Factors influencing driving 10 years after brain injury

Objective: To study long-term consequences of brain injury on health status, driving characteristics and car accidents. To study whether driving 10 years after brain injury was retrospectively related to cognitive functioning and on-road driving performance 10 years before. Research design: A semi-structured telephone interview with 38 patients with sequelae of brain injury and 49 healthy controls was used. Results: Hypertension, heart disease and vascular disorder were the most frequently reported diseases. The patients reported fatigue, irritability, memory and initiative problems. Concentration and vision problems influenced their driving. Patients had more car accidents reported to an insurance company during the observation period than control subjects. Present driving was retrospectively significantly related to neuropsychological test results but not to on-road test outcome 10 years before. Car accidents were not related to neuropsychological test results or to on-road test outcome 10 years back. Half of the dropouts were stroke patients and they performed significantly worse on the neuropsychological tests but not on the on-road test 10 years before. Conclusion: Neuropsychological tests focusing on information processing speed and attention is a useful screening tool for predicting driving competence. Stroke patients are vulnerable if they continue to drive and need to be evaluated for their driving capacity to drive.