A doctor’s warning could reduce traffic collisions
Posted Sep 27, 2012 7:58 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Research conducted in Canada finds that people warned by their doctors to avoid driving because of medical conditions appear to have a reduced risk of serious road crashes.
Health conditions such as dementia, strokes, alcoholism, epilepsy, and diabetes can make it risky for a patient to take the drivers seat.
At the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, senior scientist Dr. Donald Redelmeier says his team found that each warning led to a 40 to 50 per cent decrease in the risk of a serious crash for the patient.
Redelmeier says these kinds of diagnoses contribute to about one-third of all traffic crashes.
President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Dr. Louis Francescutti, tells 660News the findings make sense.
“The patients themselves will tell you that they will only drive with their partner because it takes two of them to drive. In other words, one really is the navigator, when one is really just the driver,” Francescutti says.
He says the time has come to look at graduated de-licensing for seniors
The research appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.
