How Long After A TBI Can You Drive (And Why)?

Exact Answer: 6 Months To 1 Year

Some of the traumatic brain injuries can result in many lifelong issues while on the other hand, after hearing from some of the traumatic brain injuries, one can get back to living a normal life as ever. That is to say that every traumatic brain injury is different with different causes, different treatments, different healing periods, and different side effects as well. Thus, for every traumatic brain injury, the time it can take to get back to driving can differ as well.

How Long After A TBI Can You Drive?

The time it takes for a person to continue driving after suffering from TBI traumatic brain injury can depend on many different factors. However, the major factor that determines the time for a person to drive after a traumatic brain injury is the type of traumatic brain injury the person has recovered from.

Calculating on a wide scale, there are majorly two types of traumatic brain injuries caused, that are, traumatic brain injury with no after effects, and secondly, traumatic brain injury with after effects. Thus, to know how long it will take for a person to drive after a traumatic brain injury, some should know if that traumatic brain injury has any after-effects or not.

If the traumatic brain injury causes no after-effects to the work, then it takes significantly less for a person to get back to driving. On average, it takes about a minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 6 months for a person to get back to driving after recovering from a traumatic brain injury which would cause no after-effects in the future.

While, on the other hand, if the traumatic brain injury has after-effects on the person who has suffered it, then it takes a longer time for the person to get back to driving as compared to the person who has suffered from a traumatic brain injury with no after-effects.

The after-effects of the traumatic brain injury can be in many different forms, such as seizures, panic attacks, restlessness, and other such effects. The average time it can take a person to get back to driving after suffering from a traumatic brain injury with after effects can range between a span of 6 months to up to 2 years.

Why Does It Take That Long To Drive After A TBI?

The major process behind getting back to driving after a traumatic brain injury is to renew the license. The reason behind that is that when a person suffers from a traumatic brain injury, his or her driving license gets canceled to prevent him or her from driving. It is so because when a person suffers a traumatic brain injury, his or her consciousness gets hindered which makes that person not perfectly fit for driving on roads. 

If a person faces a traumatic brain injury and stills go on driving then it can result in a serious accident which would not just be dangerous for the person himself or herself but also for of people who would be driving. Moreover, these accidents can even be fatal.

Thus to prevent serious road accidents, the driving license of the person suffering from the traumatic brain injury ceases starting from the time the person faces the traumatic brain injury till the time that person completely gets fit after recovering from that traumatic brain injury. Once the person completely recovers, he or she will have to pass the driving test to get his or her driving license renewed.

Conclusion

Driving includes a lot of skills and alertness by the driver or it can lead to serious accidents and even death. Driving requires skills such as judgment and decision making, a sense of alertness, accuracy, and other such skills which ensure safe driving. However, when an individual goes through a traumatic brain injury, he or she loses the capabilities to perform all these skills which makes that person incapable to drive efficiently and with full consciousness.

References

1. https://journals.lww.com/headtraumarehab/Fulltext/2006/09000/Risk_of_Posthospitalization_Mortality_Among.1.aspx
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/026990501300005659