Skip to main content

Driving with Libre - dispelling the myths?

Driving with Libre - dispelling the myths? (Group 1 Only - Standard Car Drivers)

It is absolutely true, the DVLA won't give you a licence unless you agree to the following:


The language, as with any legal document, is important here.  Group 1 is "recommended" and this is a "requirement for licensing".  I'm not a legal expert, but it does seem fairly clear, although not very satisfactory in my opinion.
Why does it say 'recommended' here?

So many times, I've seen people refer to breaking law if you're not a certain level or able to prove your level.  This is not what is being said.

At this point I must interject that it is irresponsible to drive any vehicle whilst low, going low or suspecting low.  Don't do it!  This is more about the law's view on levels and testing.

So, it now comes to why the law is at it is and why the Libre is not (yet) considered acceptable for the DVLA.  To get more information on this, you need to go back to the primary source - Secretary of State for Transport’s Honorary Medical Advisory Panel on driving and diabetes mellitus - reckon they could have come up with a catchier name!  Their publications.  From the March 2017 minutes (not published until September!):
From this, it's clear that whilst the guidelines doesn't currently allow interstitial blood glucose to be acceptable for driving, a change is being looked into.  Interestingly, in the rest of the EU, this wouldn't be a problem.

The final piece of the jigsaw is the potential law that is being contravened if you do use Libre as your only testing mechanism.  Firstly, the DVLA could in theory revoke your licence as they are unable to accept Libre readings as evidence of a blood glucose level.  It is a condition of licence-holding to follow what they say, regardless of the law.  Secondly, if you have a hypo whilst driving, you may be charged with driving under the influence of a drug (Insulin or diabetes tablet), driving without due care and attention, or dangerous driving (Link to useful leaflet).  There is indication that the under the influence statement may not even be likely to be enforceable.  In order to defend any of these charges, the Libre would probably not be considered admissible evidence.  You'd only be charged with these offences however, if there was due cause to believe that you were unfit to drive.  Personally, I believe that self-funding of Libre is evidence of effort to control levels and the debate in court could be an interesting one - I'm not sure this has been tested in law yet (and hope it doesn't need to be).

This interesting tweet from my local police force shows that levels weren't the prime concern even when there was an incident directly resulting from a 'diabetic episode'

This is a further element of diabetes care that people seem to get worried about.  It is right that you should know your levels and be controlled, but it is all part of the day-to-day management of the condition - not something to worry about.  Building testing into routines should be performed by all T1 diabetics (and probably T2s too) not just when driving but in order to effectively manage the condition at all times and in all situations.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Post

This is my first post on a blog. Not sure whether it will be the last, but we'll see. I'm not sure I'm keen on sharing too much via a blog. I think work is out of bounds and not sure I want to share too much family stuff, but maybe I'll use it to record certain events. Most probably I will use it to record my experiences with diabetes. I was diagnosed yesterday with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes. I am terrified (probably phobic, although I think it is an overused term) of needles, and know little about diabetes. Evidently my blood glucose was 37mmol/l when a normal reading is less than 10mmol/l. I guess the writing was on the wall. I have lost weight and had great thirst even though I ate lots of stuff and drank almost throughout the day. It is going to be an interesting few weeks finding out about the condition and dealing with the inevitable hardships that may follow. I even managed to eat Weetabix this morning without sugar for the first time in my life! I'...
2 comments
Read more

The CCG Project!

In order to find out the situation around the country for Libre prescribing now that the national policy has been published, I have made the decision to contact many of them to find out their plans.  I have arbitrarily chosen to contact all English CCGs that in December 2018 prescribed Libre via Primary Care to less than 5% of their population (and one specific request from a group member).  I had hoped this would be a small list, but there are 135 CCGs on the list.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm committed to doing this and feeding back.  It worked before and hopefully this level of scrutiny will bring similar results. Below is a screenshot of the base document I am sending to each of the CCGs - it has some fields that are merge fields, so don't worry about the brackets and codes in the document (I found a typo, which has now been corrected too) .  The major piece of work with respect to this is finding the right person to contact....
9 comments
Read more

Abbott dX Virtual 2020

Having missed the preceding event in 2019 (in Lisbon) through my man meets horse moment, I was greatly looking forward to ‘attending’ this year’s event, albeit from my spare room rather than the rather more appealing Portuguese capital…but at least the quality of tea on offer was top-notch! Each year since 2015, Abbott have run an event for bloggers and influencers (and me!) bringing together representatives from all over Europe.   This year there were over forty representatives from fifteen European countries, including eight people from the UK.   The programme was split over Friday evening and Saturday morning with a variety of speakers and discussion sessions.   The sessions were run on the Remo platform ( https://remo.co/ ), an application I didn’t know of previously, but certainly something that has great potential.   I’ll go through its functionality at the end of my review. At this point I need to stress that I haven’t been asked to blog about this event a...
Post a Comment
Read more