Autistic Adults Experience Higher PTSD Symptoms Relating to Motor Vehicle Accidents than Non-Autistic Adults.
Car crashes leave autistic adults with sharper PTSD and more therapy visits—screen and refer right after the accident report.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Melegari et al. (2025) asked autistic and non-autistic adults about car-crash trauma. They used an online survey that measured PTSD symptoms tied only to motor vehicle accidents.
The team also asked who had gone to therapy or received a PTSD diagnosis after a crash. This let them compare mental-health service use between the two groups.
What they found
Autistic adults reported much higher PTSD symptoms after car crashes than non-autistic adults. They also sought therapy and got a PTSD diagnosis more often.
The study shows that a traffic accident can hit autistic adults harder, emotionally, than it hits neurotypical drivers.
How this fits with other research
Bauminger-Zviely et al. (2020) first showed that autistic adults have eight times the usual rate of PTSD, mostly from social trauma. Melegari et al. (2025) narrows the trigger to car crashes and finds the same pattern, so the two studies line up.
Sawyer et al. (2014) found that autistic drivers already rack up more tickets and crashes. That crash risk gives them more chances to develop the PTSD that G et al. now describe.
Anthony et al. (2020) saw driving anxiety in autistic teens during simulator lessons. G et al. show that the anxiety can bloom into full PTSD after a real crash, connecting lab worry to later clinical need.
Why it matters
If you serve autistic adults, add one quick PTSD screen to your intake after any traffic incident. Ask about nightmares, avoidance of cars, or jumpy feelings. Early referral for trauma care can stop a small fender-bender from turning into months of avoidance that cost your client their job or independence.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
PURPOSE: Autistic adults experience high rates of traumatic events and PTSD. However, little work has evaluated motor vehicle accident (MVA) related trauma symptoms. The goal of this brief report was to provide pilot data characterizing MVA-related peritraumatic reactions, trauma symptoms, and rates of PTSD diagnosis and mental health service use among Autistic compared to non-autistic adults. METHOD: Participants were 637 adults in the United States (276 Autistic, 361 non-autistic) who completed an online survey assessing MVA experiences. Participants provided information about peritraumatic reactions to the accident, and whether they were diagnosed with PTSD or sought mental health services relating to the MVA. Participants also completed the Posttraumatic Symptom Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) in relation to the worst MVA experienced. RESULTS: 48.7% of Autistic adults had experienced an MVA relative to 64.5% of non-autistic adults. Of those who experienced an MVA, Autistic adults reported higher peritraumatic dissociative reactions, and higher MVA-related total, negative mood/cognition, and hypervigilance PTSD symptoms than non-autistic adults, when adjusting for covariates. Autistic adults were significantly more likely to have sought mental health treatment relating to the MVA (11.9% compared to 0.9% of non-autistic adults), and to have received a PTSD diagnosis relating to the MVA (5.9% compared to 0.4% of non-autistic adults). CONCLUSION: Autistic adults reported higher levels of trauma-related sequalae in response to MVAs than non-autistic adults. Future research should examine MVA-related trauma in more diverse samples, and develop assessment and support strategies to better identify, prevent, and reduce trauma-related symptoms post MVAs for Autistic people.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.1002/jclp.22612