Toronto — The number of elderly drivers in Ontario who can expect to encounter dementia will triple by 2028, warns a new study that has prompted calls from health experts for a standardized test to screen Canada's aging motorists.
Canada's most populous province will be home to nearly 100,000 elderly drivers with dementia by 2028, up from 34,000 in 2000, said the study, published in this month's edition of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
And though the study is confined to Ontario, its troubling findings illustrate a growing problem that every Canadian province will face over the next 25 years, experts warn.
“We know that our demographics are shifting across the entire country so that we have an increasing proportion of folks who are in their senior years from coast-to-coast,” said Dr. Lindy Kilik, a Kingston, Ont., psychologist who co-wrote the study, entitled Dementia in Ontario.
“We need a standardized and straightforward way to screen individuals.”
Standard road tests may not detect dementia because the early signs are so subtle, said Dr. Robert Hopkins, the study's lead author.
With the number of senior Ontario drivers expected to reach more than 2.5 million in 2028, the number of drivers suffering from dementia and other health-related problems is also likely to increase, compromising road safety, Hopkins said.
“There has to be some careful examination of how older people are examined and how the problem has to be dealt with.”
Elderly drivers are often singled out because they tend to develop medical conditions later in life that impair their driving ability, said Dr. Allen Dobbs, a research psychologist based in Edmonton who's considered one of Canada's leading experts on aging and driving.
Dobbs said it's important to first distinguish between drivers who are elderly and those who are suffering from problems like dementia, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, stroke and neurological and psychiatric disorders.
“That's critical because that was the first step in saying here are the symptoms . . .of people who are no longer safe to drive,” said Dobbs, who wants doctors and nurses to be better equipped to screen patients to determine whether they're a road risk.
Deciding a patient is unfit to drive is a “difficult thing for a doctor to do,” said Dr. David Irving, the Canadian Medical Association's resident expert on elderly drivers.
“There are more and more senior drivers driving than there used to be so there are more people to screen,” Irving said. “It's a national concern.”
The number of people aged 65 and over is expected to double to eight million by 2026, from four million in 2000 — 21 per cent of the population, according to Statistics Canada.
In recent years, accidents involving aging drivers have made national and international headlines. An 86-year-old man drove into a farmers' market in Santa Monica, Calif., last year, killing nine people and injuring dozens more.
And in April 2000, Toronto resident Beth Kidnie, a 43-year-old mother of three, was dragged 700 metres to her death beneath the sedan of 84-year-old Pilar Hicks, who was convicted of criminal negligence causing death and given a conditional 15-month jail sentence.
Her driving privileges were also permanently revoked.
People with dementia continue to drive for about four years after the onset of symptoms, and are two to five times more likely to get into a crash, the report found. Dementia, which in its most advanced stages includes Alzheimer's disease, affects memory, concentration, judgment, and eventually motor function.
In Ontario, doctors are required by law to report cases in which patients are not healthy enough to drive, said a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Motorists aged 80 and older who want to drive must also be tested every two years.
CP 1740ES 20-07-04
