easy answer here. You get diagnosed with Alzheimers stop driving. You might not be a danger to crash. But there are other dangers like getting lost or wandering into areas that leave you lost. Dozens of ways for this to end badly. Guess it might tread on guidelines, but this is a BS topic if there ever was one.
You got Alzheimer’s then don’t drive.
esldude wrote:
“You got Alzheimer’s then don’t drive.”
I went to my doctor and he said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
I said, “Tell me the bad news first, doc.”
He said, “You have terminal cancer and only six months to live.”
I said, “so what is the good news?”
He said, “You’ve got Alzheimers.”
I said, “So what is the bad news?”
Had a relation who developed Alzeihmers – he could still drive quite compently for quite some time. Downer was that whilst he could drive he had no idea where he was going and when he evenyually arrived he didn’y know how to get back home. A crash evenyually finished his driving days. Sad