Effects of stimulant drugs on actual and simulated driving: perspectives from four experimental studies conducted as part of the DRUID research consortium

The Integrated Project DRUID (Driving under the Influence of Drugs, Alcohol and Medicines) involved researchers from more than 20 European countries. It aimed to gain new insights to the degree of impairment caused by psychoactive drugs and their actual impact on road safety. Part of this large research program that was conducted between 2006 and 2011 has been devoted to the assessment of stimulant drug effects on driving performance in experimental, placebo-controlled studies. These studies are presented in the current issue of psychopharmacology and focus on single-dose effects of MDMA (Bosker et al. 2012) and dexamphetamine (Hjalmdahl et al. 2012) on driving performance before and after a night of sleep deprivation and on the effects of MDMA (Veldstra et al. 2012) and dexamphetamine (Simons et al. 2012) with and without alcohol. The major objective of these studies was to provide scientific basis for harmonized pan-European regulations of driving under the influence (DUI) of stimulants. Research partners agreed on a number of standardized driving scenarios to increase comparability between studies. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]