Assessing medically impaired older drivers in a licensing agency setting.

An exploratory study is being conducted jointly by the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop a licensing agency assessment battery for elderly drivers with dementia or other aging-related medical conditions. A preliminary battery of nondriving tests and road tests is described; test results for a small pilot sample are presented, and the tests are evaluated in terms of their utility for detecting functional impairment and predicting driving performance. Some considerations that shape construction of a test battery for licensing agency use are discussed in relation to these goals and the givens of a driver licensing environment.