Law and everyday life
Law and everyday life
The prescription answers the medical question. It does not answer the ones that follow: may I drive? What happens at a roadside check? Can I travel? These questions get asked across the borders and are answered quite differently in the three countries — and here a mistake costs not money but the driving licence.
Driving — three countries, three systems
The diagram above is kept in German because it is a drawn figure rather than copy. It reads: Germany applies a limit of 3.5 ng/ml with an exception for patients holding a medical prescription (§ 24a Abs. 4 StVG); Austria has no limit and no comparable exception, working instead from the impaired state under § 5 Abs. 1 StVO; Switzerland applies zero tolerance from a detection limit of 1.5 µg/L with an exception for patients holding a medical prescription (Art. 2 Abs. 2ter VRV). The caption underneath adds that all three exceptions end where actual unfitness to drive begins — no prescription permits driving while intoxicated — and that in all three countries the licensing authority's procedure runs separately from the criminal or administrative-fine proceedings.
Germany
Patients are exempt from the THC limit — but not from criminal liability if they are in fact unfit to drive.
Austria
Austria has no THC limit. What counts is being impaired — established by a medical examination.
Switzerland
Zero tolerance — with an explicit exception for patients.
The short version, because it is so often confused: Germany has a limit and exempts patients from it. Switzerland has zero tolerance and exempts patients from it. Austria has no limit at all — there the medical examination decides, and there is no exception in that sense.
Travel
Within the Schengen area you travel with a certificate under Article 75 of the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement. Who issues and authenticates it differs by country — in Germany the supreme health authority of the federal state, in Austria the public health officer of the district administrative authority, in Switzerland the pharmacy.
At a police check
- Carry the evidence with you. The prescription or the pharmacy label bearing your name, ideally together with a short medical certificate confirming the ongoing therapy. The exception for patients applies only where use as directed can be evidenced — in German higher-court decisions of 2026 it failed on exactly that point.
- Say that you are in treatment. Concealing it does not help; the laboratory analysis will find it anyway.
- The exception does not protect against being unfit to drive. Anyone who drives while actually impaired commits an offence regardless of any prescription. No prescription permits driving while intoxicated.
- Administrative and criminal proceedings are separate. Even where fine proceedings are discontinued, the driving licence authority can take steps of its own. Anyone affected should seek a lawyer, not a forum.