So Australia brought in a new law stating that autistic people now have to get medical clearance to drive. Even if you were late diagnosed and had your licence for decades, most states are still saying you need to get medical clearance. Queensland is the worst, with several thousand dollar fines if you don't. Other states aren't penalising people directly (or not as sevearly), but I believe if you don't disclose it, it can impact your insurance and cause issues if you're involved in an accident (even if you weren't at fault).
I'm using vague language here because the thing is, this whole thing is very vague and confusing. No one seems to know anything, even the government agencies who are supposed to be enforcing it.
So as a physically disabled Autistic person who already has to get medical clearance to drive anyway, I just want to let anyone new to this whole system know to be VERY careful where you get your information from and make sure to double check everything, even when its coming from usually reliable sources.
Unless you are talking to someone who's job it is to specifically deal with disabled drivers, most of the system has no clue. This includes cops, this includes your state's government service centre (e.g. services NSW, services QLD etc) and all the places you usually look for personal transport-related beurocrocy and laws. Even talking to your state gov's transport department directly (e.g. transport NSW) isn't garuenteed. It's not a bad place to start, but with how messy this whole thing is, please double-check what you're being told.
My assessments deemed I needed a specific type of hand control to drive safely. This is a very common modification that has been around for decades and has been regulated under Australian law for nearly as long. Yet every time I get pulled over the cops get really freaked out about it because they don't know what the laws are surrounding them. that's usually why they pull me over, because the part of the hand control that is visible from outside the vehicle looks kind of similar to an illegal racing mod, and then once they determine its not the same thing they always want to check everything I do have is legal, despite not even knowing what theyre looking at. Every time I need to get my licence details updated, every time I need to do anything at services NSW, they always get really confused because no one knows what they're supposed to do or what you need to do if youre not a "normal" driver.
That won't stop abled and neurotypical people from CONFIDENTLY insisting the do know though, and giving you the wrong information.
And this is with laws that have been in place for decades.
My point is this whole thing sucks at the best of times, but the way they brought these laws in is going to cause a shitshow in the system that was already struggling to deal with even the more "well understood" disabilties. That, combined with the general misinformation already circulating about autism... just be careful of the information you're being told, double check everything, etc etc.
