My great uncle Ted made his own decision about when it was time for him to quit driving. He loved cars and his brother was a car dealer for many years. When he was in his seventies, he traded his Volkswagen beetle and bought an Opel Kadette. It was a very small and efficient car for the 1960s. As his 80th birthday approached, he decided that it was time for him to quit driving. He sold his car the year before I got married. The timing was fortunate for me. That car got us through our last year of college and four years of graduate school. It took us to and from Chicago and was my commuter car when we lived in Chicago and I worked in a western suburb. We had a few problems with the car. Once he starter gave up and we push started it for an entire trip from Chicago to Montana. Another time a u-joint failed on the freeway and we had to have the car towed and find alternate transportation while repairs were made. But for the most part it was a reliable car.

I later found out that the sale of the car was a big relief to my parents. Uncle Ted had moved to the town where we lived and worked for years as the parts manager of our father’s John Deere dealership. He had a special relationship with our family. He and his wife had had no children and our family provided support for him when his wife predeceased him. My parents felt that they were going to have to advise him to quit driving as he grew older. But they didn’t need to worry. He made the decision himself before they had to come up with a strategy to get him to stop driving.

The story was a bit different with my mother. Years before she quit driving she regularly said to us that she expected us to tell her when we thought that she was no longer safe as a driver. She promised that she would willingly give up driving if one of us said that we thought it was time for her to do so. I helped her buy her last car and at the time felt that although she was still a safe driver, having a car with air conditioning and an automatic transmission might help her remain safe for a while longer. She was living near my sister when she first became confused while driving. Although there was no accident involved the incident shook both her an my sister and my sister and I discussed whether or not it was time to tell my mom that it was time for her to quit. We never really had that conversation with her, however. She cut back on her driving a lot. For a few years, I would drive her between my sister’s home and her summer place in Montana and she would drive about our small town in Montana a bit during the summers, but the car remained in the garage when she was back in Portland. When the time came for her to quit going to Montana each summer, our son was in need of a car and I bought the car from her at the book price. She was happy about the deal and glad that the car was going to help her grandson. I remembered how my great uncle’s car had helped us when we were getting started.

A few years later, however, after my mother had come to live in our home, I overheard her talking with friends at the coffee hour after church one week. The table with several women in their 80’s sitting together was discussing when it was time to give up driving. At least two of the women in the conversation were at the point where I thought that they should give up driving and wondered if their children were getting ready to talk to them. I had witnessed a couple of frightening maneuvers in the church parking lot that showed inattentive driving. What my mother said, however, surprised me. “My son took my car away from me,” she declared. I thought her statement was unfair. I certainly didn’t remember our transaction that way. As far as I know, she was glad to sell her car and give up driving at the time.

She repeated that version of the story about my taking the car away from her several times, including a conversation over our dinner table. I wonder if that is the version of the story that she believed for the rest of her life.

I’ve joked with our children that I will know that it is time for me to quit driving when I find a full motion truck driving simulator in my living room. It will be their responsibility to provide the device. But it probably is about time to have a preliminary conversation with them in which I ask them to be honest with me when they feel that I am no longer a safe driver. When I am traveling with my children, they usually do the driving, but I am careful to regularly drive when our son is with me just to make sure that he has the opportunity to see how I am doing. I’m confident that he would be honest with me if I made him uncomfortable with my driving. Since we have a full-sized pickup truck, maneuvering the long vehicle in tight places is more challenging than driving our car and I try to have him ride with me from time to time as a safety check. I sometimes joke with friends that driving with one of my children in the car with me is like taking a driving test.

I wonder, however, if the scenario will be different for us. Self-driving cars are already a reality and those systems are going to improve with the passage of time. It is possible that as my abilities decline technology will provide a solution. I suspect that my timing is a bit off and that I won’t be able to afford a technological chauffeur, but I really don’t know how soon I will be a passenger in a car without a human driver.

In the meantime, I hope that those around me will be honest with their observations about my driving. If such a conversation bothers me, I can always make up a fictional version of the events to tell my friends. It worked for my mom.