Doctors’ Advice May Stop Impaired Drivers

Doctors who urge some elderly patients to stop driving may help to keep them safer, a new study suggests. The study was done in Canada. Doctors there must report to licensing officials if a patient has a condition that might impair driving. These conditions include epilepsy, sleep disorders, alcoholism and dementia. In 2006, Ontario started giving doctors a small fee to encourage reporting. Researchers used the fee structure to track more than 100,000 patients. Most were older than 60. Researchers added up the car crashes for drivers from this group in the year before the warnings began. They included only crashes serious enough for the driver to go to an emergency room. Then they kept track of the group for 3½ years. Crashes per year dropped 45%. The study could not tell if the patients stopped driving or were more careful. There was another result, as well.