Fear of Driving

In last Monday’s post, I wrote that we struggle not to give unsolicited advice to our children but that they don’t return the favor, giving us more advice the older we become.  “They suspect, I fear, that whatever sense we might once have possessed has declined with age to the point that we’ve become innocents in a depraved world.”  In response, my niece wrote me that it’s not that our children think we’ve become simple-minded but that they see us acting as if we’re a lot younger and that such behavior could get us into trouble.  The example she gave is now faced by a friend of hers, the child of elderly parents who don’t realize that their driving skills have deteriorated. 

This is a problem for a lot of adult children - how to pry the driver’s keys away from their parents, when those parents’ driving has become dangerous to themselves and to others.   Understandably, many parents resist their children’s efforts to remove them from the driver’s seat because in many cases, giving up driving means loss of independence, especially if they live in a city with inadequate public transportation, such as Los Angeles, or if they live in the country.  But practical considerations are only one of the factors that motivate resistance.  Driving is an icon of adulthood, of mastery.  To remove it symbolizes a return to that earlier state when one was dependent on others, in this case a symbol not of youthfulness but of decay.

About five years ago I let my driver’s license lapse.   We were then living in the center of downtown Jerusalem, which offered splendid public transportation. Mainly I didn’t use it because I could walk to most of my destinations.  I drove so very seldom that I began to feel uneasy when I did get behind the wheel.  One day, I drove too near a bus that had stopped by the side of the road.  I drove so close to the bus that I clipped my right-hand side-view mirror, which flew into the passenger compartment.  This incident so unnerved me that I decided then and there that my driving days were over, even though at that time I was only 75.  A motoring career that had begun at age 16 and had seen me drive on three continents, including countries in which you drive on the wrong side of the road, a career in which I drove across America three times by myself, had come to an inglorious conclusion.   I knew I was right to stop driving, but I felt bad about it just the same.  I felt less of a man, which is absurd, I know, but there it is.

But I also felt relief.  For the fact is I was never a superb driver, not like my wife, who loves to drive.  I remember that the late Paul Reynolds, my college friend who had come home with me during one of our breaks from classes, criticized my driving, telling me I was straddling two lanes.  This happened more than 60 years ago but the memory of it is as clear as if it happened yesterday. The only time I saw my beloved father–in- law lose his temper was when he was a passenger in a car I was driving much too slowly to suit him.  He insisted I change places with him.  This hurt my feelings, and it took me a while to forgive him for it, but no doubt he was right.  My pokiness has a precedent in my mother, who was among the world’s worst drivers.  It was she who taught me to drive.  (“Now stay in the left-hand lane,” she would say, “and don’t pay any attention to the honking behind you,” as we proceeded at a stately 25 miles per hour.)  I felt relief when I stopped driving because for the almost 60 years after I started to drive, I never lost the fear that I would run someone over.  At long last that fear has gone.

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