CHICAGO, July 30 (Reuters) - The nation's largest physicians' group said on Wednesday doctors should help decide when their patients are too old to drive.
The American Medical Association offered a 226-page guide, to be available on the group's Web site (http://www.ama-assn.org), with a checklist for doctors to test patients' vision and motor skills -- and counsels them about how best to persuade impaired older drivers to give up their car keys and retire from the road.
The guide was in the works before an octogenarian driver plowed through a California farmer's market earlier this month, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others.
The roughly 19 million U.S. drivers aged 70 or older make up 10 percent of the licensed population, but they were involved in 13 percent of fatal accidents in 2001, government statistics show. Part of the higher fatality rate is due to the fragility of the elderly, however.
The guide offers alternatives that could help older drivers' navigate, such as equipping vehicles with larger mirrors, hand gears and a knob on the steering wheel as an aid for those with arthritis. It also suggests stretching exercises to help drivers who have trouble glancing over their shoulders.
Among the questions doctors and family members should get answers to is whether an older driver gets honked frequently and whether they are being passed by the other vehicles on the road.