[The driver's license and epilepsy]

Reference is made to the recommendation of the International League Against Epilepsy concerning driving-permission of epileptics, publicated 1981; only minor attention was payed to the german translation, published in 1984. Different comments on this recommendation as well as our own experiences are quoted. We refer to the rarity of traffic-crashes due to epileptic seizures, although we assume that approximately half of the seizure-patients drive, partly under concealing their disturbance. We present 51 collected own cases of traffic-accidents due to sudden attacks of unconsciousness. Only 7 of them had an epileptic seizure, 23 were caused by internal disturbances. In 18 partly young drivers there was no evident sign of sickness, although they gave rise to accidents due to a sudden attack of unconsciousness, difficult to classify. Additionally we consider the difficulty caused by ceasing therapy of seizure-free patients and driving-ability. With respect to this an own case is quoted. Also the effects of anticonvulsics on driving ability are discussed. Finally we try to develop an expertising-strategy.