Older Drivers and Medication

August 11, 2009, 3:47 pm
By Tanya Mohn
A new study has found that most older drivers were unaware of the potentially dangerous impact of medications on driving performance.
According to the report, released on Tuesday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a nonprofit research and educational organization, 78 percent of respondents used one or more medications, yet just more than one in four were aware of the possible dangers of driving while on medications.
“That’s really scary,” said Peter Kissinger, president and chief executive of the AAA Foundation. “The risks are real.” Large numbers of older adults are on medication, and many of those medications have potential side effects, yet health care professionals “are not effectively communicating known risks,” he said.
The study, based on interviews with 630 drivers aged 56 to 93, was conducted by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Only 18 percent of those surveyed said they had received warning about potentially driver impairing medications, such as ACE inhibitors, sedatives and beta blockers.
The study also found that as people aged, awareness decreased, despite the fact that the number of prescription medicines increased.
The problem is likely to worsen, Mr. Kissinger said, as the population of aging drivers is growing rapidly and the number of older adults using multiple medications has increased.
Previous research had established the link between the uses of certain classes of medications, alone and in combination, and increased crash risk. But the prevalence of crashes caused by older people taking these medicines — both prescription and over the counter — has not been accurately determined.
“The true incidence of driving under the influence of potentially impairing medications is not known,” said Loren Staplin, the managing partner of TransAnalytics, a consulting firm specializing in transportation safety research and development. “We just don’t have enough data or enough good data.” Part of the reason is that comprehensive testing for drugs in drivers’ systems after a crash is not routinely done, except for cases involving alcohol.
Early next year the AAA Foundation planned to release Roadwise Rx, a free Web-based resource intended to help raise awareness about driving risks related to the use of medications. The program will allow older drivers to enter individual medications or combinations of medications, and through a search function, gain access to information — based on age, gender and weight — from a database.
The goal is to inform older drivers about how medicines interact with food or other medications, as well as to provide warnings, to better understand ”when it may not be appropriate” to drive, said Dr. Staplin, whose company designed Roadwise Rx.
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