Husband's First Car Accident in His Life

dananfrench

My husband was diagnosed with Early Onset AD six months ago. He is still working but is planning to retire in about six months. He had the first car accident in his life last week. The details are not clear, but it is likely he pulled out in front of the other driver. He says he is not ready to stop driving and since I had a similar accident about ten years ago we bought him a new car. I've ridden with him recently and although he is not as confident a driver as he once was, it is primarily due to his inability to recognize parts of town he doesn't visit routinely and to understand some of the new car controls. The new car has all the driver assistant bells and whistles, he uses his phone GPS, and he has slowed down, leaves more distance between cars, and agreed not to drive at night. (I had previously noticed he drives 10-15 mph below the speed limit at night and suggested he let me drive at night and on unfamiliar roads.) He has driven the new car several times with me along and he passed my quizzes on the basic controls and driving maneuvers. Our adult children all agreed it is too soon to take the keys - including an Occupational Therapist in charge of teaching handicapped adults adaptive driving skills. My husband agreed that if there is another accident he will need to stop driving, with the possible exception of short trips to the small town three miles from our home. Have I done enough?

A. Marie

Get him off the road. NOW. Do you really want to wait till he causes another accident and possibly injures or kills someone?? Besides, if he has a documented AD diagnosis, he and you could be sued for everything you've got. Read the many other posts here on this subject.

darcytg

Safety first....all forms.

Don't risk lives and your finacial security for a short term feel good.

It's very difficult to face these life changes.

Do your best to accept and adapt.

My LO has spent today sharing her feelings of being discarded. She will leave her home soon. All I can do is keep loving her and supporting the independence she does have. Brutal stuff.

ButterflyWings

I will be blunt. Please do not play Russian roulette with other people's lives. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Ignoring the warning shots is totally irresponsible and could actually be considered criminal.

His brain is already failing noticeably, as are his driving skills. His judgement, vision, mood, and more can glitch at any time. This is your responsibility now and other family members really should not enable either of you. I'm sorry if this sounds rude and insensitive but you are talking life and death for other people, their loved ones, children, etc. Truly do not let him drive one more time. You don't need to tell him. Just do what is right.

Disappear the keys, car, whatever it takes. Like yesterday.

terei

‘Details are not clear’ is probably because he doesn’t know what happened. I thought my mom was ok too til she pulled in front of a big truck + was just lucky she + her H were not killed. He was in ER for a few days. No one else was hurt, thank god. Car was totaled + that was that.

M1

No, you have not done enough. Period.

jfkoc

NO.....

dayn2nite2

If you want him to cause the death of other people and possibly cost you everything you have worked hard all your life for, keep letting him drive.

I don't care whether he, you, your kids or the occupational specialist think it's too soon. He had an ACCIDENT and cannot describe what happened.

JDancer

WTF? One more accident...perhaps a fatal accident. What are you thinking?

I have lost love ones to impaired drivers and your post infuriates me. PWD should not drive, period.

Vitruvius

I was going to write some sort of admonishment but erased it. Instead I'm just going to ask you to please do the right thing and stop him from driving.

trottingalong

Stop now. He is incapable of judging whether he should drive or not. It’s up to you. The accident was a warning. Too much denial going on here and it’s dangerous. We are all people living this in real time. Don’t bury your head in the sand, please! You state he passed your quizzes. He passed them “that” day. He may not pass it tomorrow, or the next day.

ButterflyWings

@dananfrench and @Mimi50 The reactions you are receiving from the members are not personal attacks, so I truly hope and pray you will not allow convenience, or denial, or wishful thinking to blind you to the truth of what we are saying. It is an EXTREMELY dangerous situation you both are allowing. Its not about getting lost, or driving 10-15 miles below the speed limit at night for some reason (hint: brain is dying, skills are impaired.)

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of articles you can access with tragic stories like this I am linking here. The person with dementia whether elderly or young, at some point fairly early on is not able, with their damaged and dying brain, to understand their limitations. Their caregivers or even just caring friends and family must be the responsible ones. Most of us have been through this driving decision point and know it is not easy. But it is urgently necessary that you step up and remove the risk to your impaired LOs and others before something truly horrible happens.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/driver-dementia-kills-baby-self-declaration-b2382260.html

Mimi50

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/193261#Comment_193261

I am so very sorry for your loss.

Mimi50

Probably not enough. It would be better for everyone if he didn’t drive anymore.

Mimi50

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/193271#Comment_193271

You are trying to get us to accept reality. I appreciate it. My husband will have no choice. His doctor and I will tell him he can’t drive. If I have to lock up my purse with the car keys in it. I will do that to. I don’t want him to get hurt or even worse hurt someone else. He was diagnosed year ago. With vascular dementia he is stage 1. Thankfully he wasn’t working when he was diagnosed.

Pat6177

Something else to take into consideration while making the decision about driving. What I have seen with my DH and observed from reading on this forum is that the progression of this disease is unpredictable. Some people on this forum feel that those with Early Onset progress more quickly. Vascular dementia is known to progress in a stair step fashion meaning that they will go along for some time with little progression and then a sudden big decline. Then another plateau. My DH has mixed dementia - ALZ and Vascular dementia. A couple of months ago, he suddenly did not recognize me. No warning, it came out of the blue. So think long and hard if the plan is to watch for a deterioration of their driving skills before they quit driving. That plan might work. Or it might not.

Mimi50

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/193279#Comment_193279

My husband has vascular dementia. The changes are slow but happening. Time to make good choices for everyone.

JJ401

Dementia does not wait. It moves on at its own pace (which varies by the individual). You need to plan for the unexpected. The plan for him to retire in six months may move up.

You and your children are not looking at his ability to drive realistically. You are looking through the lens of a loved one who wants to see ability that is not there. He caused the accident. He cannot maintain appropriate speed. He does not recognize his surroundings even though he has been there before. He can’t use some of the new car controls. Only driving within three miles and using GPS will not solve this. His skills are deteriorating and will continue to do so. You cannot predict when or how big the next deterioration will be. He needs to stop driving now.

This time he pulled in front of a car. Next time he could pull in front of a trailer truck. Next time he could hit a small car and kill or seriously injure someone. Or you could stop his driving now.

Nowhere

I’m so sorry. Your husband may have lots of clarity (probably when the occupational therapist evaluated him), but he’s been diagnosed with EO dementia which is known to advance quickly. In your own words you’ve described times and incidences that he’s affected. If he needs a ride to get to work he needs transportation because in a moment’s hesitation due to being lost, instrumentation confusion, or an inability to reason causing judgment error puts him and anyone in his path at risk. Sadly, failure in his thinking will only accelerate. If he were my husband, I’d call the insurance company, his doctor and the DMV first thing tomorrow and rally their assistance in removing his driving privilege. I feel for both of you because EO AD doesn’t allow time to psychologically ease into making this decision.

harshedbuzz

I am so sorry you find yourself in this situation. I know from experience how difficult it is to end driving for a man whose entire masculine identity if wrapped up in this one IADL. I was fortunate that dad's neurologist made the decision for us as convincing my mom who was still struggling to process the implications of this hellish diagnosis on every aspect of her life.

I am sorry that every aspect of stopping him driving is going to be hell for you. He will likely be angry, perhaps to the degree that medication is required to keep him at home. Perhaps, even, to the degree you will be forced to call 911 and have him transported to a hospital with a geriatric psych ward for admission and medication management. My own dad never got over this and we heard about driving on the regular. The very last words I ever spoke to the man the day he died were a promise to bring a car to the MCF in case he needed to go somewhere. He, obviously, was too impaired to have done so.

It's unfortunate, that your children are not supportive of you in this. I side-eye an OT professional who would offer an opinion on a family member especially if they hadn't done rigorous testing on them. Dementia is a progressive disease; this is not the same thing as a disabled adult who doesn't have an intellectual disability or cognitive impairment. I suspect your children they don't appreciate the dire circumstances in which you have found yourself. But such is your responsibility as the adult left standing in your marriage-- you get to be the bad guy.

But I have to agree with the others. Driving is one of those things that is OK until it isn't. The time for him to have stopped was before he t-boned another driver. He should not get a second chance. The fact that he can't tell you what happened doesn't support him driving. In your shoes, I would go to the police station and get the accident report and see what it contains. If your DH appeared flustered, the other driver may have been the side of the story that is now accepted as fact. If the victim got a sense that your DH was in any way impaired, you may be facing a lawsuit.

My mom does not have dementia. She does have some vision issues for which she is treated. He neuro-ophthalmologist assured me she was OK to drive as did her retinal specialist. I drove with her at the wheel at least monthly to keep an eye on things which kind of annoyed her. I also drove her car regularly to make sure it was handling as it should. I also discretely took photographs of all sides of her minivan to document the condition of the body in order to compare if I thought it had new dents or scrapes. In February of 2019, mom rear-ended a car at a light and totaled both vehicles. She felt terrible especially since the other driver was so gracious about it despite driving home from the ER with her son with autism who was also very upset. She claimed the brakes failed. It was an older car, so plausible but I was concerned.

She wanted to continue driving, so I took her to buy a shiny new Accord with all the safety improvements and we made a pact-- her idea-- that she would only drive locally, on roads with which she was familiar and that she would voluntarily limit her driving to daylight hours. Not 60 days later she had a nearly identical accident except that it involved 2 other cars waiting for the light to turn. FTR, she was less than 2 miles from her home and it was dusk. She decided to give up driving.

Unfortunately, one of the drivers in this accident sued her. Mom has full-tort coverage and no dementia in her medical record (my parents' insurance policy is void if the driver has been diagnosed btw), so her company provided an attorney and paid the settlement. But the experience was horrible. I'm sure it was no picnic for the person she hit. Mom was terribly upset to have potentially injured someone-- the woman was a fitness instructor and claims to have lost wages in addition to the pain and suffering. Then she had to attend a deposition with the other driver attending. Because of COVID, the case took longer to wind its way through the courts. The accident was 4/2019, the lawsuit was filed in 9/2019, the deposition was 2/2020 and the court date was postponed several times until 9/2021 at which point the woman settled for a net payout of just under $5000.

Had that accident been my dad given his rate of progression through the stages of dementia, it would have been a very different experience. The man who would gave the deposition would have been a very different person than the one who had the accident if it had been on the last day he drove and by the time the trial was set he'd have been in a diaper and unable to swallow.

If he's still fit to work-- and I would be cautious-- would he lose retirement benefits like health insurance or a pension if he was fired for cause?-- you could have him Uber to and from work. It's what I do for my mom these days when I can't drive her somewhere. She enjoys having some independence.

HB

Phoenix1966

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/193278#Comment_193278

You may very well have to hide the keys or “tamper” with the vehicle so that it can’t run. Sadly, these are the crappy realities of this evil disease that can slowly strip away everything from a person(and their loved ones suffer as well alongside them).

Practically speaking, he has a diagnosis that will leave you on the hook financially for any accident now. Also, there is no way to predict when his abilities will decrease further. Dementia doesn’t always mean “memory loss” (you spoke about some confusion when he is in a strange/new location). It can also affect spatial awareness. He may suddenly or eventually not be able to judge distance correctly, etc., so an accident can happen on a well-known route in broad daylight, too.

Thanks for coming here to share your story/concerns and actively listening to the advice and concerns of other caregivers who have been where you are.

Please keep coming back to ask advice, vent, mourn the losses, etc. We’re here to listen and share if you want.

housefinch

1) That OT needs better training. And there’s a paper in the neurology literature that even older driver evaluations do not catch all impaired drivers (from dementia, traumatic brain injury, etc). Physicians, including neurologists who specialize in dementia, are actually less skilled at identifying impaired drivers than family members who are in the car with the person.

2) It’s not about the distance from home that PWD is driving. It’s about the distance between PWD’s car and another car or a human being. A family friend’s daughter was killed instantly last year when she was bicycling and struck by someone not even impaired—-driving a large truck with poor visibility. Left 2 children in elementary school and her husband. Please park the car elsewhere so it’s not a trigger. Living with dementia is stressful enough. You don’t want to add another tragedy to your life.

Gig Harbor

Another thought is would you let him drive grandchildren around?

Gig Harbor

Kevcoy

Reading everyone's comments here I think you have your answer. Please heed their advice. I will add be aware once you have taken the step to get him off the road please be strong and not give in to his constant complaining about not being able to drive. It will go on for months on end. Also, I'd let your kids read these comments left here because you all need to be on the same page and be strong together.