Brief Report: Driving and Young Adults with ASD: Parents’ Experiences

Abstract

A paucity of research exists regarding driving skills and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The current study sought to gain a better understanding of driving and ASD by surveying parents/caregivers of adolescents/young adults with ASD who were currently attempting, or had previously attempted, to learn to drive. Respondents included 123 parents/caregivers of adolescents/young adults with ASD. The results indicate that learning to drive presents a substantial challenge for individuals with ASD; complex driving demands (e.g., multi-tasking) may be particularly problematic. Respondents provided suggestions that may be useful to others who seek to teach these skills. The survey results offer guidance for next steps in the study of driving with ASD.

Exploring the Driving Behavior of Youth with an Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Driver Instructor Questionnaire

“…Although little research exists, Cox et al (2012) surveyed parents/caregivers of youth with ASD (previously) attempting to learn to drive. This study serves as an extension by surveying driver instructors.…”

“…Driving allows autonomy and permits maintenance of social-and work-related contacts (Cox, Reeve, Cox, & Cox, 2012;Reimer et al, 2013). Nevertheless, youth with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) depend to a great extent on friends and family for their transportation needs (Feeley, 2010).…”

Evaluating multimodal driver displays of varying urgency for drivers on the autistic spectrum

“…This result is somewhat unexpected given that anxiety is a comorbid trait of autism. Anxiety has been theorised to potentially interfere with driving [7,8] and been used to explain a trend for heart rate increase with drivers on the autism spectrum in a simulated driving experiment [24]. With higher states of anxiety as well as findings of increased sensory sensitivities for individuals higher on the autism spectrum [26], it would have seemed likely that the participants on the autism spectrum would have found the warnings more annoying.…”

“…Given that in many situations vision is overloaded with requirements of monitoring the external world and the state of the vehicle it is interesting to speculate whether the advantage seen in the autism spectrum population with rapid recognition of the warning will still obtain. Certainly, examination of the opinions of parents of teenagers on the autism spectrum regarding their son or daughters capabilities indicates that concerns are great for performance in complex situations [7]. Finally, the results of [24] showed that young drivers on the autism spectrum looked further into the distance and it was suggested that this was done to avoid the complexity of the near environment.…”

“…However, some of this research is based on self-report and report of parents and caregivers. For example, surveys have shown that 63% of teenagers on the autism spectrum plan to obtain their driving license [14], even though their parents believe this is a challenging goal and one that the parents also believe that they might have substantial difficulty at performing safely [7]. A study by [8] used self-reports from a standardized driver behaviour questionnaire to examine differences between ASD and TD adults (mean age 33).…”