Driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) is a known phenomenon that has been well explored from clinical, social, and legal viewpoints [ 1 ]. Despite the recognition of this problem, there is no objective impairment evaluation tool available for patients on psychotropic drug therapy, health care professional, or police for psychomotor drugs other than alcohol. Police in many countries sanction drivers for DUID on the basis of subjective suspicion of impairment. In a minority of countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the police use objective standardized psychometric tests to evaluate drivers for impairment (e.g., standardized field sobriety, horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk-and-turn, one-leg-stand test [ 2 ]). Two shortcomings of these testing schemes, however, are that they don’t show a numeric value in relation to a reference population and that they are tests administered after a roadside stop has been performed and thus provide no assistance to drivers when making the initial decision as to whether they are too impaired to drive. Psychomotor testing systems that would correct these flaws (e.g., Vienna System Traffic Test or driving simulators) are not portable and require too much time and expense to be practical under driving conditions. The Italian government (Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department of Drugs Policies) recently gave approximately US$200,000 to the University of Udine (TEDOL project) for the purpose of developing a simple, objective, cheap, and portable (roadside) tool able to reduce car crashes involving drivers under psychotropic drug therapy by evaluating their potential impairment. This tool could provide the police the ability to access the results of testing for legal purposes. To this end we decided to create a software application for mobile devices called Safedrive ...
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1526-2375 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pm/pnv061 ID - ref1 ER -