Because epilepsy affects brain function and the medication taken to treat this disorder may affect driving, epileptic drivers as a group offer potential risk for the general driving population.
Reported in this paper are the results of a 1982 pilot study which compared the driving records of epileptics receiving treatment who were known to the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) with epileptics not known to DMV to establish if there are differences in motor vehicle crash rates between the two groups. Prior to this study, it had been hypothesized that persons with seizure-related disorders might have had their condition revealed because of involvement in a crash or moving violation; and, as a result, persons known to DMV were probably poorer drivers than those not known. Thus, a question remains concerning the crash risk of those epileptics who have not come to DMV's attention.
The population studied (N=112) was those persons using any of six of the North Carolina Division of Health Services' clinics for the treatment of epilepsy and who also held a North Carolina driver's license. The findings indicate that only 26 percent of the epileptics treated in the clinics were also known to DMV. Epileptics known to DMV had a crash rate 1.4 times greater than their counterparts in the general driving population while those unknown had rates 1.1 times greater. Results indicate that epileptics with grand mal and temporal or psychomotor seizures accounted for all the recorded crashes. Implications for highway safety administrators and for future research are discussed.