Road safety has always been a major issue to be encouraged and protected for private and professional vehicles. Although there are many aspects of human performance that are related to driving ability, vision is the primary perceptual channel on which the driver depends. A decrease in visual abilities could be an important contributing factor in the driving difficulties experienced by visually impaired drivers. The elderly people, presenting heterogeneous functional abilities, might also be concerned by this issue. Nevertheless, no irrefutable visual tests, clearly correlated with accident rate, is available for the moment. A comparison of the various legal procedures used in some countries for driving licence examination and renewal is discussed in the paper. Thus, the debate is about the relevance of using, for license passing, some visual tests showing no direct consequences for road safety. The poor correlation of this kind of tests with accident rate is discussed, raising the question of what tests, if they exist, would be the more relevant in order to evaluate drivers' performance. The approach is to study cases of patients suffering some sudden loss of their abilities, to identify the consequences for the driving performance and the modalities of recovering, with the ultimate goal to set up relevant training procedures. For the covering abstract see IRRD 898348.
Samenvatting