By Carrie Brumfield via The Tennessean
Imagine for a moment that you are now unable to drive after a lifetime of independence. How might you feel if you could no longer go to the places you want or need and see the people you want?
As you may have found in this thought experiment, not being able to drive is not just a logistical problem—it can negatively impact a person’s health and happiness. When combined with the necessity of depending on others, our aging population must endure negative repercussions to their everyday lives and to their psychological health.
Statistics show that seniors who no longer drive make significantly fewer trips to the doctor, visit family and friends less and experience greater rates of food scarcity.
Not surprisingly, studies have shown that twice as many homebound seniors suffer from depression than their driving peers.
In Nashville, we have a pressing need to help our senior population. More than 33,000 Nashvillians are over the age of 75. A 2011 Transportation for America study revealed that the Nashville region is ranked the fourth worst in the country in terms of the percentage of our seniors with poor access to public transportation. In addition, 14 percent of Nashvillians over the age of 65 live in poverty.
With little to no expendable income, many seniors are unable to afford modern transportation services such as Uber and Lyft.
Senior Ride Nashville was created out of the desire to better serve our aging community. In 2015, the Council on Aging of Middle Tennessee convened the Senior Transportation Leadership Coalition, comprised of public, nonprofit and private sector stakeholders from transportation and aging services.
With the goal of helping ease mobility challenges facing Nashville’s non-driving older adults, Senior Ride Nashville was formed in November of 2017 as a new nonprofit call center and volunteer ride program for Davidson County residents aged 60 and older.
Support from the community is essential
In our first 10 months, Senior Ride Nashville has provided nearly 2,000 trips to Nashville seniors. We have recruited, screened and trained 80 volunteer drivers and enrolled 135 senior riders. Nashville’s reception to our services has been overwhelmingly positive.
Since November of 2017, we have expanded from our initial service area of Bellevue to include West Nashville, Madison, Old Hickory, Hermitage and Donelson with the goal to be countywide as quickly as our volunteer capacity allows.
Support from our community is foundational. Without volunteer drivers and community partners, our services would not exist. It is critical that we encourage Nashville’s driving population to fill this urgent need.
Our service is only available if we have dependable and caring volunteer drivers. Our service is designed to fulfill the needs of our riders, but we also work to ensure that our drivers have the flexibility that they desire.
Our drivers choose rides based on their personal availability, the location of the pickup or destination, and/or preference for a rider that they have already enjoyed driving previously. We work to make sure that all of our riders and drivers are as pleased as possible with our services.
After all, if our riders are able to see their physicians regularly, see family and friends, enjoy community events and participate in their houses of faith, they are able to age with dignity and in their homes for a longer period of time.
We provide a needed service to a population who deserves our respect and needs our help. If it were our own family member who needed help, we would be there without question. We should provide that same care and attention to all of Nashville’s seniors. Treating others kindly and with dignity? It’s the Nashville Way.
Our entire community improves when everyone is able to participate in the events that shape our everyday lives and weave the fabric of our community.
If you volunteer with us, you will get to know a remarkable segment of our population and do a good deed at the same time. We are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to serve everyone who needs our help. Please come join us.
Carrie Brumfield is the executive director of Senior Ride Nashville. Learn more at https://www.seniorridenashville.org/ or call 615-610-4040.