Transport chronicle
Road safety and health: prohibited diseases
Audio 02:30
In France, medical progress and new automotive technologies will allow some disabled people to be able to drive a vehicle.
© Getty Images/xijian
By: Marina Mielczarek
3 mins
My child is epileptic.
My cousin is autistic.
My mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease... So can they drive a car or pass the licence?
In France, the law has just changed.
Medical progress and new automotive technologies will allow some disabled people to be able to drive a vehicle.
Changes very appreciated except by certain associations of Alzheimer's disease.
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It is called the strategy of the radar: to pass his father, his mother several times in front of a radar while exceeding the authorized speed.
So minutes.
So license withdrawal!
From the experience of families of loved ones with Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease, angry doctors and associations
French justice has seen fit to impose a medical visit by setting a scale of symptoms and degree of severity of the disease.
“
It is never with a happy heart that a relative goes to the prefecture to withdraw the driver's license from his parents,
explains Guy Le Rochais, vice-president of the France Alzheimer association.
.
Never again does he manage to hide the keys or ask the mechanic to say that the car has broken down.
Cases of last resort, but when this new law requires medical visits to judge the stages of the disease, it is outside of reality!
This kind of medical check takes months to complete.
Moreover, in consultation, inside the four walls of an office, it is extremely difficult to judge behavior behind the wheel.
Until there are regular examinations, including prevention, and real driving situations, families will continue to use the D system.
”
Within a group of disease experts, the France Alzheimer Association has just seized the Defender of Rights.
A suspension of the decree is requested in order to be able to start a consultation with road safety doctors, road prevention, with the government to write a new text.
New drugs, new prostheses and new cars
Medical progress has pushed the legislator to change the law.
Prostheses, new drugs.
From now on, people with diabetes without risk of hypoglycemia and certain hearing impaired people will be able to pass the heavy goods vehicle license.
In January 2022, in Philadelphia, researcher Michelle Dawson demonstrated that young autistic car drivers do not have more accidents than other Americans of the same age.
But the majority of the bans remain.
Such as pathological drowsiness, severe diabetes, visual impairment, declared epilepsy, amputation, schizophrenia.
A good assessment of the limits
In France, it seems that the families of people with disabilities assess the limits for driving and obtaining a driving license rather well.
For this, they benefit from the support of general practitioners and doctors approved by Road Safety.
The list of approved medical experts is on
the Permicomed
website, a website that brings together doctors and road professionals.
As Permicomed doctor Philippe Lauwick, one of the greatest European specialists in road health and prevention, explains, medical progress rhymes with progress in cars: "
Today
,
from GPS to automatic boxes, driving assistance, cars, as well as autonomous buses or taxis will make the roads safer.
In autistic people, as well as in the elderly, accidentality is not as important as some claim or would like to believe.
A total ban would be a mistake.
Admittedly, for all disabilities there are risks concerning reflexes, the perception of space, but this can be assessed and we can adapt the vehicles (cars equipped for handicaps) as well as the timetables (daytime driving , limited space…)
”
France, a European exception
In Europe, France is an exception.
While the majority of its neighbors have made it compulsory, the medical examination for obtaining permit B (the standard permit) is not required.
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Health and medicine
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