Well maybe if the council didn't stick so many dumb signs up all over the place I wouldn't need to worry about being distracted. I find it funny that the council at the moment are banning these signs that advertise something on the side of the motorway as they are distracting, yet they are putting up more bright red distracting signs all over the place telling people how many deaths and casualties there have been on the road in the past 3 years. When I'm travelling at 70mph on the motorway I don't have anywhere near as much chance of being distracted by a sign advertising laptops on ebay as being distracted doing 30mph in a residential area and seeing a large red sign in front of me stating 86 people were killed on this road this year (yeah and stick more signs up like that and their will be more killed!). The funniest signs I've seen have to be the dull yellow ones indicating diversions on national speed limit roads which read something like "The road at the junction of this avenue with that avenue will be closed for a total of 4 weeks from the 1st Febuary 2008 to the the 1st March 2008." Travelling towards these signs at 60-70mph with such small writing on them, by the time you've even tried to start reading them and then tried to figure out whether you will have turned off the road before the junctions and whether the date is between the dates listed you've already reached the place where the road is closed from! Some of them aren't too bad such as "Road ahead closed from the 1st February", you actually have time to figure this out (without looking at a map), but telling people street names, if I'm not from that area how the hell am I supposed to know whether or not I am heading towards that junction??? LOL! And not only that they are quite distracting!

I have ADHD too and Asperger's I went through school dx'ed as having ADHD until I got to the end of school. Then at the end of school I was told I would grow out of it. I went through College, and then Uni. During Uni I screwed up with my concentration and failed my degree (Note at this point I was under the impression that ADHD ended at 16 and I had not been dx'ed as having Aspergers). Then after completing my HND (I could have re-sat my degree had it been due to disability that I failed it - unfortunatly I didn't know I was disabled at the time), it was finally my Venture Scout Leader who told me I have Aspergers. It then took me nearly 2 years to get a diagnosis of Asperger's, and then after that I found out that ADHD does continue into adults (despite what some idiots in the NHS believe), and now apparently the doctor is referring me to someone to assess me in 3 weeks time. Also it is quite funny that you should say that Concerta is unlicenced for adults, when I read a report from Cambridge University about how Ritalin can be used by adults with Asperger's Syndrome to control concentration. Also it's even more funny that despite Drs saying that ADHD doesn't continue into adulthood, why the hell are the NHS wasting so much money with two centres dedicated to adult ADHD?? and why does every other country admit that ADHD does continue into adulthood? The main reason I've found for this is that people with ADHD go through hyper-focus stages, and then they totally forget about it, so if you tell someone with ADHD that you will refer them to someone about it within 3 weeks, it's ok 'cos in 3 weeks time there concentration wont be on sorting ADHD out anymore but on something else - and that way it saves the NHS from paying out for medication for adults with ADHD.

Hi, just reading your interesting discussion here, I am currently 29 and have both Asperger's and ADHD. I too do not get high motability, only low, and no blue badge. Firstly there is one problem that the DLA seem overlook with me, I can only drive an automatic car as I by trying to drive a manual car with my ADHD causes me to loose concentration on other things (such as the road), and even if I could concentrate for long enough my hand-eye co-ordination causes me problems too. My car is my lifeline, without it I wouldn't be able to go out, before I passed my driving test I used to go on buses and coaches everywhere, I also have siderodromaphobia (fear of trains) so I'm very restricted to what I can travel on. When I get on a bus or coach though I always get very worked up, so worked up that I end up having to call someone to re-assure me, also sometimes on public transport I've been insulted by drivers (especially Warrington Borough Transport), who don't seem to understand the problems faced by someone with ADHD when they get upset and instead ban you from travelling so you end up having to walk home. My car though has to be modified specially so I can drive it (ok an automatic gearbox isn't really a major modification, but it still costs more than a normal car). On top of that with the hand-eye co-ordination issue I struggle to park the car in some places (mainly because I can't always get the car into the narrow parking spaces), also at times I struggle to understand signs and when I come back and find I've got a parking ticket for reading the sign wrong and then have the ticket warden sat there laughing at me that also sets my ADHD off and I end up giving the idiot a mouthful about how I'm disabled, and yet can't get a blue badge because it's not physical but mental. One thing I am really lucky with is the fact I've got a mum with arthiritis who can't drive so she lets me get a car on her motability and let's me use it as my main lifeline, she also has a blue badge however I'd rather continue to collect parking tickets than use her blue badge illegally. The most annoying thing about all of this is the fact that at school I was told I had ADHD but that I'd grow out of it, this information was not passed on to college or Uni (because apparently I'd grown out of it), I failed my degree, then after gaining a HND I finally found out that I have Asperger's and ADHD does continue after childhood. So now I'm 29 working in a really low paid job all because I never received the support I needed to complete my degree (oh and also the other problem I've got is now I'm aware of still having ADHD, I've run up massive credit card bills through impulsive spending during the time when I wasn't aware of ADHD), well thanks alot NHS for messing my life up. Maybe I should sue them! And also the NHS are still messing around as they can't give me medication (Ritalin) for the ADHD until they've fully re-assessed me for it (should be in about 3 weeks, yeah I heard that one before when I found out about Asperger's and I was still waiting 2 years later!). My other problem with driving is the amount of distractions there are on the road for people with ADHD, some areas where I live are getting very dangerous for me to attempt to drive around because there are signs, chicanes, speed bumps and even plants (YES I actually have found a street near where I live that has put plants apparently as a traffic calming measure???) in the middle of the road for me to drive round, obviously the person who puts all these in place doesn't bother for one second to stop to think about people who's attention might be taken away by all these distractions!