The Challenge of Driving With Asperger’s
Over the last two decades, researchers have examined the risks faced by young drivers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and tried to find ways to help them to learn to drive safely, an issue explored in this week’s Science Times. Now those researchers and driving instructors are finding themselves faced with a new challenge: the growing number of teenagers with Asperger syndrome and other forms of autism, conditions defined by deficits in social skills and obsessive interests that can make learning to drive especially difficult.
“Driving is a social act,” says Dr. Jamie Dow, the medical adviser for safety issues for Quebec’s government-run auto insurance and licensing agency. “It involves obeying rules and cooperating with other drivers.”
For young people with Asperger’s, both parts of that equation can pose problems.
Obeying rules is generally a good thing, but can be taken too far if rules are applied inflexibly or without taking into context into account. For example, does a “Stop at White Line” sign mean that the line is where you should stop only if you need to stop - or that you should stop every time you come to it?
And cooperating with other drivers involves perhaps the hardest task for people with Asperger’s: reading nonverbal social cues. On the road, that happens through the “gestures” drivers make through the motion of their cars - by changing lanes boldly or hesitantly, for instance. Those motions amount to signals flashed from driver to driver so routinely that most people are hardly aware of the messages being sent about intention or mood.
“There’s some discussion in the field that driving in traffic is like reading a person’s face,” said Lissa Robins Kapust, of the DriveWise program at Beth Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “The driving scene may be friendly, it may be frenetic, it may be angry.”
ASPERGER’S SYNDROME AND DRIVING
Marc Segar was diagnosed in 1981 with High-functioning Autism at the age of seven. This was later changed to Asperger’s Syndrome in the early 1990’s. Segar wrote two books called “The Battles of the Autistic thinker” and the “Survival Guide for people with Asperger’s Syndrome”. Segar eventually passed his driving test but took his own life in December 1997, at the age of 23.
In the latter publication, Segar said, and I agree with every word, “Driving is quite a bizarre skill to learn”. He was right. For most people with AS, learning to drive a car, and driving itself, can be very difficult. Some with AS may be able to drive. I have two friends with AS I have met through this website who can. One passed her driving test, at the fourth attempt, in February 1996 eight weeks after her 29th birthday. Scandalously, she wasn’t diagnosed until ten-and-a-half years later, five months before her 40th birthday. The other, a close friend from Ohio, USA, passed her test in September 2001, four days after her 20th birthday and eleven months after she was diagnosed. However, there are some with AS who can’t drive. There are some who, frankly, never will be able to.
You may ask why? How can someone who seems to intelligent or smart not master a task which seems so basic? Nothing to do with intelligence. When you have a Asperger’s Syndrome, you have a monotropic information system. Neuro-typicals, have a multi-channel information system. That is the way each are wired. This places those with AS at an immediate disadvantage in a world that is designed for monotropic individuals. It is inevitable. NT’s are in the majority, so their ways of being, and methods are going to predominate in life. If Aspies were in the majority and NT’s in the minority, the Aspie way of being would dominate.
Ms. Kapust’s group has made a video, sponsored by the advocacy group Autism Speaks, that examines the trade-offs between the desire for independence and the safety issues for drivers with Asperger’s.
According to a survey conducted by Cecilia Feeley, a project manager at the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation at Rutgers University, only 24 percent of adults with autism - many of whom described themselves as “higher functioning” - said they were independent drivers, compared with 75 percent of the population as a whole.
But for many people, the surprise is that people with autism are driving at all. “Thirty years ago people didn’t think any kids with autism would be interested in driving, school or the other gender,” said Dr. Gary Gaffney, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. “Now we see they’re interested in all of the above. Now kids with Asperger’s syndrome are driving all the time, and we don’t really know the risks.”
Asperger’s (and other Developmental Disorders) and Driver’s Licenses
All parents have mixed feelings about their teens getting a driver’s license. On the one hand, they welcome the liberation of not having to chauffer them around anymore, and look forward to seeing their “child” transition into early adulthood. On the other hand, the very idea that their teen is solely responsible for all the complex decisions involved in driving is frightening and a bit overwhelming.
We want our children to develop confidence and self sufficiency. We also want to protect them and make sure they are not attempting tasks for which they are not ready.
For parents of teens diagnosed with Asperger’s or other developmental challenges, the ambivalence about driving is understandably even greater.
There are many factors to consider in deciding if it is appropriate for your teenager to attempt to get a driver’s license. You want to think about their overall level of responsibility and maturity. You also want to consider their ability to handle the stress of potential tickets, accidents, and getting lost. Are their cognitive, spatial, and motor skills developed sufficiently to handle the multitasking necessary to drive safely? Are they able to attend to their driving without becoming distracted?
In thinking about their overall level of maturity and responsibility, ask yourself the following questions:
How much does your teen want to drive? What are the reasons they cite? Can they describe to you realistically what driving would mean for them?
Can your teen reliably discern when they need assistance and are they able to effectively find it? Can they consistently initiate help-seeking conversations such as asking for directions if lost?
Do they have sufficient good judgment to know when road conditions would make driving inappropriate, such as blizzards or severe rainstorms?
Does your teen reasonably and consistently adhere to limits and rules? Would they be likely to obey speed limits and traffic rules?
Will your teen think ahead to keep sufficient gas in the car? Are they able to navigate filling stations?