Occupational Therapy Driving Assessment

Driver assessment and rehabilitation is recognized as an important practice domain for occupational therapists.

 “Assessing Fitness to Drive” (Austroads & National Transport Commission, 2016) provides physicians in Australia and New Zealand with a decision-making guideline regarding fitness to drive for patients with medical conditions. These guidelines indicate that a practical on-road assessment may be required to determine fitness to drive. On-road assessments, usually conducted by occupational therapists with specialised training, are generally considered optimal for determining fitness to drive because functional driving performance is assessed in real traffic. Therefore, the test has high acceptability.

An Occupational Therapy Driver Assessor is able to:

• Determine a client’s suitability to undergo a driving assessment and inform them of the driving assessment process.

• Work within relevant state and national legislation, license authority guidelines, and third-party funding body guidelines to assist the client to achieve safe and legal driving where possible, and withdraw driving where required.

• Conduct comprehensive off-road driver assessment (including screening of vision, physical, cognition, perception, sensory-motor, hearing and communication capacities, and road law knowledge).

• Conduct safe and legal on-road assessment procedures working in collaboration with the driving instructor.

• Determine the impact of a driver’s medical condition, injury, disability, or age-related changes on driving performance.

• Provide recommendations regarding fitness to drive.

• Prescribe vehicle modifications or assistive technologies.

​

• Determine capacity for rehabilitation and coordinate a driver rehabilitation programme where suitable.

• Document findings, plans, driver rehabilitation interventions, and intervention outcomes.

​

• Determine capacity for rehabilitation and coordinate a driver rehabilitation programme where suitable.

• Document findings, plans, driver rehabilitation interventions, and intervention outcomes.