“When can I drive?  How can I drive?” – these are questions you may have been asked directly, or perhaps you have been asked to give an opinion on whether your patient or client can drive following illness or disability.  You might have questioned if you are the right person to give this opinion, and you need further information on what is involved.  If you are already carrying out driver assessments you may wish to develop your knowledge and skills further;

or

perhaps your organisation wants to find out more about what is needed to set up a programme that can offer quality practical clinical driver assessments – you are aware it is a complex task and requires appropriate skills, expertise and resources.  PRACDRIVA aims to provide practical guidance on these issues, which have been raised before by many professionals and organisations associated with helping people to drive or return to drive following illness or disability.  

By arriving at our website you have taken the needs of your patients, clients or staff team, seriously.  You recognise the importance of enabling independence for people with a disability or health condition by driving.  However, you are also aware that by enabling this independence it must be balanced with road safety and your country’s Medical Fitness to Drive legal requirements.

The development of a common and accepted model of clinical driver assessment is important because it relates to fairness and equity for the person with a disability or medical condition.  It is a challenging subject when taking into account:   

• the wide range of professionals involved
• their different levels of knowledge, skills and qualifications
• the variety of organisations with different operating frameworks
• the Medical Fitness to Drive legal requirements of individual countries

PRACDRIVA acknowledges this challenge by providing guidance on what the ideal driver assessment should include. 

We hope our website will provide a fresh approach by providing guidelines on what is helpful to include in your practice, or when developing services and protocols. We also focus on information relating to specific medical conditions, their impact on driving, relationship with the guidelines and consequences for road safety.

If you have been practising driver assessment for some time, or about to embark on this, we hope you find PRACDRIVA a useful resource.

The website is currently at Phase I in its development, and more medical conditions will be added during website updates over the coming months.

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