“At the wheel, vision is life,” is a slogan that the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) popularized decades ago when launching a campaign to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining attention and concentration on the road. We must not forget that 80% of the decisions we make when driving reach our brain through sight. Therefore, if vision is not adequate, the chances of suffering an accident are very high.
This perception is held by the majority of people who get behind the wheel. According to the conclusions of the Vision and Driving study released by the DGT in its magazine Traffic and Road Safety, 97% of drivers admit that the possibility of having a traffic accident is greater if their vision is not correct. Furthermore, 95% consider that driving when you don't look good is even more dangerous than doing so after drinking alcohol, using a cell phone or speeding.
Visual problems affect almost 80% of the population of Spain, according to the report La Visión en España 2020. The data from the study in which Fesvial (Foundation for Road Safety) participates delve into other considerations: 30% of citizens suffers at least two vision problems and 14% suffers three, which in the case of drivers represents an important issue when having to be attentive to everything around them. The main disorders are presbyopia (42%), myopia (39%), astigmatism (39%) and hyperopia (18%).
In most cases, vision problems can be resolved with the proper use of glasses or contact lenses. However, despite this available solution, many people choose not to wear corrective lenses when driving, and others prefer pre-fitted glasses, an inexpensive option that is easily found in opticians and pharmacies, although they do not always suit their visual needs. specific.
These glasses are usually designed primarily for close reading, so they are generally worn by nearsighted people. But there are people who can drive with them to see from afar, even if this is not the initial purpose. This is the case of hyperopic people. Although these glasses are designed for close reading, they can compensate for your difficulty focusing on close objects when wearing them, allowing you to clearly see distant objects while driving, even though this is not their primary function.
“Hyperopes can drive with glasses to see up close, but not myopes,” says ophthalmologist José María Pérez, representative of the Council of Spanish Doctors in Road Safety. And he gives the following example: “A child who is born with farsightedness will perhaps have one and a half positive diopters and will spend his entire youth with one and a half positive diopters. Now, another person without these vision problems may need this diopter and a half to correct their vision at age 50. For him it is a pair of glasses up close, but for the kid who was born with that prescription and uses them to see in the distance, he can use them to drive.”
However, Dr. Pérez warns that pre-assembled glasses have an important limitation. The fundamental problem is that the two crystals are the same. “Many people have a difference in vision between one eye and the other, either due to natural variations or conditions such as astigmatism, where the eye, in its embryonic formation, can develop an ovoid shape instead of round. Consequently, with store-bought glasses, this astigmatism is not adequately corrected.”
The specialist emphasizes the need to carry out periodic examinations, especially from the age of 45, with a recommended frequency of two years. “There are a series of eye diseases that occur without pain. But they do so by decreasing vision and in some cases they can lead to blindness.” One of these diseases is glaucoma.
In this sense, the doctor recalls that it is estimated that there are two-thirds of glaucomatous patients undiagnosed. “It is essential to carry out awareness campaigns so that people monitor their visual acuity at home and go for diagnosis and treatment if they notice a decrease. Glaucoma is a progressive disease that gradually affects vision and can go unnoticed until vision loss is irreversible. “Treatment can stop its progression, but once vision is lost, it cannot be regained.”
