Austroads and the National Transport Commission have released the 2016 updated Assessing Fitness to Drive for commercial and private vehicle drivers: medical standards for licencing and clinical management guidelines. The document governs medical standards required to assess medical fitness to drive, and covers a wide range of medical standards.
Chapter 10 of the document, titled Vision and Eye Disorders (pages 124 – 131), is a result of extensive consultations. RANZCO Fellows Michael Delaney, Paul Beaumont, and Rick Wolfe of RANZCO’s Visual Standards sub-committee have contributed substantially to the development of this chapter. RANZCO would like to thank these Fellows for their ongoing efforts in developing and updating the Vision and Eye Disorders chapter. The Vision working group also included RANZCO General Manager – Policy and Programs Gerhard Schlenther, and one representative each from the orthoptics and optometry sectors.
The Vision and Eye Disorders chapter includes assessment guidelines on a wide range of vision and eye health topics of relevance to assessments of fitness to drive. These include general assessment and management guidelines on visual acuity, visual fields, diplopia, and other conditions. A flow chart (p. 125) is included to assist with the assessment of visual acuity for drivers, and a summary table of medical standards for licensing (pp. 128-130) details both the private and commercial standards for visual acuity, visual fields, and diplopia.
The new updated guidelines are effective from October 1, and replace the previous document (2012, amended 2014). The document is available for download here.