How Your Driving Is Affected

Regardless of the type of Dementia you have been diagnosed with, it is inevitable that at some point, it will begin to affect your ability to drive. This may not be apparent in the early stages of Dementia, and even as the condition progresses, it is easy to 'shrug off' isolated incidents and put them down to some other cause; 'I'm tired', 'the car is playing up', 'it was their fault not mine', are all common excuses. The truth is that at some point Dementia will affect your driving, but the difficulty lies in identifying how and when.

A change in your driving is more easily spotted by someone who is close to you and knows your personality and ability. This is not however very practical, as many of you will travel alone when driving a car. If you are unusually missing 'turn-offs', getting lost (especially in areas you are usually familiar with), forgetting to turn on your headlights at night, forgetting to indicate, and forgetting to put fuel in the car, it could be an early indication of your driving being affected. In addition to this, you may also find frequent bumps and scrapes on the car's paintwork, under inflated or near flat tyres, and generally bad maintenance of the vehicle. These could all be signs that your driving is being affected by Dementia.

Lastly, it is thought that driving at night, driving in heavy traffic, or driving through areas affected by roadworks and detours are all circumstances that may highlight any effects Dementia may be having on a person's driving abilities. The key factor is to decide whether any of these circumstances are a direct result of a deterioration in your driving ability, or whether you have always been a 'problematic' driver.