Prolong Driving Safety: Care for Yourself Like You Care for Your Car

It really is possible to prolong safe driving years. If you care for yourself like you care for your car (assuming you are doing a fine job of caring for your car!) you can prolong your safe driving years.

The Most Important Tip: Schedule Preventive Maintenance

1. Get routine scheduled preventive check ups with your doctor. (like your car gets with the mechanic)
Regular physicals that include all of the following:

• Get an annual eye exam (Like checking your lights)
• Get all the required medical screenings (To make sure everything is OK)
• Keep your body well lubed ( Eat good nutritious food and drink plenty of water)
• Keep your muscles (Like the belts in your car) flexible and in good condition
• Stay fit or get fit (A good routine maintenance program)
• Wear good shoes (Like good tires, they are the basis for your ride and help with balance!)
• Keep your mind in excellent condition (Just like your car engine)
• Be aware of medications that cause fatigue, sleepiness, visual, physical or mental changes (Like additives in a car, you have to know what happens when you use them)

Next blog will include details to explain the "how" of this section, then more tips.

Be WISE and healthy.

Dr. Vanessa M. Dazio

Let's Work To Prolong Older Driver Safety

Let's Work to Prolong Older Driver Safety

Limited Public Transportation

Our beautiful USA is vast in size. Our largest cities have subway systems that help get people from place to place. The majority of US citizens live in cities and towns without subway systems. So many of our cities are sprawling and crawling over greater and greater distances. Supermarkets and malls are massive. Hospitals and churches are enormous. Theaters and sports arenas are mega centers. Parking lots are huge. Distances between one business and another are long.

We now depend on driving to get to where we need to go. Driving makes doing possible. It requires less effort, less time, and we can cover far greater distances when driving a car. Driving gives us independence and freedom to go where we want to go, when we want to go. Never has the car been more valuable than now.

Unfortunately, due to the normal aging process, vital driving skills do decline. For instance, vision is a critical skill that commonly declines with age. Physical strength, range of motion, coordination, and other senses may also decline. Some mental abilities may decline. Dementia may also happen to some. Such changes or combinations of changes can be cause for discontinuing driving if safety is compromised.

When this time does come, relinquishing a driver's license is necessary. Giving it up can be a crushing experience. I think we should be doing everything possible to prolong older driving safety. Please, hear me out.

Driving Cessation Programs

We have a number of wonderful government and non-profit agencies devoted to public safety. They have been doing a crucial job in promoting "driving cessation" programs. (Driving cessation programs are designed to get unsafe drivers to stop driving before accidents happen.)

They have well developed brochures, programs, educational packets and materials describing red flags, warning signs or symptoms, to help people recognize unsafe driving behaviors.

But, I am just not seeing much of anything on what the older driver can do to prolong older driver safety.

Let's Work To Prolong Older Driver Safety

I would like to see our government devoting as much or more resources on educating the public on how to prolong older driver safety.

How about it? The next couple of blogs, I will devote to tips for the older driver on how to prolong safe driving skills.

Let me know what you think.

Stay safe and healthy.

Dr. Vanessa M. Dazio

Doctor of Occupational Therapy