Patient page. The risk of fatal car crashes in people with epilepsy.

Abstract

### What are seizures and epilepsy? Seizures are sudden, unpredictable events that can temporarily interfere with a person’s ability to think or act normally. A person has epilepsy if he or she has had more than one seizure. Sometimes medication can control epilepsy, but not always. Seizures can cause injury or death if they happen while swimming or driving a car. More information about seizures and epilepsy appears on the next page. ### What does the law say about driving and seizures? Laws temporarily prohibit people from driving after a seizure. The restriction period varies by state (usually 3 to 12 months). If no seizures occur during the restriction period, the patient can drive again. However, sometimes seizures recur after long periods without seizures, even if a patient takes medicine to prevent seizures. Seizures more commonly recur if a patient stops taking seizure medications. ### What is the latest research on driving and epilepsy? In this issue of Neurology , researchers from Johns Hopkins University studied how often seizures or epilepsy cause fatal car accidents.1 They looked at death certificates of drivers who died in car crashes from 1995 to 1997. About 44,027 US drivers die each year in car crashes. Only 86 of these death certificates (0.2%) listed seizures or epilepsy as a contributing factor. Alcohol caused 156 times more driver deaths than seizures. Young drivers (age 16 to 24) died in accidents 123 times more often than drivers of any age who crashed due to a seizure. The driver fatality crash rate for the general population was 2.6 times higher than epilepsy-related driver fatalities. This is because seizures …