DRUID Project

From the University of Groningen, Eurodurg received a request to participate on in a European Project, aiming to collect data on utilisation of medication that could influence driving ability.

Summary of the project

Over 40,000 people were killed on the roads in the year 2000 in the EU. The EU has fixed the target date of 2010 to reduce the number of road-injury fatalities by 50% (White Paper). As the number of accidents that can be attributed to psychoactive substances (alcohol, drugs and certain medicines) is constantly at a high level with drugs and medicine proportionally increasing over the years, special efforts have to be directed upon gaining better knowledge of the various aspects of this explicit problem and developing appropriate solutions. DRUID aims to combat the scourge of drink-driving and find answers to the question of the use of drugs or medicines that affect people's ability to drive safely. The objective of DRUID is to give scientific support to the EU transport policy to reach the 2010th road safety target by establishing guidelines and measures to combat impaired driving.

DRUID will

• conduct reference studies of the impact on fitness to drive for alcohol, illicit drugs and medicines and give new insights to the real degree of impairment caused by psychoactive substances and their actual impact on road safety
• generate recommendations for the definition of analytical and risk thresholds
• analyse the prevalence of alcohol and other psychoactive substances in accidents and in general driving, set up a comprehensive and efficient epidemiological database
• evaluate "good practice" for detection and training measures for road traffic police allowing a legal monitoring of drivers
• establish an appropriate classification system of medicines affecting driving ability, give recommendations for its implementation and create a framework to position medicines according to a labelling system
• evaluate the efficiency of strategies of prevention, penalisation and rehabilitation, considering the difficulties of appropriate evaluation strategies for combined substance use and recommend "good practice"
• define strategies of driving bans, combining the road safety objectives with the individual's need for mobility
• define the responsibility of health care professionals for patients consuming psychoactive substances and their impact on road safety, elaborate guidelines and make information available and applicable for all European countries./li>

Part of the project is to gather information about the consumption of drugs with central nervous system (side)-effect in the general (non-hospitalised) population in various EU member states.

Eurodurg should help to look for dataproviders in those countries where the data are not easily available.

For more information see:

• Project summary and strategic Objectives
• List of substances in the atc therapeutic classes selected for druid 2.1.1
• The letter involving EURODURG in DRUID project
• Data collection sheet

Interested researchers or dataproviders can contact Sylvia Hummel (email adress: s.a.hummel@rug.nl) designated by EURODURG Executive Committee to follow up this project.