Driving and impulsivity

Driving is a highly valued activity key to support daily life in home and community. However, driving is complex and easily disrupted by injury, illness, or age-related changes. Onset of medical conditions such as stroke, brain injury, or dementia are commonly associated with personality traits, such as poor insight, reduced awareness, and impulsivity. On road, these traits are known to contribute to increased driving errors and crash risk. Therefore fitness-to-drive screening is required to ensure drivers with deficits are safe to drive and are provided with the opportunity to participate in remediation programs when beneficial. Practitioners have identified personality traits to have an important impact on fitness-to-drive determinations, particularly when performance is borderline, and where personality traits may assist in distinguishing function between disorders and between individuals with the same disorder. The UPPS-P model has been identified as a promising framework that provides this level of discrimination for the trait of impulsivity and therefore may support fitness-to-drive determinations in this critical area and may guide interventions designed to ameliorate impulsivity deficits.