At age 70, driving at night was no longer in Nina Uzick’s comfort zone. Physically, she still could do it — though headlights were starting to irritate her eyes more — but the choice she made was ultimately about those around her on the road.

“I don’t want to create a hazard for other people,” said Uzick, a Montgomery County resident and AARP Maryland’s driver safety coordinator. “It doesn’t affect my ego because I figure I’m helping keep those around me safer.”

In a country built around car ownership, and in Maryland where 1 in 5 drivers is 65 or older, giving up the keys as an older adult can feel like saying goodbye to activity and independence. Research shows that decision can be linked to depression and an overall decline in quality of life, and is often the source of emotionally charged conversations among families navigating the change.

But it doesn’t have to be any of those things.

“Driver retirement” is a natural life stage, experts say, and is best approached with a community and a plan. Amid the fear of losing something, it also offers the opportunity for a positive lifestyle change, as well as significant cost savings on car payments, repairs and insurance.

It’s an “elephant in the room situation” for many families, Uzick said.

To broach the topic successfully, she suggests avoiding confrontational “you” statements, tailoring conversations to the reasons people drive and coming up with alternative solutions.

“When you shake hands with someone, are you holding their hand, or are they holding yours? We have to look at this cessation of driving as a mutuality,” Uzick said. “Let’s spend time together, let’s go out and have a nice lunch together.”

In a recently published study focused on older drivers, about 81% of regular drivers ages 65 and over reported feeling very confident in their ability to drive safely.

But only 43% expressed the same level of confidence when asked about five years in the future. And a little more than half of all drivers surveyed didn’t have a plan for what to do when they no longer felt safe behind the wheel.

There’s no one, definitive indicator when it’s time to hang up the keys, nor is there any law in Maryland mandating retests for a driver’s license at a certain age.

Perception, cognition and psychomotor functioning (the ability to quickly act on a decision) naturally decline over time, said Renée St. Louis, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute who co-authored the study. But there are 80-year-olds running marathons and 65-year-olds struggling.

Many older adults feel guilty asking family members or close friends for assistance, she said, and fear becoming a burden. For others, there’s shame or a sense of loss in experiencing physical or cognitive decline in a culture that glorifies youth and self-reliance.

“Those are not easy conversations to have. I’ve had them with loved ones,” said Chrissy Nizer, Maryland’s motor vehicle administrator.

It’s a good idea to bring other trusted individuals into the conversation, too, she said, like the family doctor who can consult on the impacts of certain medications.

Giving up driving doesn’t have to be a cold-turkey stop — there are plenty of resources to help older drivers take proactive safety steps while also tempering their driving habits. Older drivers in Maryland “are often some of the safest” because they self-regulate, Nizer said — avoiding taking the car out in bad weather or, like Uzick, choosing not to drive at night.

Nizer and Uzick highlighted the Car Fit program, which offers short, drive-up appointments at senior centers or other community spaces to check tire treads, mirror positioning and seat placement. There’s also My Car Does What? and AARP’s Smart Driver technology course, which can help people get the most out of all the safety features on their vehicles — great for those who are unfamiliar with new technologies.

When it is time to hang up the keys, locality-specific services could help fill in gaps when a family or friend isn’t available to give a ride — programs like Action in Maturity in Baltimore City, CountyRide in Baltimore County and Senior Connection in Montgomery County.

The independence that driving offers is a function of the country’s built environment and design, St. Louis said. Cars mean freedom because sprawl, road design and a lack of pedestrian infrastructure make them necessary to get anywhere safely in much of the country.

Another way to combat isolation is to physically build things closer together. But that raises additional land use, planning, and even cultural questions about how our society is set up.

“Designing for people to continue to access the things that they need and want in a community, regardless of whether they have a vehicle or not, that will help everybody in the long run,” St. Louis said.