Legal issues and the DVLA

Diabetes can affect your ability to drive safely because of the risk of hypos, so there are some guidelines that are important to follow.

DVLA Obligations

If you have type 1 diabetes, in the UK it’s your responsibility to tell the DVLA – the government organisation that handles licensing. If you don’t, your licence isn’t valid – you will be driving illegally and breaking the law.

License Type

If you have type 1 diabetes, you won’t get a standard licence that needs to be renewed every ten years. Instead, you’ll get a three-year restricted licence.

Unlike a standard licence, you won’t have to pay for your licence to be renewed but you will have to provide some medical information.

You’ll be asked about your feet, to make sure you can use the pedals safely, and your eyes, to make sure you can see the road. Most importantly, you’ll be asked about your blood glucose control and particularly about any hypos you experience and what your warning symptoms are. 

People with type 1 diabetes can hold a group 2 license which covers larger vehicles such as buses or lorries. There are additional measures that you will need to complete to hold this type of license and it will need to be renewed every year. To read more about type 1 diabetes and group 2 licenses, click here.

Hypos

The main reason for putting restrictions on driving licenses for people with type 1 diabetes is the risk of having a hypo while driving.

If you have a severe hypo, you might become extremely confused or disorientated, or even lose consciousness, and you will need to rely on someone else to help you.

If this happened while you were behind the wheel, it would be incredibly dangerous both for yourself and others. 

The guidelines now state that you can have no more than one episode of severe hypoglycaemia, while awake – specifically, hypos that are bad enough that you need to be treated by someone else – in the preceding 12 months. You could lose your driving licence for a while until your blood glucose is under better control.

We’ll cover hypoglycaemia in more depth in the next topic.