Fitness to Drive After Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of fitness to drive in patients suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Guidelines for assessment are proposed and three types of studies are reviewed: studies about impairments of attention and information processing, studies of driving competence, and driver selection studies, applying and evaluating the procedures for assessing fitness to drive. From these reviews a relicensing rate emerges of slightly over 50% for very severe TBI patients. Failures in relicensing particularly occur in patients with a very long duration of post-traumatic amnesia (exceeding 1 month), and with severe impairments of perception and judgement. Furthermore, a review of studies describing training of driving competence in traumatically brain-injured patients is presented. It is argued that graded procedures for (re)training should be developed and assessment should extend to training advice and prediction of training success. When expanding assessments according to this suggestion, evaluation procedures should not only focus on operational capacities, but should include measures of executive functions and learning potential as well.