Prescription Glasses - Struggling driving at night. 1 December 2021 at 8:33PM in Health & beauty MoneySaving 2 replies 161 views

RealBobbyDazzler

I’ve normally driven in lenses but struggling with my astigmatism getting worse, and even after a few visits to the opticians my lenses seem to go off my eye when tired & just blurry.

I bought myself a nice pair of glasses with anti-glare & transitions gen 8 lenses.. The lenses visually look clear at night, but my night vision is terrible - I’m actually slightly worried driving, I’ve been back to the opticians and they say my prescription is correct.

I’m 29, and my day vision is fine - just seem to be suffering with night blindness.

Is anyone else the same or have any tips, or have had the same issue with transitions lenses (they’re gen 8 so look crystal clear and not tinted at night) or with anti glare.

Thanks

Floss

When I had transitions lenses I was told not to wear them for night driving. I find that I struggle on unlit roads at night, witbvarifocals & astigmatism in one eye.

Undervalued

RealBobbyDazzler said:

I’ve normally driven in lenses but struggling with my astigmatism getting worse, and even after a few visits to the opticians my lenses seem to go off my eye when tired & just blurry.

I bought myself a nice pair of glasses with anti-glare & transitions gen 8 lenses.. The lenses visually look clear at night, but my night vision is terrible - I’m actually slightly worried driving, I’ve been back to the opticians and they say my prescription is correct.

I’m 29, and my day vision is fine - just seem to be suffering with night blindness.

Is anyone else the same or have any tips, or have had the same issue with transitions lenses (they’re gen 8 so look crystal clear and not tinted at night) or with anti glare.

Thanks

They may look clear at night but I bet if you could measure them with an instrument you would find that they still absorb significantly more light than ordinary lenses. 

Obviously the less light that reaches your eyes, the wider your pupils and therefore the less depth of field you have. Keeping both your glasses and the car windscreen spotlessly clean with help to some extent.

If you have ever seen spectacle lenses (even so called scratch resistant ones) under a microscope you would be horrified at how scratched they rapidly become.

Varifocals (which I wear most of the time) add to your problems because depending on how well they have been setup, how well they still fit and your seating and head position you may well not be looking through the correct part of the lens and be partly into the mid range portion of the varifocal. In bright daylight conditions you wouldn't notice because you would have far more depth of field. At night it becomes a problem.

All varifocals distort to some extent when you look from side to side without turning you head the full amount. The expensive ones do this less but there is a trade off. If you have a significant difference between your two eyes they can sometimes be worse than more basis lenses.

Even with non varifocal lenses, if your eyes are significantly different, the two images the brain gets are different sizes. At night that can be a problem for some people. This effect is far less with contact lenses but obviously they can have other issues and not everybody gets on with them.

I suspect you probably have a little bit of all of these problems added together.