Brain Injury: My Road To Recovery – Regaining Independence

BOSTON (CBS) Left, right, stop or slow down. After more than 30 years of driving, last October I found myself once again demonstrating to the RMV that I know my hand signals.

I had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle fall three months earlier, and a medical competency road test was deemed necessary before I could get behind the wheel again.

Ironically, my 16-year-old son Luke had received his junior operators license the week before, so HE gave ME pointers!

I had to ask him, How bad was I? He smiled and said, You were pretty bad. Im not gonna lie. You had a lot of things wrong. You didnt know how to straighten out the wheel without letting it slide through your hands. You couldnt really park on a hill, and did not head check at all. You probably wouldnt have lasted 20 seconds in the road test. They would have failed you before you started the car.

Listen: Mary Blake: My Road To Recovery Part 7

Registrar Rachel Kaprielian says medical competency tests arent that unusual. On average, roughly twenty of them are administered around the state each day.

The manual Mary Blake used before her driving test. (Credit: WBZ NewsRadio 1030s Mary Blake)

We work with patients and their doctors to ensure that they are, in fact, ready to try the competency exam, and thats the whole point of the competency exam. She continued, If youve had an injury, or an incident that prevents you from driving, that may not be the permanent state of things. So, the Registry is interested and the states interest is in making sure that people are capable and competent to drive so that theyre safe and everyone else on the road is safe.

Kerry Wigandt, program coordinator for the RMV road test program, was my tester. She did not know my line of work or background prior to the test, but wasnt surprised when I confessed to her afterwards that I had been a nervous wreck.

A lot of people, I think, get overly nervous, she said, but, just as long as youre cautious on the road and youre showing that youre looking for your blind spots, that youre aware of your surroundings and you drive defensively, assuming that people will always jet out of nowhere, youre good.

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Brain Injury: My Road To Recovery – Regaining Independence