Nobody wants to lose their independence, and losing the ability to drive can be one of the most painful adjustments older people are forced to make if the situation isn’t handled sensitively. Michael Gartner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former president of NBC News, wrote a lighthearted essay about the clever way his elderly parents solved that dilemma.
I was surprised to learn that out of the over 220 million licensed drivers in the United States, almost 1 in 5 are over 65 years old. There are far more baby-boom drivers today than teenage ones. While there are over 45 million over-65 drivers, there are fewer than 9 million licensed teenagers behind the wheel. Even more surprising is that there are fewer teenage drivers today than at any point since the government began tracking driver’s license data back in 1963.
