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Objective: The study compare two tests for evaluating the driving abilities of patients undergoing opioid therapy for chronic pain: the Vienna Test System (VTS), a software developed for this purpose, and a new free APP for smartphones (SafeDrive) measuring visual and auditory reaction times., Methods: One hundred and five patients undergoing long term opioid therapy for chronic pain were enrolled. The driving abilities of study patients were evaluated using two tests, namely the Vienna test System (VTS) and the SafeDrive APP. The concordance between the two tests was evaluated through Cohen's test. In addition we evaluated the correlation between the results of both VTS and SafeDrive tests and prescribed Morphine Equivalent Doses (MEDs), sex, age and the specific drugs taken, by multivariate linear regression analysis., Results: A statistically significant concordance (Cohen's K coefficient=0.476) was found between the SafeDrive APP and the VTS; multivariate linear regression analysis found no significant influences of dosage and type of opioid prescribed on test performances, but significant influences of sex and age., Conclusions: The Authors found a significant correlation between VTS with SafeDrive test results. The SafeDrive APP is cheaper, easier to use and faster than VTS, and is portable and "usable on the road". Complex behavioral tasks such as driving may be severely impaired by psychoactive drugs, and consequently SafeDrive could be considered a useful portable screening tool to identify drivers with drug associated psychomotor impairment.

Objective: Italian Road Law limits driving while undergoing treatment with certain kinds of medication. Here, we report the results of a test, run as a smartphone application (app), assessing auditory and visual reflexes in a sample of 300 drivers. The scope of the test is to provide both the police force and medication-taking drivers with a tool that can evaluate the individual's capacity to drive safely., Methods: The test is run as an app for Apple iOS and Android mobile operating systems and facilitates four different reaction times to be assessed: simple visual and auditory reaction times and complex visual and auditory reaction times. Reference deciles were created for the test results obtained from a sample of 300 Italian subjects. Results lying within the first three deciles were considered as incompatible with safe driving capabilities., Results: Performance is both age-related (r>0.5) and sex-related (female reaction times were significantly slower than those recorded for male subjects, P<0.05). Only 21% of the subjects were able to perform all four tests correctly., Conclusion: We developed and fine-tuned a test called Safedrive that measures visual and auditory reaction times through a smartphone mobile device; the scope of the test is two-fold: to provide a clinical tool for the assessment of the driving capacity of individuals taking pain relief medication; to promote the sense of social responsibility in drivers who are on medication and provide these individuals with a means of testing their own capacity to drive safely.