Driving scene-based driving errors in brain injury patients and their relevance to cognitive-perceptual function and functional activity level: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Driving is an essential activity for community engagement in patients with brain injury. However, brain injury patients have cognitive-perceptual deficits and low independence in daily activities. The aims of this study were to identify the driving errors of brain injury patients and determine their relevance to cognitive-perception function and daily activity level. This study was conducted at a single rehabilitation hospital. Thirty-one brain injury patients were included in the study. The patients underwent a driving-scene-based simulator evaluation in the rehabilitation clinic. Driving errors were checked using automatic software. Perceptual ability was measured using Motor-free Visual Perceptual Test (MVPT) and Cognitive-perceptual Assessment for Driving (CPAD). A linear relationship was found between the driving aptitude score, steering wheel and judgment, simultaneous operation items, total score of road course test, and cognitive-perceptual functions and daily activity levels of the participants (P <.05). The general factors that affected driving errors included driving experience, age, part of the hemispheric affected, and presence of vascular injury (P <.05). In addition, the Korean version of Mini-Mental State Examination (K-MMSE) score and the CPAD score correlated with driving errors (P <.05). The total error score of the participants correlated with the Korean version of the Modified Barthel Index (K-MBI) score (P <.05).These findings suggest that driving experience and age have more influence on driving error than perceptual level due to brain damage. In addition, it was found that the basic level of daily living influences overall operating errors.

Figure 1

Driving simulator for assessing driving errors.