I have participated, on behalf of EFA, in a Disabled Driver Assessment Workshop organised by CIECA (The International Commission for driver testing). It was a well organised event held on the outskirts of Amsterdam and hosted by CBR the Netherlands testing authority. Kari Hakuli President of CIECA opened the meeting. Jean-Pierre Fougère, was the Moderator for the day and began by outlining the programme.
Ruud Bredewoud, Chief Medical Officer, CBR, The Netherlands was the first speaker and made one announcement that surprised me. That was about the use of bioptics by a number of drivers in Holland with visual acuity problems. I remember that a few years ago, it was actually September 2008, DVSA put out a circular stating that “Under no circumstances should a candidate be allowed to take the eyesight test or drive vehicles of any category whilst using Bioptics glasses.” You can read the story here.
You can find current DVSA thinking on bioptics here
It seems that in the Netherlands a small group of around 100 people who use bioptics have been awarded driving licences and apparently there have been no problems so far. Of course with freedom of movement laws in the EU these full licence holders can drive anywhere in Europe.
Mark Tant, Head of CARA Department, Belgian Road Safety Institute then surprised me further when he talked about the restricted licences that are issued to some differently abled people in Belgian. These restrictions which are included as local codes on the persons licence might include a familiar roads restriction a person only being allowed to drive within a set number of kilometres from their home. In other cases the restriction might exclude driving at night or the use of major dual carriageways what are termed motorways in the UK. I have heard this idea talked about before but I have always been told the idea would be difficult to enforce, with an increasingly older population across Europe perhaps this is something that will be considered by other European countries.
Jos de Vries, Senior Product Manager, CBR, The Netherlands (on the day if his retirement) gave a presentation of the handbook on disabled driver assessment put together by the PORTARE project you can read details of the book here.
The Chief Executive at Forum of Mobility Centres, UK Ed Passant gave an excellent presentation on the training of driving assessors in the UK and reported that assessments were being carried out in the UK by 16 centres using around 50 venues. He also explained that about half the people assessed by forum members were full licence holders.
Delegates from over a dozen European countries attended the workshop the UK was well represented with two delegates from the DVSA and three from the Forum of Mobility Centres other countries represented included Belgium; Finland; France; Ireland; Kosovo; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Norway; Portugal; Spain; Sweden and The Netherlands.
An interesting and worthwhile event.
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