IMMORTAL (Impaired Motorists, Methods of Roadside Testing and Assessment for Licensing) is a special EU research programme dealing with the accident risk associated with different forms of driver impairment. The project aims to investigate the influence of chronic and acute impairment in order to make a more accurate risk assessment, to recommend criteria for high risk categories, and to provide key information to support EU Policy on licensing and roadside testing. The IMMORTAL consortium comprised 10 partners from a range of European institutions with multi-disciplinary expertise. Acute and chronic impairment was investigated by case control and field studies, experiments, interviews, literature analyses and literature reviews. Concerning the prevalence of psychoactive drugs, the IMMORTAL research results indicate that the proportion of drugged drivers has increased and that mixed consumption has become more frequent. By means of case control studies a more accurate risk assessment was made possible. Furthermore, prosecution of DUI is urgently needed in case of alcohol especially for drivers with high BACs, and drivers with combinations of drugs and alcohol and more than one drug. Legal framework for both prosecution and further research is important and still has to be established in some cases. Concerning illness and diseases, it became apparent that the degree of impairment not only differs depending on the medical condition, but may also clearly vary individually. For the assessment, both medical and psychological variables have turned out to be relevant. Regarding the intervention methods, frequent Random Breath Testing and Alcolocks are promising measures. A drug recognition method tested in the context of IMMORTAL still needs further improvement, also the saliva test devices seemed to be still error-prone. Concerning licensing procedures, consistent, reliable, and valid standards are sought after. Here, work can be continued on the basis of the findings of the odds ratios of medical conditions. Concerning criteria for high risk categories, IMMORTAL yielded important starting points: For illegal drugs that are taken alone, and with the exception of heroin, zerotolerance legislation would, however, seem to result in very high costs and hardly any road safety benefits. For most medicinal drugs, like antidepressants, benzodiazepines, codeine, barbiturates and even morphine, therapeutic levels may be adequate as legal limits, at least for the time being. (Author/publisher) For the complete IMMORTAL web site see http://www.immortal.or.at/
Abstract