Well,OP, can’t you disable the car while he isn’t looking?? Only 2 idiots would allow this car on the street!!
In a worst case situation and if the leak is on a straight section of metal line you could always cut the line at the leak and put in a compression fitting splice. These can be gotten at some hardware stores, heating and air conditioning supply houses, etc.
It’s not perfect but it’s steel and is prefereable to the existing problem.
At some point I think elderly people (allegedly I’m getting to be one according to my better half) should be retested every 5 years on their driving and I certainly would have no problem with it.
What grates on me is not your father’s age so much as the attitude behind this problem. The attitude alone is grounds for pulling his license forever.
I can see it now. He will plow into another vehicle, run through a standing crowd or schoolyard, and then tell the cops “the brakes failed. I don’t know why but it ain’t my fault”.
Given his age does anyone think a DA is going to prosecute this guy for manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc? Not for one second.
To the OP:
If my wife gets killed by a 93 year old driving a '97 Dodge Neon because she gets T-boned in the driver door due to the Neon sailing through an intersection with no brakes, I will hunt you with every fiber of my being.
Don’t be a dumbass. Fix the brakes.
[edit] Second thought… I’ll hunt you after I hunt him should he survive the collision. He’s already proven with his technical prowess that his mental capacities are less than ideal. He’s 93. Time to take the keys. A 20-year-old college kid with a BAC of .18 would have swifter reaction times than he does. From a jurisprudence perspective, all Drinking and Driving laws should be abolished so long as semi-regular physicals and reaction tests aren’t required for a driving license.[/edit]
The age thing is a big issue with me because of a preponderance of elderly in my area.
While teenagers often get bashed as being unsafe drivers I can honestly say that I seldom ever have near incidents involving a 17 year old but have repeatedly gone through them with the elderly.
Just a few months back while sitting at a light in my Lincoln I look in the rear view and see an elderly couple in a Lincoln Town Car coming up behind me, One of my sons was with me and I told him to hang on because I thought we were going to get hit.
Sure enough, I watched the guy’s eyes and he just drove right into me while looking straight ahead. It did not hurt my car (has a Draw-Tite hitch on it and I just happend to have the drawbar in place) but it busted up his front fascia and license plate pretty good.
Not too long ago an elderly woman just drove right across the oncoming lane of traffic, went down an embankment, and plowed her almost new Corolla into a tree line on someone’s driveway. This was about 3 blocks from a school that was about to let out.
At one minor accident, I noted that the old man who had dinged up his Cadillac was standing beside the car with the cops present. He appeared to be in his 90s and could barely stand up even with his walker. One of the cops was even steadying the guy to keep him from falling over and from what I saw the guy was having a near impossible time reading the accident report form which required a signature.
And this guy is piloting 2 tons of Cadillac around… 
You need to take the keys. We went through a similar situation with my grandmother. After my grandfather passed away, she had to drive herself to the store and around town. This was something of an issue because grandma was never that great a driver and usually let grandpa drive whenever they needed to go somewhere. But we decided to see how she did. She did okay for a few months, but then she somehow was able to reverse into parked dump truck, that was parked in her condo’s parking lot. Keep in mind this dump truck was parked a good 100 yards away with no other vehicles near it, yet grandma somehow was able to back right into it. The dump truck suffered no real damage, but grandma’s Grand Marquis required a trip to the body shop. It was at that point we basically to her that her driving days were over. Naturally she protested, but it wasn’t negotiable. It was in everyone’s best interest that she be kept off the road.
If, indeed, your father has no insurance, report it to the police. They should show up at his house, remove the license plates, and drive away. This is the LEAST you can do.
Sounds to me like this is a good choice for the Darwinian award.My father-in-law had a like problem. He was bad enough off that all I had to do was to disconnect the battery cable and tell the local care dealer to not repair it. It worked.
A) Dad has insurance, just the basic allowed in Indiana, covers the other car not his
B) Dad won’t give up the keys, he has a number of copies hidden in the house
C) Drove all over town yesterday and just kept filling up master cylinder at every stop
D) Not sure where the leak is, but can see lines on the ground in front of the driveway when he braked to enter the drive way.
E) The state says he is able to drive.
F) I have washed my hands of it, sis has washed her hands
Remember what happened when Lady Macbeth tried to wash the blood off her hands?
Can you print this thread and get dad to read it?
Something needs to be done here. This WILL result in an accident and maybe a death. It may not be your dad’s, it may be someone totally innocent.
Just let it go, guys. brm is unwilling to deal with the problem. We’re not going to convince him to deal with the problem by sitting at our keyboards and typing angry posts on the internet. His dad is going to wreck the car. We’ll have to hope he doesn’t kill anyone when he does it, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
Frankly I suspect others in this thread are correct and that brm is a troll. He’s gotten his answer about 700 times, and yet he keeps coming back to stir up the flames. But whether he’s a troll or not, responding further to this thread at this point will have no positive impact whatsoever, and so what’s the point?
Not a troll at all. My dad is stuborn and arguing with him won’t work. I really hope he doesn’t hurt anyone else, but he is an adult, in his right mind. I have spoken with a local police officer and he basically said that they can’t prevent him from driving, only deal with the issue once a wreck happens. I have no access to the car and even if I did woulnd’t have a clue how to stop it from running outside of removing the battery, which my dad would see me doing. It’s sad when stuborn people refuse to listen, but that is the position I am in, again sometimes we can only do so much.
I know you’re right, shadowfax. I was just indulging myself, but you’re right.
I’m just going to respond to the idea that dad is still in his right mind. He’s not. He want to keep driving an obviously unsafe car. He is a danger to others. That’s not just stubbornness. If it were odd political beliefs or the like, then it’s mostly harmless. But you cannot say that dad is both of sound mind and willing to drive this car around. The later is an absolute disavowal of the former.
If he is driving an unsafe car then he is guilty of reckless driving and should be arrested.
I found this definition of reckless driving and it will vary some from state to state.
“Any person who drives any vehicle upon a highway in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is guilty of reckless driving”
I don’t believe for 1 second that you talked to a police officer about this.
BRM… you are either a troll or a complete moron.
The words TAPE and BRAKE LINE should never EVER be used in the same sentence. Enough said?
Those of us who’ve had to deal with elderly parents will recognize this scenerio. It is very common, even though the details may vary. I personally see no reason to suspect a troll. What I read into this is someone desperately looking for a way to help a very stubborn elderly parent from doing something dangerous.
It’s unfortunate that in this case there may not be a way. But we do care and we tried our best. We can’t solve everything.
The officer said that since the state no longer requires inspections, that they have no basis to determine what is or isn’t an unsafe car. He asked me if the car stops when the brakes are used and I said they do right now. He said all they would ask him to do is show them that it can stop, if it did they would have to let him go. They would advise him to get the issue looked at but under the law they can not stop him from driving.
My dad contends that the car is safe to drive and believes as long as he keeps the master cylinder full there is no issue.
As for unsafe cars, since the state has determined to no longer inspect cars, how do we know how many unsafe cars are on the road? Isn’t it then the states fault for allowing potential unsafe cars on the road?
Nope. It is the responsibility of the registered owner to maintain a safe vehicle, and of the driver to drive only safe vehicles. The state has no liability in this.
As to the question of “how do we know”, you don’t. Even in states that require state inspections nobody knows. Statistics have shown no difference in accidents in states with and without inspections. My state has inspections and some things that I’ve seen going down the road are downright spooky. There are plenty of clearly unsafe vehicles wven with annual inspections.