Mild Cognitive Impairment and Everyday Function: An Investigation of Driving Performance

Cognitive Impairment (MCI) involves subtle functional losses that may include decrements in driving skills. We compared 46 participants with MCI to 59 cognitively normal controls on a driving evaluation conducted by a driving rehabilitation specialist who was blinded to participants' MCI classification. Participants with MCI demonstrated significantly lower performance than controls on ratings of global and discrete driving maneuvers, but these differences were not at the level of frank impairments. Rather, performance was simply less than optimal, which to a lesser degree was also characteristic of a subset of the cognitively normal control group. The finding of significantly lower global driving ratings, coupled with the increased incidence of dementia among people with MCI and the known impact of dementia on driving safety, suggests the need for increased vigilance among clinicians, family members, and individuals with MCI for initially benign changes in driving that may become increasingly problematic over time.