I am asking all ones with Asperger's to respond & all parents who have had AS drivers in their families to respond. Does AS affect attention span during driving?
We can all be distracted while driving, that is a given... but what about stimming while driving?
What if we start getting deep into our thoughts & cannot remember how we arrived at our destination or missed a turn & never arrived?
That is when it becomes a problem.
I have a teen son who is taking Driver's Ed & frankly, I am worried about it. He has AS... he claims, when practicing driving that he "did not know" that law, or did not "see" that curb.
He passed the intial permit test, obviously, because he can drive with an adult in the car.
Any advice? Any lessons learned? Care to share?
1 comment:
I have Asperger's as well as Bipolar and Septo Optic Dysplasia (which leaves me blind in my left eye).
I feel the responsible thing to do is for me to not drive. I could probably pass the test, but my therapist agrees me driving would be dangerous. Asperger's makes it hard to predict others, and it seems like people on the road use the DMV manual as "guidelines", not a "set in stone" rulebook. It confuses me terribly why it's okay to go 26 miles in a 25 miles-per-hour zone. Why isn't it a "25-26" miles per hour zone then? And when I'm in a car, I think about everything: "Why is that man sitting on the ground?" "Hey that street sign reminds me of a story title..." "Oh, that's an obnoxious bumper sticker!" "Oh no, that poor roadkill. I wonder if my dad hunts that kind of animal?" Etc.
I'm also light sensitive so the sun could also impair my driving.
So, I have learned to use the bus and walk unstead. It just seems safer.
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