AOTA's Older Driver Safety Awareness Week—Tuesday: Screening and Evaluations
By Stephanie Yamkovenko
AOTA’s Older Driver Safety Awareness Week seeks to raise awareness and increase education about the aging driver’s options. Each day of the week, AOTA will spotlight a different aspect of older driver safety.
Following a family conversation, an older driver may decide that it is time to get a check-up for his or her driving fitness. Checking up one’s driving fitness is important because driving requires complex physical, visual, and cognitive abilities. These abilities can change in subtle ways, such as difficulties driving at night but having no problems driving in the daylight.
Driving fitness evaluations range from self-assessments, which can be useful educational tools to help identify potential challenges, to a comprehensive driving evaluation from an occupational therapy driving rehabilitation specialist.
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AOTA’s Older Driver Safety Awareness Week runs from December 5 to 9.
- Find articles on each day’s topic—Monday: Family Conversations; Tuesday: Screening and Evaluation; Wednesday: Driving Equipment and Adaptations; Thursday: Taking Changes in Stride; Friday: Life After Driving
- Click here for all AOTA Resources on Older Driver Safety Awareness Week.
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“Driving evaluations by occupational therapists are necessary for individuals with medical conditions,” says Anne Dickerson, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA. “Driving school instructors may know the road content, but not the medical conditions. Select a professional OT if there is any question of medical risk.”
When preparing for a comprehensive driving evaluation, older adults need to present the truest picture of their current functional level. “I recommend making no changes to the older driver's routine, such as medication schedule, sleep pattern, meal intake, etc. prior to the appointment,” says Meredith Sweeney, OTR/L, CDI, CDRS. “The older driver should be involved in the scheduling process. This allows the older driver to ask specific questions to the occupational therapy driver rehabilitation staff and typically decreases anxiety the client may have.”
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It is also important for older drivers and their family members to know what will happen at the evaluation, and because every facility is different, it is important to ask the facility that question before the evaluation. “Generally, there will be a clinical component that may last from 1 to 3 hours and consists of vision tests, physical abilities, and tests of memory and mental functioning,” says Dickerson. “There is usually a break and then the older driver is asked to drive in the facility’s vehicle for about an hour. It is important that the older driver is prepared to be driving a different vehicle for the driving test.”
Families should plan to have an adult child or another family member attend the evaluation to help with the initial interview that reviews driving history and medical history, to have another set of ears when hearing the results, and to have family or friends prepared to help with planning for driving retirement if that is the recommendation.
“The therapist can assist the family in talking with the older adult if cessation is necessary and just the opposite—the therapist can help the family understand that the older adult can learn to make judgments that are safer or use adaptive equipment that might make it easier to get in and out of the car or improve visibility,” says Dickerson.
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