What could we have done?

The worst thing we can do as CG's is to play the 'shoulda, coulda. woulda' game with ourselves.

We make decisions based on the facts as we see them, whether they're 'true' or not. We do the best we can. We also second, third and fourth guess our decisions!

Without POA, you did all that you could. Yes, I guess you could have disabled mom's car or hidden the keys or hidden the car, but the law would be on her side.

The sad thing is what happened to your mom whilst driving is what we all worry will happen to our elders and (gasp!) to us.

Make one or two of your kids PoA for you. Write out a document stating what you want them to actually DO for you when/if the time comes. If you need to, have that notarized and put in your paperwork with your other legal documents.

The failure to plan is a plan to fail.

Anybody can have an accident, and I hope no one was seriously injured. Did the police come to the scene? I would think they'd have some thoughts on this.

Yes, Drs can make that call for their recalcitrant patients, but a judge certainly can do it too, and often do after an accident has occurred.

I'm sorry you're going through this!

Mommabeans, how do we stop anyone from causing an accident that injures or kills others? We don't, it happens every single day and mostly it IS NOT demented elders. So stop beating yourself up.

The police officer was correct in what he told you and you understood correctly, you had no legal ability to take her keys or her car without being guilty of a criminal act.

I turned my dad in to DMV, whom had told me on multiple occasions that he was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other, yet he was allowed to retain his license.

Had he injured someone or even killed them, I would not have been to blame, I did everything the law allowed me to do and someone else made the decision, okay. You did everything you could, that is all we can do.

I have to say it again, living in a retirement city of a million people, I am less worried about the seniors then I am about the idiots of ALL ages driving a lethal weapon with their faces in a phone. The statistics prove that automobile deaths are rising every year, ya think? I even see cops doing this, so how can it ever be policed and stopped? When enough "important" people bury loved ones, that's when we will see change, until then, paying attention ourselves is the only safe bet.

Driving should be determined by actual ability and not age, remember we will ALL be old, if we don't die first.

I was PoA for my Aunt who lived in FL and I was in MN. On a visit there, it was becoming obvious her driving was becoming dangerous (and her car looked liked like it was in a pinball machine). She had triple vision and had to wear special glasses. I heard stories about how her non-driving sister was her co-pilot, telling her when the light was green, when she needed to avoid the curb, etc.

I was able to anonymously report her dangerous driving to the FL DMV through their website. I had her DL #, address, and was able to give detailed specifics, dates and locations of her dangerous driving, as well as telling them about her triple vision and memory loss/cognitive decline.

FL DMV sent her a letter informing her she needed to come in for a vision re-test. I told everyone to not take her to this appointment, but one of my unsuspecting cousins did. She failed the vision test with flying colors. They asked how she got to the appointment in the first place and pointed to my cousin. They cancelled her license.

My SFIL had Parkinsons. He was still driving. He had no PoA but he and my MIL were working with social workers, trying to set them up with in-home assistance. I reported his driving to the social worker. SFIL, me and social worker had an "intervention" where she made him hand over the keys to me and we took the car away.

This past summer I was to stop my 95-yr old Mom from driving. I am her PoA but the authority wasn't yet activated through a diagnosis of cognitive impairment. So I sent a message to her PCP through her portal, asking for her to give the test at my Mom's free annual Medicare wellness exam. I went into the room with her. During this exam, my Mom voluntarily bragged to the doc that she was still driving, which raised her eyebrows. She then said she was putting in an order for a virtual driving assessment with the OT department in the following week. It was a long, silent drive home, punctuated only by her toddler-esque insistance that she's a good driver. I told her she can prove it to everyone by doing the assessment. I though for sure she wouldn't go -- but then she did. And failed with flying colors. The OT then told her the test results will go to her PCP, who is a mandated reported, and the failure results would go to the Dept of Public Safety. When it did, they sent out a cancellation letter, which my Mom snatched from her mailbox and hid. But I reminded her that I knew she hadn't passed and that I would give her the dignity of surrendering her keys, that I wasn't going to "take her keys" or car away. The next day she defiantly drove, and then hid the keys so well neither of us could find them. I told her I'd set aside 1 day a week to take her wherever she wanted (she lives next door to me). She eventually even agreed to sell her car to my BIL (but not before she hid the car title). I got a duplicate and sold it.

It's not easy to stop a determined person from driving, even with an active PoA (but then you can at least legally remove the car or sell it). It's too bad you got bad info from some people. My cousins should have stopped my 93-yr old Uncle from driving. He went through a red light and got t-boned, which killed his wife of 70 yrs, a 2-time cancer survivor. Luckily the other victims were not seriously injured.

What you should consider doing is making a video of you telling your future elderly self that if your kids are playing this video back to you, it means it's time to retire from driving. But then if you have paranoia you may not believe it's you, anyway (it's AI !!!). Or write letter to yourself.

In any group dealing with dementia, one of the big areas of controversy is whether to let the person continue driving. I am firmly in the "no" category, and feel that family should do whatever is necessary to get the keys and/or car away. I think what the police officer said was wrong or misinterpreted, but in any case, taking the keys would have been worth doing regardless.

Even with a revoked license, some people with dementia disregard the law and continue driving anyway. Taking the keys -- all keys, to all cars they have access to -- is necessary. Maybe the person will get new keys, but maybe they won't, and in any case they will be unable to drive during the time that it takes to replace them. (And the process of taking the new keys should be repeated, as necessary.)

Fawnby, my condolences to you. Thank you for sharing your sad and painful story.

Nothing you could do . We are in a similar situation . I even reached out to DMV . In the state my MIL lives in , she would have to have 3 accidents in 18 months to revoke her license . Or multiple witnessed dangerous traffic violations/ tickets . Or a doctor to say she should not drive . MIL showtimes well. She had an accident this past summer , she made a right turn right in front of another car . She had a stop sign .

Nothing could be done because there is no diagnosis . Her car is leased , we can’t steal it , she would just call and get more keys , or get it fixed if we disabled it .
Right now she isn’t driving due to she is in sling from a slight shoulder fracture , she falls all the time . We live out of state and get told things weeks after they happen . It’s mean but I keep hoping for the fall that prevents her from driving ever again . Some do but many doctors often don’t even want to get involved with the driving discussion . We got nowhere with her primary doc .

Nothing you can do when the elderly person is still too smart to be tricked into doing cognitive testing and refuse .

My nephew had problems with my sister ( with dementia ) calling up and canceling doctor appts . My MIL will never agree to us taking her to the doctor .

When my great grandfather who I suppose had Alzheimer’s got lost , my grandfather took the car away and that was that .

These days it’s much harder and the entitlement seems worse . My grandparents did not act the way my mother did or my in laws . My MIL keeps saying she is going to do what makes her happy .

You could have kept trying to reach her doctor. You could have written him a note explaining your concern for her condition. You could have asked him to contact the DMV and have her license pulled, or have them call her in for an eye test, or found some other way to get her on DMV radar so that she would not be allowed to drive legally. What police officer told you that you couldn't take her keys from her? Why is that person the authority in this matter when as a police officer, he or she SHOULD have concerns about drivers who are a public menace and the people they could hurt?

What is this "allow" thing? You should want to keep your mother safe even if you didn't want to keep other drivers safe, and tricking her into a doctor appointment is not going to qualify you to go straight to hell. You could have disabled her car key fob, if there was one, by removing the battery. She might have never figured out why her car wouldn't start. You could have found someone to drive her places - a high school or college kid, or a volunteer with a service that helps seniors get to appointments and recreation. You could have placed her in a facility where she had transportation anywhere she needed to go.

You had power but instead of using it, you consulted the wrong people and wanted to believe them because that was the easiest path to take, and she probably wouldn't get in an accident, much. You let your mentally incapacitated mom boss you around and were afraid of offending her.

I may seem harsh, but I can't offer consolation to you as others are doing. You see, my wonderful brother-in-law was killed by an incapacitated driver who ran a stop sign in a crash that never should have happened. He died of massive head injuries at the age of 49. He left a wife and four children, and our family was never the same. I have no sympathies for people who won't take the car away from someone who should no longer be driving. None.

I have no idea what your kids should do if you get dementia. But I know what you should do when your mind starts slipping. Stop driving.

You can't do for anyone what they don't want done.
What you can do now for yourself is make sure you have all the things in place that you want done.
You tell, better yet write down your wishes so that they have in writing what you want.
Do not make them promise that they will never "put you in a home" instead make them promise that they will do their best to keep you safe.
If you have not seen an attorney to get all your legal paperwork in order do that now.
Make someone younger than you POA for Health and Finances.
If you can afford it and wish to move into a Continuing Care Community so that you will not have to move as you require more help.
OR
If you do not wish to move into such a community do renovations to your home now so that you can safely stay there.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I am sure others noticed a decline and they also had little power to change things.

Momma,
Don't spend your time going backwards.
The old adage that "hindsite is 20/20" is pretty spot on, to tell the truth.
It's easy to give advice; every day I'm here exPOUNDING on what everyone should do about this or that.
The truth is that, faced with your own private individual circumstance the answers are few, and almost impossible to implement.

You did the best you could with the situations. Your kids will, too.
I didn't even RECOGNIZE, from half the state away, what was happening to my brother. We hadn't visited one-on-one for over a year due to his having bought a home and moved with a partner who turned out to have severe alcoholism/mental problems; then another move back home to Palm Springs.
When I DID see him he told me about some "weird" dreams that seemed REAL and he felt he was AWAKE when he had them.
And I just missed it ALL!
Until he wrecked his truck, was seriously injured, then was diagnosed as probable early Lewy's.
I see NOW all I missed then. How I should have known when his phone didn't work and phone company said "Yeah. It DOES work". Should have seen the balance was so poor. Should have recognized the hallucinations he could so vividly describe.
I didn't. I was a retired RN. I just didn't.
Happily his accident injured only him; we were "lucky".

Yes, some dementias are inherited. Some aren't. You can't predict. Do your advance directive. Do your POA. Talk to your kids now about what you do and don't want.

You have all the RIGHT questions. There just aren't right answers.
I sat for two hours watching the fires yesterday. Last year, for me, a second cancer popped up. Then in October, N. had a huge stroke. Lucky for us we got to a stroke center within an hour and it was 100% reversed.
I said to him last night, with a shrug: " We just go along, don't we? We think this is today, and tomorrow will be much the same. But at any SECOND.....it all can change".
We know that. We have lived that. But still. We never fully can absorb that kind of stuff.

I always retreat back to Dr. Laura's old adage "Not everything can be fixed". It's the truth. We address things best we can. We make decisions, and some we don't make quick enough. We're just humans with limitations doing our lives. You are doing what you can. Sometimes the sad truth is that nothing here is going to end well.
I just don't think we can have all the answers. And my OCD tries to plan otherwise.

Without POA and a diagnoses of Dementia, not much you can do. Just wait until she is hospitalized and have her evaluated then.

The woman crashed her car. I would have called DMV and told them you suspect Dementia was the cause and was there anything they could do to revoke her license.