Baseline Research Program: Prescription Medicines and Road Safety (MUARC Report 380)
Driving is a complex behaviour, requiring the coordination of sensory perception, sensory processing, memory, cognition, executive functioning and neuromuscular response to maintain vehicle control. Drugs acting on the peripheral and central nervous systems as a consequence of their desired effect (psychoactive drugs) or as undesired side-effects (e.g. cardiovascular drugs), have the potential to interfere with cognitive and behavioural processes required to drive a vehicle.
The National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020 (Australian Transport Council, 2011) identified that, “there is scope to develop…a national approach to improved management of impaired driving due to medical conditions or use of prescription medication”, with an associated aim of eliminating driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs by 2020. There is, however, no mention of prescription medicines/legal drugs in the consultation draft of the new National Road Safety Strategy, 2021-2030 (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, 2021).
There is, however, uncertainty as to the role of prescription medicines in crashes and the size of the problem in Victoria, and Australia, is not well understood.
Understanding the impact of prescription medicines and, in particular, which medicines may influence road safety requires information regarding several important aspects:
- How many road users in the population take these medicines? (prevalence),
- What is the association between prescription medicine use and crash risk? (Epidemiological evidence), and
- What is the effect of prescription medicines on driver performance and behaviour? (Behavioural evidence)
It is important to understand both prevalence and risk because a medicine may have a small impact on driving performance and crash risk, however, if a large number of drivers take that medicine, then the influence on road safety at the population-level could be substantial.
The current research project has two phases:
- Investigation of the prevalence of prescription medicine use amongst Victorian drivers
a. the prevalence of medicine use amongst Victorians of legal driving age (18+)
b. the prevalence of medicines detected in Victorian drivers injured in road crashes - A literature review to investigate the influence of prescription medicine use on road safety, in terms of
a. driving performance, and
b. crash risk
