Hi everyone,

Earlier this year Brad Williams, director of Williams OT, was interviewed by Nicole de la Perrelle about heavy vehicle and motorbike assessments and other types of vehicle assessments. If you follow us on Facebook, and I recommended that you do, you would have seen many of our posts where we help people return to driving all kinds of vehicles. From lawn mowers, sedans, to trucks and motorcycles, and even a harvester. If it has wheels and you have a disability or medical condition that may impact on controlling the vehicle, A driver trained OT with advanced training can assess it. 

Now, we get a lot of questions about how we do assessments for heavy vehicles like buses, forklifts, trucks and other machines. Heavy vehicle assessments are much like light vehicle assessments. Both involve a lot of manual driving, after a Pre Drive initial assessment. We looked at physical elements, visual elements, and cognitive elements to see how that will impact driving. But the biggest factor of all is understanding about the job that you need to get back to.

Most heavy vehicle assessments we have encountered are with clients with back problems or other physical injuries, but it is not limited to that. For motorbike assessments, on the other hand, we have clients who have physical injuries or lost a limb and head injuries, but again we see motorbike riders with all kinds of conditions.

Overall, the main goal of a heavy vehicle and motorbike assessment is to be able to figure out what modifications, training, and/or rehabilitation is needed for the client and what the client needs to achieve for them to be able to drive independently. Once the client is happy, then we are happy!

Check out the full interview below: