Is your eyesight affecting your driving?
While many eye problems can occur at any age, they often are more common in older individuals. Unfortunately, ageing also increases your risk for certain types of sight-threatening eye conditions that can lead to blindness. And given that age-related degenerative eye diseases are the major causes of blindness and vision loss in Australia, regular eye exams as you age are important to monitor how your eyesight might change and also how this could affect certain activities like driving.
These steps can help you maintain healthy eyes and clear vision, along with a good driving record:
Annual eye examinations
Your optometrist or ophthalmologist can make sure your eyes don't show any serious age-related changes such as macular degeneration. Also, with certain common eye conditions such as presbyopia, your eyeglasses prescription may need more frequent changes to help you maintain optimum eyesight.
Consider special eyeglasses
Anti-reflective coatings can cut down on glare. Also, lenses developed with wavefront diagnostic technology may be able to reduce halos, starbursts, glare and other problems caused by eye aberrations.
Drive slow at night
As we get older, our pupils get smaller and don't dilate as quickly in the dark. Because of this and other normal age-related changes in the eye, only about one-third as much ambient light reaches your retinas in your 60s, compared with when you were in your 20s. This loss of light transmittance significantly reduces night vision, which is why you should reduce your driving speed at night to compensate.
Let others be your safety gauge
The best way to assess your driving is by the reaction of those around you. If you notice honking horns, worried loved ones, warnings from police and blinding headlights it might suggest you need to get your eyes tested or look at why you’re your driving skills aren’t what they used to be.