Dad still drives after his dementia diagnosis and nobody else will raise it. Do I have to be the one to tell the DVLA?

#1gwyn_r(Joined Oct 2026 · 4 posts)October 16, 2026, 9:37 pm

First post. Dad got his diagnosis in August, early stage the consultant said, and he still drives. Not far. Shops, his allotment, my sister's on a Sunday. He seems fine most of the time and I genuinely do not know whether I am overreacting.

But there is a new scrape along the passenger side of his car that he cannot account for, and last week he rang me from a petrol station he has used for thirty years because he could not remember which way was home. He laughed it off. I did not sleep.

My sister says leave it, it would break him. Nobody at the memory clinic said anything about driving that I heard, though I was not in the whole appointment. Does he have to tell someone? Do I? I feel like the only person in the family who can see this, and also like a traitor for typing it.

#2dee1972(Joined Apr 2025 · 24 posts)October 17, 2026, 7:30 am

Not a traitor. The petrol station is the bit that would have got me too. Same with my mother's last year, it was a car park she had used for years.

#3ron-at-home(Joined Aug 2025 · 17 posts)October 17, 2026, 10:15 am

Different country here, so I will not pretend to know your rules, but one thing that worked for us. I did not tell my father he had to stop. I asked his GP to raise it at his next appointment and I went with him. Coming from the doctor, he grumbled and accepted it. Coming from me, I think it would have been a year of not speaking.

#4gwyn_r(Joined Oct 2026 · 4 posts)October 18, 2026, 8:51 pm

That is a good thought, Ron. I have rung the surgery and asked for his GP to call me back. Was told they cannot discuss him with me but they can listen, which I suppose is the point.

#5Maura KinsellaAdmin(Joined Sep 2024 · 168 posts)October 20, 2026, 7:44 pm

Gwyn, welcome, and you are not overreacting. A scrape nobody can explain and getting lost on a route he has driven for thirty years are two of the signs road safety guidance lists for exactly this, and you have noticed both.

On your direct question. In Great Britain the duty sits with him, not you. GOV.UK says plainly that a person must tell the DVLA if they have dementia, and that someone can be fined up to £1,000 for not telling it about a medical condition that affects their driving. A diagnosis is not automatically the end of driving. The DVLA decides, often after asking his doctor, and it can be a shorter licence with reviews rather than an immediate stop. But the telling has to happen, and his insurer needs to know too, because cover can fail if a condition was not declared.

Ron's route is the one I would start with. The surgery cannot share his notes with you, but they can take information from you, so write down the scrape and the petrol station with dates and send it in, rather than just saying it on the phone. A formal driving assessment is another route that takes the judgement out of the family, which matters when one sibling sees it and one does not. If he will not act and you believe he is a danger, the DVLA will take information from family members too, though I would treat that as a last step, not a first one.

I have put the signs, the rules in three countries and the conversation itself into when a parent should stop driving. And plan for the allotment and your sister's on Sunday before the keys come up, because those trips are what he is really afraid of losing. One thing I would not wait on: if his driving or his memory gets suddenly worse over days rather than months, that is a same day call to his GP, or NHS 111 out of hours.

#6gwyn_r(Joined Oct 2026 · 4 posts)October 21, 2026, 8:12 am

Maura Kinsella said:

plan for the allotment and your sister's on Sunday before the keys come up

This is the bit I had not thought about at all. I have been rehearsing the argument and not the answer to "so how do I get anywhere". Writing his week down tonight.

#7gwyn_r(Joined Oct 2026 · 4 posts)October 29, 2026, 9:05 pm

Update. GP saw him on Monday, I went in with him, and she asked him straight out whether he had told the DVLA. He had not known he had to. He has filled the form in, with some help, and agreed to stop until they reply. My sister is now doing Sundays by car. He is furious in a quiet sort of way, but he has not driven since. That is more than I expected a fortnight ago.