elderly person

“Hannah is a 30-year-old and woman, and unfortunately if you’re not disabled, a minor, or an elderly person with dementia, they don’t take your case seriously because they think you voluntarily go off on your own,” Pidgeon said.

But, warning of social isolation if new rules deter older people from driving, he adds: "The car is often a lifeline for an elderly person and they try and mitigate their fragility - they don't drive at night, they only drive short distances, et cetera."

Williams’ research suggests the death of a child, a child’s loss of their parents, or an elderly person’s loss of caregivers can all profoundly alter survivors’ physical and mental health, as well as their socioeconomic status.

These deaths can affect everything from an elderly person’s ability to go to the doctor to a child’s access to education or a single parent’s ability to support their family, Williams explained.

Until now, assistive dressing robots, designed to help an elderly person or a person with a disability get dressed, have been created in the laboratory as a one-armed machine, but research has shown that this can be uncomfortable for the person in care or impractical.