Dangerous club member

[rgshafto]

Here’s problem I’d welcome some advice about. I’m part of an informal local old car club that meets for a drive every Sunday a.m. Last week was our 1st outing of the spring. One of our older members is showing signs of what might well be early dementia (confusion, inability to focus).

His car was out of brake fluid and sure enough, he hit another member’s A-400 (fortunately only minor damage) and just missed another parked car at the coffee shop. He was too confused to know what to do, so some members got the car in good enough shape to so he could drive it home (less than a mile away as it happened).

My guess is that he’ll show up tomorrow morning and pose a hazard to all of us.

What to do? He’s a nice man, all alone in the world with no family, but unlikely to take any advice from us about it being time to turn in the keys.

Anyone else had a problem like this? We are very sympathetic to his situation, but feel we are putting our cars (and maybe ourselves) at risk with him showing up for our rides.

[CarlLaFong]

In some states you can notify the DMV and they will investigate to see if the person is competent to drive. Maybe call the local law enforcement agency as well. It may seem harsh, but someone could be hurt or worse, not to mention damage to collector cars

[keiser31]

You have to be very diplomatic about it. A few of your club members should get together with him and tell the guy that you welcome him to stay in the club and go on tours, but that someone else will have to drive his car. If you try to convince him that you are concerned more about HIM than your cars and he will probably be o.k. with it all. I know exactly your concern....there are a few elderly folks here who should not be driving on our tours or in any other vehicle for that matter. We have to gently put our foot down.

I left my car with a guy in our club who was going to "help" me get my car running when I had carb problems. The next time I saw my car, it was indeed running, but the taillight stanchion was bent, fuel tank dented and both rear fenders scraped and bent. He was old and he backed into his own fence while getting my car off of his trailer in his yard. Then he wanted me to pay him for getting my car running!

Tell the guy before it gets worse.

[Guest Orphanauto]

A short term response may be to tell him you or someone from the club would like to check his brake system out to see if they are leaking BEFORE he takes it out again. This will buy you some time, to talk to other club members to see what to do, perhaps offering him a ride to the club meeting, until that can happen, which because you are very busy, (work ectt...) you haven't had time. Yes, this does not solve the problem, but it will buy you time, to figure what to do, before he shows up tomorrow and hurts himself or someone else, or worse. This is just a short term response, Lets see what others say about the real long term solution.. best of luck...

[MCHinson]

In most states local law enforcement officers can send a request for medical examination to DMV.

It appears to me that you can report to DMV or any local law enforcement agency.

Attached are the appropriate rule from your state's DMV.

http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/rules/29/250/250c003.doc

It is a tough situation, but safety is more important than ego. You might find that somebody could offer to drive him in his car or theirs. He might enjoy having a younger driver to leave the driving to. We have at least one member of our Chapter who normally is driven by a younger member.

[Guest buicks39]

i agree with keiser.im sure there are guests of members who do not have cars but are active in car clubs that probably would love to drive him around and who knows they may end up with his car once he can"t drive anymore.

[JohnD1956]

how sad that this is occuring. I would think overall safety for everyone is of primary importance and your club would be doing everyone, including him, a big favor if his car was suddenly disabled (put in a rotor without the conector) . Then offer him rides to meetings and events. I know it is subtefuge, but how will you all feel if he hits a pedestrian or one of you pulling into the meeting location?

[keiser31]

Yep.....you don't want to make him mad by reporting him to the DMV until he absolutely refuses to abide by the members' wishes and then, of course, you must take action.

[Shop Rat]

We had to do this to get my dad's license revoked. He was doing fine driving while Mom was alive, and for a short time afterward. Then his dementia started getting worse. He went down the road we live on to see a friend. They weren't home so he kept driving until he was in Ohio. Luckily he turned around and made it back home. But he was gone for several hours.

As a passenger he started flinching away from a vehicle that would come out of a side street. That worried us.

So I contacted the Citations Division of the W. Va. Dept. of Transportation. A nice lady there told me that what we needed to do was send a letter expressing our concerns about Dad's driving abilities. She said anyone can send it in, so my oldest of two older brothers, he lives in Va., sent the letter. The younger of them, he lives two minutes from where I do, was against us taking Dad's license since he didn't want to be stuck taking Dad places. He lost on this one.

They then contact the person and they have to take the written test. She said 85% of them never make it through that. If they do then they have to take the driving test. That weeds out more of them. If they make it through that then they must pass the parking test. Very few make it through that. One touch and they are done.

Dad was upset at first, I don't blame him. We was an excellent driver before we lost mom. But he never went to be tested after he got the letter. He even said he liked being driven where he wanted/needed to go. Until we could get this done Bill disabled Dad's PT Cruiser and then we snagged the keys and didn't give them back.

About two weeks later a woman with similar problems went around a stopped school bus and killed a six-year-old little girl as she crossed the road to go home. Her first grade class photo will be the last one her parents ever have. The woman's husband stood there with his arm around her crying and saying how sorry he was. You could see it on his face he KNEW she should not be driving but was not brave enough to do what had to be done.

[Barry Wolk]

No one is doing anyone a favor by letting this guy drive. Let the DMV handle it. He'll never know wher it came from. Let him be mad at them.

My wife's grandfather confused the brake and accelerator one day, hit a car, glanced off, knocked down a tree and hit a house.

He thought the parked car behind him hit him. They took his license but his wife got it back for him (well connected) and he went on his merry way until I disabled his car permanantly.

You do what you have to do to keep dangerous people off the road. Dimentia does not get better over time.

Driving is a privilege, not a right.

[Marty Roth]

Susan,

THANK YOU - excellent commentary, and well expressed. We all need to be involved.

Dale's mom Quit driving on her own after ankle surgery at age 90. She was still an excellent driver at that time, and regretted her limited freedom, but appreciated having us as "dedicated runner" and scheduled her doctor and beauty salon appointments accordingly. In our area, the local gov't. provides a transport service with wheelchair capability, requiring 1 week advance scheduling.

She was mentally sharp and still shouting out Jeapordy answers at nearly age 95 until 2 days before we lost her last November - hurricane evacuations finally did her in.

[Dave@Moon]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Tell the guy before it gets worse. </div></div>

This is a very touchy subject. It's easy to offend, for sure. But let me tell you, the regrets if you don't take hard action are a b-tch!

I had a supervisor in the PA-DER who (at 63) started doing the same kinds of things. I recall vividly once him driving his state car 25 miles from a worksite in a minor city (next door to a Pizza Hut) to use a men's room on a distant interstate, and then return. We had concerns, but most people considered him more daffy than dangerous and towards the end his instructions/judgement were always checked just to be sure.

He retired eventually, and was an avid outdoorsman who loved to hunt. He bought every license (and in rural PA <span style="font-style: italic">-I was working in the Pocono Mountains at the time-</span> that's a lot!). In retirement he was in his glory. He'd looked forward to the time when he could hunt and fish year round his whole life.

Six months in to retirement while hunting he shot and killed his best friend thinking he was a turkey. It was an accident of course, but one nobody would've normally made. The poor guy was devastated. To make matters worse when you do that in PA you cannot get a hunting license for 10 years regardless of circumstances. He obviously didn't have 10 years.

The last years of his life must have been awful.

The people who worked with him (myself included) always regretted not having an intervention of some sort. The pain/anguish it would've caused him (and us) would've been nothing compared to what we put him through by doing nothing.

[Shop Rat]

Thank you Marty. I felt that maybe if I shared my dad's story, and the one about the lady that killed the little girl, it might show that tragedy is just a vehicle key turn away.

The husband of the woman that killed that little girl was devastated. And I think more so because he let her drive knowing that she shouldn't have been. She had that vacant look in her eyes that folks with cognative problems have. Many times they do the opposite of what they would have done had they had their full faculties about them.

And it is best to let the DMV handle it. One of my best friends and her sister made the mistake of trying to take their dad's license by talking to his doctor. HUGE mistake because the doctor was one of her dad's buddies and he wouldn't do that to his friend. AND the stupid doctor told their dad what they were trying to do. Additonally her father drank and was a diabetic which is a bad combination. Her father was observed by one of his other friends going the wrong way up an Interstate ramp. That was what prompted her and her sister to pursue getting his license. He finally became ill and had to go to a nursing home. His license was still in force when he died.

[rgshafto]

Thanks everyone for the good advice, and heartfelt stories. Stay alert out there!

[Ivan Saxton]

You have to do what you have to do; and only someone on the spot can know. There are nevertheless a couple of lipid food supplements that you would think are brain food, but not drugs that can do any harm; and these are worth trying. I will give you two actual outcomes that I observed. It is too long since I did biochemistry and physiology at university for me to know exactly how they work but they do. My 26 year old autistic son has improved substantially since I have been giving these to him daily.

A little while ago my daughter and I were in the chorus of a local production of My Fair Lady, which was excellent professional standard by the time of performances, and we were very proud of it. Then the big bloke who was Dolittle had his knee collapse on stage. The director used his network to locate someone who had played the part 18months before to fill in. Now we had to come in extra early to rehearse with this fellow who was 72, and he was terrible. After a while the director said "OK, that is enough. Go and have something to eat , and start getting made up ----"

Well, he was outside by himself marking his script with a highlighter (which is not allowed for the hire stuff). I went for a quick walk to buy a bottle of Lecethin capsules from the supermarket. He was still there. I said to him "Dont worry about it David, you know the part. All you need is something to help you bring it out. Stick out your hand". I gave him a handfull of capsules and explained what it was, telling him to take two then, and one a day after to see if he thought it was helpful. We were dreading the ruin of the performance, but from his first lines you could tell he had nailed it. Afterwards he said to me "It worked! And I am completely calm too". It was an astonishing contrast.

I regularly call on a young bloke of about 86 when I go to Melbourne, who was my boss at the engineer's shop of the family sawmill when there were school holidays. One day I called he was having great difficulty with his speech, memory, and mobility. So I got him a big bottle of Omiga 3 fish oil capsules because there was no Lecethin, and told him to take a couple a day but not tell Elsmarie. His daughter is a fairly authoritative researcher at the Baker Medical Research Institute. Next time I saw him a month later you would not recognise him as the same bloke. His memory and speech were faultless though his memory is vast, and he walked down to the shops again instead of using the electric scooter he had scrounged and fixed. He still hasn't told his daughter, who had seen him start a downhill slide and inexplicably recover. His sense of humour is wonderful too.

Don't expect miracles, and these may not always help, but in many cases they do.

Sooner or later age catches up with almost everyone, and within about the lasy year or so, motoring journalist Paul Frere died some time after an accident (I think) on the Nurburgring. Go to Atlas F1 discussion forum Nostalgia section if you want to check. About 5 years previously he was at Lemans for the race when he was invited by Audi to drive test laps in practice in one of their cars as had won several LeMans 24 hour races previously. His consistent lap times would have placed him at the front of the grid. He was in his late 80's, but a former F1 driver and winner of LeMans. His book on theory and practice of competition driving is a classic.

Dont expect miracles, but these supplements often help though they may not always. Ivan Saxton