Title. When I drive past, I get hit by alternating shadow and bright sunlight very quickly, and it is uncomfortable for me, and I don’t have epilepsy. So just wondering if that is a concern for people who do have it.
Title. When I drive past, I get hit by alternating shadow and bright sunlight very quickly, and it is uncomfortable for me, and I don’t have epilepsy. So just wondering if that is a concern for people who do have it.
It’s state by state. Some states don’t make physicians report, so there’s not necessarily enforcement. I waited the six months my state requires after my seizures, but there wasn’t really any mechanism by which a cop would have known if I hadn’t.
If you were to get an epileptic seizure while driving, would it strike like lightning, leaving you zero seconds to react, or would you still have enough time to pull over safely?
When I had them, they were very sudden. I didn’t have auras or anything.
It was very odd. The first one I had I didn’t realize was a seizure - I was out working on a farm and woke up very confused and missing my glasses. It wasn’t until I had one in front of my ex husband, and woke up fighting firefighters, that I figured out what was going on.
So yeah, wouldn’t have warnings if I was driving. I’d honestly be happy to never drive again if I didn’t live in a place where that was impossible - I haven’t had one in years and think I figured out why I was having them, but it is scary knowing that there is some trigger that could hit me out of nowhere.
That is a bit terrifying actually. Even if you know one trigger and manage to avoid it, there could still be another one, a stealth trigger, just lurking somewhere. What if you’re mowing the lawn one day, and BOOM! Horrible things can happen before you wake up.
It depends from person to person. Some don’t get much warning if any. They just drop. Others can tell when it’s coming and/or have warning signs they can learn. A book I read as a kid had a character who heard a train horn getting louder as the seizure came on.
Just because you can tell it’s coming doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to drive, though. Maybe you won’t get a warning next time. Maybe you’ll get stuck in traffic where you can’t pull over safely. Your faculties are already starting to go when a seizure starts to come on, maybe you’ll have poor judgement about how far you can make it before you have to stop. Maybe you’ll stop, but you won’t be good to drive when you wake up again.
Those warnings are called auras, and you can have visual or auditory auras warning you of a seizure.
I knew somebody who had a dog that could sense when they were about to have a seizure. I’m not sure that science knows how it works.