When it came time for my feisty 93-year-old grandmother Meemaw to hang up her car keys for good and stop driving, the conversation didn’t go well. In fact, it went so poorly that when my father remembers it these several years later, he lets out a self-conscious laugh. “Oh no, that did not go well. It did not go well at all,” he says. It’s a difficult conversation many families today face. The number of Americans age from 35 million in 2000 to 49.2 million in 2016, according to the United States Census Bureau. These seniors are living longer than generations before and this means more older drivers on the road — many of whom will need to stop driving at some point.

How to Take Away the Car Keys There’s no reason your own conversation with a senior loved one should go as poorly as ours did. Here are five steps you can take to make the conversation a bit easier: Step 1: Have a Plan in Place Before you sit down to talk about how to take away the car keys, it’s a good idea to have a plan in place for transportation. “If you are going to create a void, you have some responsibility to fill it,” says, director of Montefiore Medical Center’s Division of Geriatric Psychiatry in. For older adults living in cities, the options can be plenty. There’s public transportation, taxis and a host of ride-sharing apps including. But for older adults who live miles from doctor offices and grocery stores, taking away the car keys often means giving up their independence and depending on others for rides. Worst case scenario it can mean having to move into an assisted living facility.

“In rural areas, if you don’t drive, you don’t exist. You are going to be socially obsolete,” says Kennedy, who has also lived in. Step 2: Start a Conversation The key to a conversation about stopping driving is that it not be an intervention with the end goal of giving up the keys. It should be a discussion.

Elizabeth Dugan, author of the excellent book, “,” suggests in her book that you start the conversation as early as possible before it gets to the point where keys must be given up. Even if it’s beyond that point, you want the decision you make as a family to be a shared decision, not a demand from you to them. Some tips for the conversation from Dugan and others:. Ask, “what do you think we should do?” instead of saying, “we think you should stop driving.”.

Be empathetic. Share that you want them to be active and have as full a life as possible.

Dugan suggests you share your fears, such as, “I don’t want the last chapter of your life to be marred by an accident that kills someone.”. Try open-ended questions such as “at what point will you know you’re no longer safe to drive?”. Use the word “I” and “we,” not “you.” For example, “I’m concerned about the minor accidents you’ve had recently.” If you’re lucky, the driver will come to a decision on their own that it is time or soon will be time to stop driving. If the first meeting doesn’t go well, you have options. You can table the discussion with idea that you’ll meet again. This gives the driver time to reflect on your concerns.

You can also suggest involving a third party to assess them and see if their problems are fixable. Step 3: Involve a Third Party Many families turn to a to evaluate a senior driver and help break the news to them that they should consider quitting driving.

This can be a family doctor, an occupational specialist or a therapist who specializes in aging issues. Perhaps the best idea I’ve researched is a national program called “” that certifies professionals to evaluate senior drivers and give them recommendations.

Sue Teague is a senior care consultant based in, who is part of the program. In fact, she helped the father of a friend of mine with his driving issues.

The best thing about the program, in my opinion, is that it takes the pressure off families. In fact, the idea is to have the senior driver come to their own decision, which can be empowering. Step 4: Get Creative Especially in cases where a driver has dementia and should not be driving,.

Some methods that experts condone include:. Disable the vehicle. Hide the car keys. Keep the car elsewhere. Sell the car “These kinds of manipulation and deception are justified if it’s going to save people’s lives,” says Kennedy. Step 5: Get the Law Involved If steps 1-4 don’t work, you can check your state’s laws and find out how you can have their driver’s license revoked.

It may take a letter from a doctor and it may involve. We were on the verge of doing this when Meemaw fell and broke her hip.

That marked the end of her driving. We all breathed a sigh of relief when it happened, which isn’t the reaction anyone wants to have when their loved one has a serious injury. Plan Before You Have to Sit Down to Talk If I knew then what I know now, I would have sat down with Meemaw and discussed her plans for her driving long before we were forced to. Just as you plan for long-term care costs and your retirement, experts advise you should also plan for the time when you’ll have to stop driving. You can even draw up an agreement for family members to sign that you can bring out when the time comes.

Creating a plan before it’s needed puts the decision-making power into the hands of the driver, instead of putting all the pressure on the driver’s family. “Wouldn’t you feel better if you could say, ‘I decided to give up my license because I know that I have lost some of my ability, and I don’t ever want to be in an accident and feel like I was the cause of it?' ” asks Teague. Have you been in this situation with your parents or senior loved ones before? What way was the right way to take away the car keys in your family?

We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below. Related Articles:.

The Right Way to Take Away the Car Keys posted by Julyne Derrick. About the AuthorJulyne Derrick is a writer and editor who lives between Brooklyn, NY and upstate NY. She has more than 20 years experience writing and editing for online Websites including MSN.com and About.com and spent her first working years as a health reporter at various New Mexico newspapers. A native small town Texan, she enjoys visiting friends and family in Texas and when she’s not traveling home, she spends time with her husband and toddler son skiing in winter and sailing and hiking in the summer. She has a keen interest in aging issues and seniors because her father has had to adapt to becoming blind at 65 (he handles his situation with large doses of humor) and her feisty grandmother, “Meemaw,” lived to 96. She particularly enjoys finding solutions for the everyday issues people face as they and their loved ones age. My mother gave up her car of her own accord.

She was out shopping one day and a pedestrian walked behind her car as she was backing out. That scared her. Then a care ran a stop sign on the way home and she almost had an accident.

She was not responsible for either event, but knew she would be devastated if anything happened because of her. She got home, called my sister and said, “Sell my car.” It was gone the next day and she never looked back! We were all grateful that she remained safe and did not jeopardize anyone else’s life.

He’s the elderly, extremely nearsighted cartoon character who ends up in a heap of trouble every time he drives his car. I’m pretty sure his sister lives in my neighborhood.

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More than once, this elderly woman has driven her vintage Skylark straight into and over the traffic circle on my street. Each time, she’s emerged from her bunged-up car cursing about how “that darn thing ran in front of the car — again!” The first time she did that, I laughed. Then I took a look at the statistics for older drivers and talked with some experts in the field. Now I’m alarmed. Not just about Ms. Magoo, but about the growing number of elderly drivers on the road and the millions of older snowbirds from up north loading up their cars and RVs right about now and starting their annual migration south. It’s not just the Magoos As far as I know, neither my neighborhood Magoo nor the one from cartoon-land has hurt anyone with their car.

That wasn’t the case back in 2003 when an 86 year-old man confused the gas pedal for the brake and drove his Buick into a crowded farmers’ market in Santa Monica, Calif. That day, George Russell Weller killed 10 people and injured about 70 more. He also brought national attention to a growing problem that even the most well-mannered travelers have trouble confronting. What’s the problem? According to the Federal Highway Administration, mile for mile, the elderly have higher crash rates than any other driving group except teenagers. It’s a statistic that will only get worse as baby boomers age: in 2006, 15 percent of all licensed drivers were 65 and older.

By the time 2030 rolls around, older drivers will make up 25 percent of all motorists. Additionally, folks are living — and keeping their driving licenses — longer than ever before. And because boomers are known for being stubborn, getting older drivers to pull off the road will surely become more of a challenge. While age alone doesn't automatically make a bad driver, we know our cognitive functions, vision, hearing and other physical abilities decline with age. It stands to reason that driving skills will decline, too. Yet, giving up a car and the independence that comes along with it is a top concern among most senior citizens.

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What can you do? Have you tried convincing an aging parent, relative or friend to stop driving? It’s never easy. Some people try reasoning.

Others try joking. But when these approaches don’t work, many people resort to alternative strategies. Casey Quinlan found that “getting my Parkinson’s-afflicted father to surrender his car keys was a two-year battle that was only won after we literally took the keys and sold the car. It’s something of a miracle that he didn’t have an injury-causing accident in that time.” Others seek assistance from doctors and other authorities. “When I worked with a police department we had frantic family members come in to request an officer come out and take the keys,” Bonnie Russell says.

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“At that point you contact DMV Department of Motor Vehicles, which can ask the person to come in for a test because a ‘motorist’ took down their license number and reported them.” After Jodi R.R. Smith’s grandmother had three car accidents, family members “borrowed” the car while theirs was in the shop. “They took her car and basically never gave it back,” says Smith. “Instead my dad drives her anywhere she wants to go.”. With teams using more than 100 unique apparatuses to launch globular projectiles a half-mile or more, the 27th annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin event is our pick as November’s Weird Festival of the Month.

Smith, the author of the etiquette book “From Clueless to Class Act,” also offers these suggestions for dealing with an older driver whose safe driving days are numbered: Strategize: Think about what the car represents to them. Is this their freedom, their youth, their independence, their status? Anticipate reactions and objections: Have answers ready.

If they say “How will I get my groceries?,” you might say, “I’ll take you shopping every week. It will be fun. We’ll have lunch together first and then go for groceries.” If they say, “I am not old!,” you can say, “Of course you are not old and you are a great driver. I’m worried about the other drivers. With all the rushing and the road rage, I’m petrified one of those loonies will crash into you!” Campaign: Cut out or print out articles about crashes from the paper; “Did you see this one? I am so glad it wasn’t you!”. Filmmaker David Ackerman made “Taking the Wheel,” a 10-minute film starring John Cleese. The funny, award-winning film not only got Ackerman's grandmother to start talking to him again, it convinced her to stop driving.

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Hollywood to the rescue Unfortunately, no amount of reasoning, pleading, cajoling or straight talk could convince David Ackerman’s grandma to pull over. “She lived in Milwaukee and drove until she was about 92, but she was always a bad driver,” says Ackerman. “Starting around the time grandma was 80 years old, my father in California would get letters from neighbors saying what a menace grandma was on the road. We all tried to get her stop driving and she thought that my dad, her doctor, and the police, were all conspiring against her. But in the nicest way possible.” Finally Ackerman, a psychotherapist and filmmaker, picked up a camera and made a “love letter” to his grandmother.

“I didn’t want her to not be around anymore.” The result is “,” a 10-minute film starring Monty Python-alum John Cleese. Ackerman says the funny, award-winning film not only got his grandmother to start talking to him again, it convinced her to stop driving. “I wish someone else would have made this film or something like it so that I could have shown it to my grandmother when we first had our falling out.” Watch a film, take a test, play a game, obey the law “Giving up the keys to the car is one of the more difficult decisions we will have to face as we watch our parents age and as we age,” says Peter Kissinger of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. He thinks Ackerman’s film can be a great icebreaker on the subject for many families. But Kissinger says asking someone to give up the keys to the car isn’t the only option. There are brochures, videos, online quizzes, screening tests, refresher courses and plenty of other tools offered by the AAA, and many other organizations that can help older drivers evaluate and improve their driving skills. Insurance companies are getting involved as well.

Last week, Allstate to see if certain computer games (“brain fitness software”) can help drivers over 50 reduce their accident rates. If they do, Allstate may offer lower insurance premiums to drivers who use the software. And if all these measures don’t help, there’s always the law.

Licensing procedures vary by state, but many states are tightening up the rules and regulations for older drivers. For example, in May 2007, Texas enacted “Katie’s Law,” named for a young Dallas woman killed when a 90-year old driver ran a red light. Now Texas drivers age 79 and older must renew their license in person and take a vision test, while the license-renewal period for drivers aged 85 and older has been shortened. For the regulations in other states, see this put together by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “In general,” says AAA's Kissinger, “it’s important to make driving retirement part of your overall plans for retirement.” That’s what filmmaker Ackerman, now 40, plans to do.

He says if he starts driving like his grandma he’ll happily give up his license and let someone else drive him around. “Then I can talk on my cell phone, work on my computer and multi-task without having to worry about it.” Sounds like a plan to me. Harriet Baskas writes msnbc.com's popular weekly column, The Well-Mannered Traveler. She is the author of the, a contributor to National Public Radio and a columnist for USATODAY.com. © 2013 msnbc.com.

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