Kamiel Mallens · 11 October 2026 · 3 min read
If your licence expires on or after your 75th birthday, renewing it always involves a health declaration. Usually that is where it ends, with a check by a doctor. Sometimes the CBR then asks for a driving assessment. What that involves, and how to prepare for it, is explained here.
Start in good time
You complete the health declaration through Mijn CBR and then have a doctor examine you. The CBR advises starting about four months before your licence expires; around that time you also receive a letter from the RDW. From 75, a new licence is valid for at most five years each time, or shorter if the CBR decides so.
When the CBR asks for an assessment
A CBR doctor decides, based on your declaration and the medical check. The question is whether a condition affects driving: seeing, for example with reduced vision or a limited field of view; thinking, such as with memory problems or after brain injury; or acting, with a physical limitation. Why you need an assessment is stated in the letter you receive from the CBR.
How the assessment goes
An assessment is not a driving test. You start with an introductory conversation with the CBR expert, then you drive for 30 to 45 minutes, and you finish with a conversation: 60 or 90 minutes in total. The expert sets the route and gives tasks that suit your situation. Bring your licence and the confirmation of your appointment.
You hear straight away how it went. The decision then comes from the CBR doctor, by post or email: you may keep driving, you may drive with measures such as glasses or an adapted car, another assessment follows, or you may no longer drive. There are at most three assessments in total.
In your own car or in a lesson car
Most people take the test in their own car; you book that yourself through Mijn CBR. Sometimes the CBR requires a lesson car. Then you contact a driving school within four weeks, and the school books the assessment for you using the product code and relationship number from your invitation. No authorisation is needed, and the test must take place within six months of the invitation. The assessment itself is free; for a lesson car you only pay the rental.
Preparing helps
Anyone who has driven for decades drives on routine. That is a strength, but also a pitfall: traffic rules change, cycle streets and turbo roundabouts have appeared, and small habits creep in. In a few refresher lessons an instructor looks along with you at observation, right of way and dividing your attention, and you take the test in a car you already know by then.
At Rijschool de Baronie in Breda you can do that with single lessons or a refresher course of four lessons, and you can take the assessment in our lesson car with dual controls. How that works and what it costs is at guidance for the CBR driving assessment. Rather talk it through first? Get in touch.
