RECENT tragedies involving older motorists puts a sensitive issue in the spotlight. For some it should prompt a difficult but vital conversation – Mum, dad, maybe it’s time to stop driving?
SHE’S eight months pregnant with a little girl she’s already named Olivia and looking forward to a baby shower the next day with friends and family on the Gold Coast.
But 33-year-old Kerryn Blucher never makes it.
The middle of three sisters is the last of the trio to get married and to start a family. She and husband Vaughan have just celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary and have a two-year-old daughter, Kiara. It’s a glorious spring day in September 2012 and the family is enjoying a relaxing Saturday afternoon at a music and cultural festival at the Cleveland Showgrounds, a bayside suburb in Redland City, east of Brisbane.
Nearby, 76-year-old jazz pianist Clare Hansson is behind the wheel of a small blue car, trying to exit a grass carpark at the Redland Spring Festival. She loses control and ploughs through two rows of bollards, narrowly missing Vaughan and Kiara. But the car hits Kerryn and despite frantic efforts to save her at the scene, she and her unborn daughter die.
More than two years later, her mother Fay Mowbray, weeps as she talks about her lost daughter and the granddaughter she never got to hold.
“It’s affected our whole family to such an extent,” Mrs Mowbray says. “We’ve got to live without our daughter for the rest of our lives. Kiara is over four now. She’s wonderful, she’s an amazing little girl. But she’s asking lots of questions. She knows she doesn’t have her Mummy like everyone else at kindy and she knows her Mummy and her sister went to heaven. It’s very sad.”
ALI France, the daughter of former Queensland Racing and Tourism Minister Peter Lawlor, was lucky to have survived after she was hit by a car driven by an 88-year-old man in a Brisbane shopping centre in May 2011. But doctors had to amputate her left leg above the knee. Ms France pushed a stroller, carrying her son Zac, out of the vehicle’s path.
Weeks later, a 90-year-old woman died after she was struck by a car being reversed by her 79-year-old friend following their regular Bible studies session at the Taringa Baptist Church, in Brisbane’s west.
The string of tragedies sparked an ongoing debate in Queensland about when people should stop driving and the responsibility on family and friends to intervene when elderly drivers are struggling behind the wheel.
Queensland Police Service acting assistant commissioner Mike Keating encourages friends, colleagues and relatives of anyone losing the capacity to drive safely to talk to them about hanging up their car keys.
“None of us want to face a tragic circumstance where someone we know is involved in a traffic crash that we could have done something to prevent,” he says.
Mrs Mowbray backs his calls.
“I don’t want to criticise all elderly drivers because some of them are good, some of them are capable,” she says. “But families also have to step in.
“Families have got to be aware and keep their eyes out for any signs of problems and really have that discussion with them — and show them a picture of my daughter.”
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A ROUTINE drive with her Mum to the local shops was the catalyst for Linda Lloyd to talk to her elderly Mum, Niesje Lankamp, into giving up her wheels.
Ms Lloyd noticed her mother was holding up traffic, only turning left to avoid crossing busy roads and when she parked, it was “a foot away from the curb”.
While she didn’t feel unsafe in the passenger seat, Ms Lloyd was concerned her precious mother was becoming a road-rage risk, a target for impatient drivers.
“The amount of traffic is increasing, Brisbane is getting very, very busy. She wasn’t confident,” Ms Lloyd says. “You hear terrible things. I always worried about road rage. That would have really frightened her. I didn’t want that to happen.”
So she sat down with her mother and talked her into giving up her car.
“I think she probably welcomed it,” Ms Lloyd says. “I said: ‘Mum, it’s cheaper getting taxis, your neighbours have offered to help you’.
“Her grandchildren call round to make sure she gets to the shops. It has been nothing but positive and she would be the first to agree.”
Mrs Lankamp is the grandmother everyone longs for, an ever-smiling social butterfly who loves to do things with her grandkids — the type of person you would expect to be lost without a driver’s licence.
But the 84-year-old great grandmother, lovingly called oma — the Dutch word for grandma — is as busy as ever, despite being unable to drive herself.
“I didn’t feel confident,” she admits. “Sometimes I miss it but I’m not worried because I’ve got plenty of people who drive me. The buses are only five minutes away from my place and I often get a taxi. I can go anywhere. I go to the movies on my own. Why should I stay home if I can go out? “
THE conversation about when an elderly person should give up driving is not as easy for many families. Some avoid the subject altogether and others get the police or an elderly relative’s general practitioner involved.
For older drivers, the transition can be daunting. They can resent the loss of independence, fear isolation and sometimes fail to recognise when they are no longer safe on the roads.
Ms France, a mother of two young boys and former journalist, has never spoken publicly about the crash that changed her life. But her father, a former Southport MP, was behind a successful push for a review of elderly drivers in Queensland. The review led to a requirement for drivers aged 75 and older to undergo annual medical assessments to declare them safe to drive.
“We’d been confronted with this long before Ali’s accident,” Mr Lawlor says. “My own father was still driving at 82 and he was a danger to the public. He was showing early signs of dementia. He used to get confused.
“He was going to kill someone or badly injure someone and maybe himself but my brothers and I at the time got together and said: ‘No, that’s it’.
“We got the police to come around and say: ‘Look, Jim, we’re going to take your licence’. We sold his car and that was it.
“When you get to the stage where family are saying: ‘I wouldn’t let my kids travel with grand-dad’, well, he shouldn’t be on the road. Something should be done about it.”
Mr Lawlor says families should get involved if an elderly relative is no longer fit to drive.
“First, they’ve got to stop them from driving and then, they can’t leave them isolated,” he says. “They’ve got to give them support and take them to the bowls club, the shopping centre, to medical appointments.”
AUSTRALIAN Medical Association Queensland president Shaun Rudd says broaching the subject of having to give up driving with an elderly patient is a difficult one for general practitioners.
“You’ve got that patient-doctor relationship that you may have had over 20 years, 30 years and then all of a sudden you’re telling this patient they’re going to lose their independence and they can’t drive. Dementia can be part of it or there may be physical problems,” the Hervey Bay GP says.
“We shouldn’t shirk our responsibility in those cases. That’s part of general practice life, part of the job. Usually, patients are fairly understanding.”
Dr Rudd and former AMAQ president Richard Kidd, a Brisbane-based GP, both say people age differently and need to be assessed for their driving fitness as individuals, not based on a birth date. Dr Kidd says he has healthy patients in their nineties who are still driving.
“They’re absolutely sharp as a button intellectually, good vision, good hearing,” he says.
Transport Department statistics show that in 2013, Queensland had almost 6000 licensed drivers aged in their nineties.
Dr Rudd says some patients may develop early onset dementia and have to give up their licence well before they reach old age.
“Everyone’s different,” he says. “You have to assess everybody, not based on a number, but based on where they are. Obviously, as they age, they’re more likely to run into problems.”
Experts such as Mark King from the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland, say crash rates among the elderly are lower than for teenage and twenty-something drivers. But he says older drivers are more likely to be killed if they are in an accident, their frailty making them less resilient to recover from injury.
Queensland Transport Department statistics show people aged 75 years and older made up about five per cent of all licensed drivers in 2013 and were represented in 3.8 per cent of serious crashes.
This compares with younger drivers aged 16 to 24 who made up 14 per cent of all licensed drivers last year and were involved in 23 per cent of serious crashes.
But numbers of elderly drivers are expected to surge in coming decades as the population ages, and potentially, so will their accident risk on Queensland roads. In 2013, 17 centenarians were licensed to drive in Queensland, up from nine in 2009. By 2031, the number of Australians aged 75 and older is projected to jump to 11.4 per cent of the population, up from 6.2 per cent in 2007, challenging policy makers.
Dr King, based at the Queensland University of Technology, says more needs to be done to keep older people driving safely for longer. He says younger drivers are more likely to crash as a result of deliberate risk-taking, such as speeding and drink driving.
But diminishing eyesight, hearing and reaction times mean elderly drivers are more frequently involved in accidents affecting decision making, such as judging gaps in traffic and when it’s safe to merge. Round-a-bouts and intersections, for example, can be problematic.
Dr King says lower speed limits and more arrows at traffic lights would help ameliorate the road risk for older drivers.
“But that has implications for traffic flow and authorities are often reluctant to take steps that might increase travel times,” he says.
DAVID Terry, an education officer with the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, says elderly drivers often compensate for their road risk by avoiding peak-hour traffic and night driving. They may also limit their driving to familiar roads close to home.
“They’re aware of their own abilities,” he says. “It’s the same for everybody. There are plenty of 20-year-olds out there who avoid doing a reverse park because they’re not super confident in it.
“We encourage people of all ages to constantly assess their own driving and abilities in regard to safety and anything they can do to improve, that will help everybody.”
But at some stage, all drivers, and their doctors, will need to assess whether they remain safe behind the wheel as they age.
Mrs Hall, 64, of Scottsdale, in Tasmania’s northeast, still has flashbacks of that day and is seeing a counsellor to cope with the ongoing emotional legacy of the accident. Her life has not been the same since, her future health uncertain.
She required surgery to stop internal bleeding, fractured her pelvis in two places and has ongoing nerve damage in her left leg.
“I have trouble with my balance,” she says. “There’s a lot of things I can’t do. It’s very frustrating sitting in a chair looking at things that you’d like to do and not being able to do them. I can’t even stand up to have a shower.
“Sometimes I don’t deal with it very well and I get a bit depressed. I just want my life back again.”
But she also knows she and her 83-year-old mother, who was thrown out of her wheelchair by the force of the crash but not seriously injured, are lucky to be alive.
“It could have been so much worse,” Mrs Hall says. “It’s made my husband and I realise that if there’s something we want to do, we’re going to do it, we’re not going to put it off because you never know when your life is going to change in an instant.”
She and husband, John, had to cancel a holiday to Fiji after the accident but they recently took an overnight trip to Cradle Mountain so they could indulge her love of wombats.
Despite the changes in her life, Mrs Hall bears no ill-will towards the driver, in his sixties, who is believed to have blacked out as a result of a number of medical issues.
“You can’t change the past,” she says. “I don’t spend time blaming people. Why live with anger when it’s not going to do you any good? “
But she hopes her experience is a lesson to drivers to be mindful about not getting behind the wheel when “maybe they shouldn’t be driving”.
MRS HALL’S lawyer Alison Barrett, of Maurice Blackburn, says the man who caused the accident had symptoms that should have prompted him to question his driving ability on the day.
“All drivers, including the elderly and those with medical conditions, need to be aware of their limitations on the road – whether it is associated with things like unfamiliar roads, driving at night, or feeling dizzy when driving,” Ms Barrett says. “Regular check-ups with a local GP and certification for fitness to drive for both elderly drivers and those with medical conditions is a good preventive measure to help keep people safe on the roads.”
In Queensland, drivers are legally obliged to promptly report to the Transport and Main Roads Department any long-term medical conditions that affect their ability to drive safely.
“They can’t wait until renewing their licence,” Dr Kidd says.
Failure to comply may result in penalties of up to $6831 and loss of licence. In the event of an accident which occurs as a result of a medical condition, the driver could also face criminal charges.
Margaret Bailey, 74, has had her licence for almost half a century and has more reason than most to want to keep driving for as long as possible – she’s the sole carer of a 28-year-old adoptive daughter, Bianca, who was born with no arms or legs. Bianca requires regular visits to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital for ongoing medical problems.
“It would be an issue if anything happened and I couldn’t drive, we’d be really stuck,” Margaret says. “I’m glad I’m still fairly fit and well. I don’t generally have any health issues. I’d have to do a lot of work to try and reorganise our lives if I lost my licence. We’d have to have someone to drive us.”
Margaret says she exercises regularly so she can stay healthy and hopefully, care for her daughter for longer.
“I know that I need to be fit and well to look after her,” she says. “I usually exercise five or six times a week.”
Blanket statements suggesting “elderly drivers shouldn’t be on the road” frustrate the devoted Brisbane carer.
“Just because there’s been one or two high-profile accidents involving elderly people you can’t just wipe out all people when they reach a certain age and say: ‘They’ve got to stop driving’.
“It’s very individual. Not one size fits all.”
QUT’s Mark King says research has found people who are no longer able to drive are at increased risk of depression but Mrs Lankamp is evidence that losing her ability to drive doesn’t have to mean an end to a life well lived. If anything, it’s strengthened the relationship she has with her family.
Her granddaughter Kimberley is a frequent companion on weekends, the pair sharing a love of sewing.
“Oma’s always been very social and so it’s always been hard to catch up with her,” the 24-year-old says. “Now I see her every Saturday, we go to fabric stores, we go to arts and craft fairs together. If she was still driving, I probably wouldn’t see her as much.”
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To report a medical condition to the Queensland Transport Department: tmr.qld.gov.au or phone 13 23 80.
Governments and not-for-profit organisations offer subsidised services to assist the elderly and the impaired without drivers’ licences:
brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-transport/public-transport/special-taxi-services
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