The Unfairness of Driving Restrictions for People with Seizures

Not being able to drive has always sucked, but lately I’ve been thinking about it from another perspective. People with seizures shouldn’t be able to drive of course, but that seems like a tiny minority of people. People with other neurological conditions and even psychiatric conditions are able to keep their driver’s licenses just fine. People with strokes? No problem. People with schizophrenia? No problem. They’re able to legally drive. What about people with severe depression and suicidal ideation? They could easily just run off the road. What about psychopaths? They might intentionally run over pedestrians. People with Alzheimer’s could forget where they are or forget that a red light means stop. Yet for some reason, it’s only those of us with seizures who legally can’t drive. Why? I know lots of perfectly healthy people who shouldn’t be driving either…who regularly speed, merge without their turn signal, etc. Yet they have no problem keeping their driver’s licenses. The reason this came up is because I was talking to a stranger online, and I mentioned that I can’t drive. “Oh, do you have seizures?” “Yes, how did you know?” “Well, the only people who can’t drive are people with a DUI and people with seizures.” After that, I did some research, and it’s basically true. The only other thing I could find is people who have committed vehicular manslaughter. So yeah, the only health condition that causes people not to be able to drive is epilepsy. That’s it. Not brain cancer. Not sociopathy. Only seizures. It’s wild.