Question
What are your favorite resources for driving and community mobility?
Answer
There is an AOTA book called Driving and Community Mobility. It is a self-paced clinical course, as well as a textbook. There are chapters on cognition, vision, and assessment. It also has some really neat history in there. It talks about why we do not have a good transit system. A lot of that is because in the 1950s, all the money was dedicated into the interstate highway system. That is where the federal government dumped all their money, into those bridges and roadways, and never really built the transit infrastructure.
There is a great instrument called Lifelong Driver. The company is ADEPT Driver. They have had a long-running program that serves teens, and it has been shown to be really effective. It is video based and a great training tool. An example is they are on a roadway, have to turn left, and have to decide when it is safe to turn left as cars are coming from the other direction. Another one is that they are driving through a parking lot, and they have to click on all the potential hazards; kids walking, people with shopping carts, cars backing out. I think there are seven different modules. It is one of my favorites. It is actual videos; not animated. They mounted cameras on top of the vehicle to take the videos.
Additionally, there are actually some worksheets out there that you can use with clients regarding cost of driving. You can lay out what is the cost of the car payment, how much is spent on gas, how much is spent on insurance, how much is spent on oil changes, tire rotations, etc. Then, you can explain to the patient how much money they are spending per year on their vehicle. If they do not have a license and they do not have that car to maintain, then they will have all that money instead. Typically, this amounts to thousands of dollars, which can easily be used for transportation alternatives.
