Psychoactive substances and driving: State of the art and methodology

The purpose of this work is to define the role of the intake of drugs, drugs of abuse, and alcohol in determining the disability to drive, aiming at correlating and combining findings from epidemiological studies examining the incidence of drugs in various subpopulations of road users with results from a review of the recent literature on psychomotor performance and drugs. Analysis of the literature was carried out by processing and classifying the data, to extrapolate and assess results reported in empirical works. Classifications and conclusions consider studies on the interaction between drugs or drugs of abuse and alcohol. The problem of pharmacological interaction is presented after preliminary examination of the general mechanisms of action of the drugs and the best-known types of interaction among classes of psychoactive substances. Lastly, the problems of methodology and content that emerged during the review are addressed.