Meine Frau...die selber unverletzt blieb, aber zur Abklärung ins Krankenhaus gefahren werden mußte, da ihre Beine sie nicht mehr tragen wollten.

My question is about what 'fahren' means in this sentence. The situation is that the speaker's wife has nearly been hit by lightning in a park—she was about 40 meters away from her friend who was in fact hit and killed. It doesn't seem likely that anyone would have expected her to walk to the hospital for an evaluation, but in this sentence the fact that she didn't walk there seems to be surprising. Could 'gefahren werden' mean 'taken on a stretcher'?

Maybe it's that I don't understand what 'zur Abklärung' implies. There are three possibilities that I see:
1. As a witness and friend she has to go to the hospital to give some sort of statement.
2. It is normal for a person whose friend suffered a fatal accident in her presence to go to the hospital for an evaluation (of her nerves, etc.), but one would not normally be driven there.
3. She is only brought to the hospital because she can't walk. Otherwise there would have been no Abklärung.

The definite article in 'zur Abklärung' seems to me to imply that the Abklärung was a routine thing, and that the surprising thing about the situation is that the speaker's wife had to be driven there.

Can someone explain? Am I silly to be sensing a contrast between being driven and walking on one's own?