Driving While Elderly

Sorry, but it should be the one allowable case for profiling: geezers behind the wheel. I just stepped out on this lovely spring morning, to run a few errands, and as I am crossing (with the flashing pedestrian beeping that it is safe) first, a women in a smallish car makes a left turn, pulling into, not a parking space, but onto the sidewalk in front of me. She is looking over her shoulder at the car close behind her, a blue station wagon, I guess trying to guide it to park as well? Not sure, really, but moments later BANG, this second car succeeds, not in pulling into the parking space, but into the tree beside it. Lady in first car (containing two kids in back seat) goes to see the old man who sits in car. The tree, for some reason, only let loose one branch, and that branch is now swinging overhead, attached by either a wire or some leftover decoration (I have been noticing that the trees seem to have some unnatural sparkle in the sunlight). Willie the parking meter man happens to be across the street, and he calls it in. Moments later, there is a firetruck, an ambulance, and a police car. All because, as a passerby says, "he forget which one was the brake and which was the gas." Seems to be likely: he was confused by unfamiliar surroundings. The woman, who was speaking Spanish, had either a DC or a diplomat license plate. Why do old people insist on driving? My Dad, the other day, referred to the fact that "until recently" he had a car (and thus, had trouble finding his way from the Visitor's parking lot, where I parked to the front door of his residence). It has been at least 3 years since he totalled it and I basically forbade him to get a new one which he (then a mere 84) wanted to do. More on his other sensible choices (like ignoring some evil looking black spots on his skin and not seeing the oncologist whom he was supposed to see for regular check ups until they had been there over three months -- at least if you can believe his sense of time, which how can you? I can't trust my own!) And now the blue station wagon is being carted off by a tow truck. Let us pray the geezer learns that the time is upon him for dispensing with driving.