Study: Doctors can keep older drivers safe

WASHINGTON -- Families may have to watch for dings in the car and plead with an older driver to give up the keys, but there's new evidence that doctors could have more influence on one of the most wrenching decisions facing a rapidly aging population.

A large study in Canada found that when doctors warn them, and tell driving authorities, about older folks who may be medically unfit to be on the road, there's a drop in serious crash injuries among those drivers.

The study, in today's New England Journal of Medicine, couldn't tell whether the improvement was because patients drove less or more carefully once doctors pointed out the risk.

As the number of older drivers surges, it raises the question of how families and doctors could be working together to determine whether and when age-related health problems, from arthritis to frailty to Alzheimer's disease, are bad enough to impair driving.

Often, families are making that tough choice on their own.

By one U.S. estimate, about 600,000 older drivers a year quit because of health conditions. The problem: There are no clear-cut guidelines to tell who really needs to -- and given the lack of transportation options in much of the country, quitting too soon can be detrimental for someone who might have functioned well for several more years.

Unlike in most of the United States, doctors in much of Canada are supposed to report to licensing authorities any patients with health conditions that may impair driving. In 2006, Ontario began paying doctors a small fee to further encourage that step. Researchers used the payments to track 100,075 patients who received those warnings up to December 2009 (out of the province's 9 million licensed drivers).