The DVLA Assessing Fitness to Drive (AFTD) document provides guidance to healthcare professionals. The aim of this study was to explore knowledge regarding AFTD vision guidelines amongst healthcare professionals.

Healthcare professionals who advise drivers with visual impairment were recruited to complete an online survey. The survey included multiple-choice scenarios, asking what advice the participant would provide. Analysis included descriptive statistics for responses, each scenario was also coded as correct/incorrect/unsure, comparisons between groups, calculation of real-world impact and correlations of healthcare professional groups, confidence, experience, conversation frequency, access to AFTD guidelines and total score.

A total of 411 responses were included. Most participants reported having weekly conversations about vision and driving (46.7%), despite this 24.1% reported having never accessed the AFTD guidelines. Across relevant scenarios, 7.5% of drivers were advised to continue driving despite not meeting the required standards, 5.7% of drivers were not told to declare a reportable medical condition, 39.6% of drivers were advised to stop driving when they could potentially have legally continued and 25.9% of drivers were advised to declare a medical conditions unnecessarily.

This study highlights that the knowledge and implementation by healthcare professionals of the AFTD guidelines specific to vision standard is currently insufficient for them to meet their duties to advise drivers on the impact of their medical condition for safe driving. The current vision guidelines for driving will be presented, alongside the study results. An increase in knowledge and awareness among healthcare professionals could potentially increase road safety.

Dr Claire Howard, Chair, DVLA Medical Advisory Panel for Vision Disorders

Dr Claire Howard is an NIHR Advanced Clinical Academic Fellow: a consultant orthoptist in the Manchester Centre for Clinical Neurosciences based at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) and an honorary research fellow at the University of Liverpool and University of Manchester.

She is Chair of the DVLA medical advisory panel for vision disorders.