“It’s sort of the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, but it’s an issue that’s coming for most of us and our family members and so denial isn’t probably the most helpful option,” she says.

“Transportation is a huge issue that we need to address,” says Jayla Sanchez-Warren, director of the Area Agency on Aging for the Denver Regional Council of Governments. For seniors, she says, a lack of transportation also “contributes to so many other things — like poor health care outcomes, isolation and depression.”

A recent report by researchers at Columbia University and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that older adults who give up driving are nearly twice as likely to suffer depression as those who stay behind the wheel.

In my family, we’ve had to have that conversation twice. When my dad talked to my grandmother, she hid another set of keys, and drove secretly until they found out. Then, 30 years later, “hell” and “no” were just two of the choice words that erupted from my dad when his Alzheimer’s diagnosis led us to insist that he stop driving.