Balancing Safety and Independence: Fitness to Drive in Individuals with Dementia

Access to personal transportation is essential for ensuring equal citizenship, social inclusion, and individual well-being. While the promotion of active and public transport is gaining increased attention, the private car remains a key mode of mobility and independence – particularly for individuals with health conditions and functional impairments. In recent years, a growing body of research and advocacy has emerged to address these challenges and to establish frameworks that support the continued and safe driving of individuals affected by such conditions.

Given that chronological age is a major risk factor for the development of dementia, and considering the ageing driving population, dementia has become a significant concern for road safety. Despite increasing attention and efforts to develop fair, just, and scientifically grounded fitness-to-drive procedures, practical and clinical guidelines for assessing driving fitness in individuals with medical conditions remain limited.

This webinar will focus on the evaluation of fitness to drive in individuals diagnosed with dementia. It will present the current state of knowledge in this field and illustrate how these insights are applied in contemporary fitness-to-drive practice in Belgium. The objective is to provide guidance for professionals involved in both driving assessment and dementia care, enabling them to form well-founded opinions on whether driving should be continued in patients with dementia, and under which specific conditions or restrictions.

About the speaker:

Dr. Mark Tant obtained his degree in Experimental Psychology from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1995. He subsequently earned a Master of Science in Cognitive Neuropsychology from the University of Essex (United Kingdom) in 1996 and completed his PhD at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) in 2002.

Since 2002, Dr. Tant has been employed at Vias Institute – formerly known as the Belgian Road Safety Institute – where he initially worked within the CARA Department and, more recently, also within the Knowledge Centre of the Institute. CARA, the Centre for Fitness to Drive (FTD) Evaluations and Vehicle Adaptations, is the sole officially recognized FTD evaluation centre for the Flemish and Brussels-Capital Regions. Dr. Tant originally joined CARA as a neuropsychologist and researcher. In 2008, he was appointed Head of Department, assuming responsibility for the oversight of FTD evaluations while continuing to conduct assessments himself. In 2018, he joined the Vias Knowledge Centre as a Senior Researcher.

He remains actively engaged in national and international initiatives and research projects concerning fitness to drive. In addition, he contributes to the development of policies related to traffic medicine and traffic psychology at both the national and international levels.