TY - JOUR PY - 2015// TI - Development of a test for recording both visual and auditory reaction times, potentially useful for future studies in patients on opioids therapy JO - Drug design, development and therapy A1 - Miceli, Luca A1 - Bednarova, Rym A1 - Rizzardo, Alessandro A1 - Samogin, Valentina A1 - Della Rocca, Giorgio SP - 817 EP - 822 VL - 9 IS - N2 - OBJECTIVE: Italian Road Law limits driving while undergoing treatment with certain kinds of medication. Here, we report the results of a test, run as a smartphone application (app), assessing auditory and visual reflexes in a sample of 300 drivers. The scope of the test is to provide both the police force and medication-taking drivers with a tool that can evaluate the individual's capacity to drive safely.

METHODS: The test is run as an app for Apple iOS and Android mobile operating systems and facilitates four different reaction times to be assessed: simple visual and auditory reaction times and complex visual and auditory reaction times. Reference deciles were created for the test results obtained from a sample of 300 Italian subjects.

RESULTS lying within the first three deciles were considered as incompatible with safe driving capabilities.

RESULTS: Performance is both age-related (r>0.5) and sex-related (female reaction times were significantly slower than those recorded for male subjects, P<0.05). Only 21% of the subjects were able to perform all four tests correctly.

CONCLUSION: We developed and fine-tuned a test called Safedrive that measures visual and auditory reaction times through a smartphone mobile device; the scope of the test is two-fold: to provide a clinical tool for the assessment of the driving capacity of individuals taking pain relief medication; to promote the sense of social responsibility in drivers who are on medication and provide these individuals with a means of testing their own capacity to drive safely.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1177-8881 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/DDDT.S77978 ID - ref1 ER -