Practical Assessment of Colour Vision to Certify Fitness for Driving

A patient with red-green colour blindness came to the polyclinic for a medical examination for the purpose of applying for a vocational driving license. He had been driving a private vehicle for years. As he could not read all the plates in the Ishihara, the attending doctor decided not to certify him fit, but referred him to an ophthalmologist. This upset the patient. A review of the guidelines suggests that for colour-blind patients, the Ishihara should not be the standard to assess a patient’s fitness to drive. We propose a simple colour chart that is more practical for this purpose.