Bay Area program helps families navigate senior driving safety

Welcome back. If you were with us yesterday on The Nine, we talked about the youngest people on the road, how teens are eager to get their driver's licenses. Well, on the other end of the spectrum are older drivers. Knowing when it's time to hand over those keys can be one of the toughest conversations that a family faces. Now, one program is helping families navigate that. And for more insight, we welcome Erica Vieira, the owner of Bay Area Driving school. Thank you so much for coming in to talk about this. It is such a tough conversation for me. We were really lucky. My mom decided on her own when she felt like her eyesight and her reaction time wasn't great. And she said, you know what? We have public transportation. She had me. I could drive her around. But other friends of mine, it really caused a lot of tension having that conversation with mom or dad. What do you say about some advice for having that conversation? Well, it's definitely a difficult conversation, and sometimes, you know, it's ongoing. Parents, they're not ready to give up the keys, but, you know, we get a lot of calls, and our customers, they're the adult children. They're calling for their parents. They're concerned, and mom or dad, you know, they're not, you know, it's often the case that they're not ready to stop driving. You're giving up independence. I mean, that's why it's a really tough call. Like, we all remember that time, or, wow, I can go wherever I want. I can, I can, I don't have to wait for anyone. And to be on the other end of that now having to rely on people once again is hard, but you offer some assessments in this driving school. So families can, because some people are driving and they are, you know, I know, I know people close to 90 and they're, they are very much able to drive and do everything else. Uh, but some people are not. So what kinds of assessments do you do? Right. Yeah. And there's not a certain age everybody's different and so the assessments that we do basically and I like to have my seniors often look at it as a refresher course even because we're going to also you know introduce some defensive driving techniques that they haven't learned before so I like to come to the house and usually I'll have them you know make a little list of the the areas like the where they usually go Trader Joe's to the bank community centers wherever they're going because I want them to be comfortable. So I will give them an assessment. I'll write down my observations. And at the end of the lesson, what we'll do is we want to know primarily two things. Number one, did they handle their driving responsibilities during the drive? And number two, if it was an actual test, would they have passed or not? And then we put this in writing too, so the kids can also take a look at it. Right. So this way there's real information that the older driver and the family can look at look at to see because sometimes there's things like do you talk about like I hear a lot of older people say like I don't like to drive at night anymore or I don't like to drive when it's raining so there might be certain conditions where they're okay and somewhere they're not right oh absolutely and you know we're the best to you know assess we need to do self-assessments and you know sometimes we we know that our night driving isn't as good and or maybe they get too nervous on the freeway or they get forgetful so that's one of the the signs as well so what guide us through uh for a family um reaching out because i would think some people might be like i don't need to take this assessment how do you kind of help them get to like let's just see how you're doing like you said it's a refresher course right yeah so um you know and then we come to our parent we love our parents and we want them to be safe and so when there's certain signs you know we want to recognize them and so the parents you know sometimes they'll even defend their case for you know to not drive anymore or to continue driving um they'll say that oh i've never been in any you know crashes i have a really great record and so it is a it's a it's an ongoing conversation and um yeah so it's it's not easy but we're here to help yeah i love though the idea where you said you could bring up something specific like hey mom i i noticed you said you're not comfortable driving on the freeway anymore um you know there's this great place where they can work with you on that do you want to be able to drive on the freeway or do you want to make sure you're safe on the small roads um is that those are some of the things you work through oh absolutely yeah and so when you're having that conversation i love that that you mentioned bring up something specific you know dad when i was following you following you on highway one i noticed you were having difficulty staying in your lane you know hitting the bumps going back and forth so there are signs and we bring it up this conversation because we care um but the The assessments are great as long as, you know, it's with the senior evaluator, and we want them to be comfortable. We don't want them to feel, you know, put in a corner or anything like that. We just want to help them and make sure they're safe. Yeah. I mean, it always kind of surprises me that when you're, you know, most of us haven't taken the driving test or the written test since we were 16, and they don't have regular assessments throughout the years. I mean, we all, our reaction times change, our eyesight changes. It seems like this would be something for everybody. Just do us a check-in. What kind of driver are you? Right, yeah. With the driver's license, there really isn't much that you have to do to upkeep it. You know, if you have a realtor's license or, you know, doctors, you know, things like that, there's continual, you know, training and, you know, maybe taking, you know, tests again like that. With the driver's license, there really isn't much. I mean, there's traffic school, but that's for people who actually get a ticket, and then it's not even something that's required. It's optional. Right. you go online you take a new photo you get a new license, right? some other advice before we let you go, just um maybe um how you would get somebody to um realize that this is something that's helpful and how you get this conversation started right yeah absolutely yeah and so we want to keep our parents safe we want them to be on the road as long as they can um as long as they're doing it safely. And I think it's kind of our responsibility as adult children to just kind of keep an eye and just let them know that, you know, we're doing this, Mom, because we care about you. And Dad, you know, we don't want anything to happen to you. So just being honest and straightforward and showing your concern. That's a really good point because we do that with our children, right? Hey, we're doing this because we want you to be safe. We're doing this because we love you. We want you to be safe. Great. Thank you so much, everybody at the Bay Area Driving school. We don't think about driving school when we get older or when our parents get older, but just a nice check-in to keep everybody safe. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.