Dear Editor,

International standards, including the Australian Assessing Fitness to Drive (Austroads, 2022), are designed to support medical practitioners’ decision-making related to driving. Conversations surrounding driving and non-driving, otherwise known as driving cessation, can be challenging. Driving cessation is often a difficult transition and older adults with and without dementia require support to adapt to a life without driving that is equal to a life with driving. Supporting an increasingly aging population to transition away from driving and toward alternative transport is essential and was the focus of a recently developed educational web-based resource (Stasiulis et al., Reference Stasiulis2023). Evidence supports the effectiveness of interactive driving cessation programs with individual goal achievement in increasing community mobility (Liddle et al., Reference Liddle2014; Peterson et al., Reference Peterson2023; Scott et al., Reference Scott2020); however, there is limited access to these programs in the community. For the past 17 years, we have been systematically working with health professionals, older adults with and without dementia, and their key support people to understand effective methods to provide support in driving cessation and the barriers to widespread implementation of a driving cessation support programs in practice (Liddle et al., Reference Liddle2023). Our research findings and experiences of barriers to implementation are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Barriers mapped to the theoretical domain framework (Cane et al., Reference Cane, O’Connor and Michie2012)

Understanding the barriers is foundational to the identification of the intervention functions and behavior change techniques (Michie et al., Reference Michie2014) required to overcome this knowledge to practice gap. An essential next step in the knowledge to action framework is for health professionals and driving cessation researchers to work together to understand specific practice contexts and select, tailor, and implement interventions that support successful implementation across our health and primary care services. Without this, we will continue to fail to support older drivers to adapt to a life without driving.