Is Astigmatism Causing Your
Night Blindness?

Compromised vision combined with sensitivity to bright headlights when driving at night can cause danger for yourself and others on the road. However, arranging an eye exam can help you identify problems with your eye health to give you the confidence you need to stay safe on the road at night.

Factors that may affect night driving are:

• Astigmatism: a common condition where the cornea is irregularly shaped, causing blurry vision that may worsen when driving at night or in low light conditions.
• Diabetes: High blood sugar can damage nerves and blood vessels in the retina, which may lead to difficulty adjusting vision in different light settings and poor night vision.
• Vitamin Deficiency: Night vision problems can be a result of retinol (vitamin A) deficiency in your diet. Vitamin A helps to produce pigments that help your retina process images correctly.
• LASIK Surgery: After undergoing LASIK surgery, some patients may develop complications, such as seeing halos around objects and glare when looking at bright or dim lights.
• Retinitis Pigmentosa: This is a genetic disorder that damages the retina and can cause vision loss. An early symptom of this is difficulty seeing at night.
• Night Blindness: This is a combination of vision problems that occur at night, such as difficulty adjusting to dim and bright lights.
• Staring at devices with glare or reflection without protecting your eyes
• Cataracts: This condition causes cloudiness of the lens, resulting in blurry vision. Cataracts also cause light from traffic or headlights to dominate your field of vision and appear as a halo or glare. Luckily, night driving after cataract surgery can improve since the cloudy lens is replaced with a clear, artificial lens.

How Night Driving Glasses Can Help

For those whose eyes are sensitive to light and who have difficulty seeing in the dark, night driving may be challenging. One of the biggest issues that affects night driving is glare from headlights and traffic lights. Night driving glare can affect your colour recognition, as well as your depth perception and peripheral vision. Trying to focus your vision when driving through bright or dim lights can cause your eyes to squint or become teary – which can affect how well you drive at night.

If you have difficulty seeing at night, anti-glare coating on your driving lenses can help combat glare and improve your vision. It’s important to note that there is a difference between nonprescription night vision glasses for driving and glasses with anti-reflective coating. Read more about how the two compare below.

Night Driving Glasses

Night driving glasses have non-prescription yellow or amber-tinted lenses and can be purchased over the counter. Yellow-tinted lenses for night driving help to filter out blue light, the light most likely to cause glare when it enters the eye. However, some studies have shown that since yellow-tinted lens for night driving block light from entering your eye, they can actually reduce visibility. Visual tests from these studies indicated that night glasses don’t improve night vision. In contrast, they may slightly worsen your night vision.

Anti-Reflective Coated Glasses

Anti-reflective (AR) coating can be added to your prescription glasses to help reduce glare and improve vision in the dark and help with the effects of astigmatism. Using anti-glare driving glasses for night driving can significantly reduce the reflection of light from your glasses, giving you better visibility on the road. This is because the lenses allow more light to be transmitted through them, therefore the amount of light that is reflected is minimal. This reduces all those unwanted halos and glare, allowing you to see more clearly while driving at night.

At Pearle Vision, we want you to have the best vision possible, day or night. If you’re worried about how astigmatism or other factors are affecting your night driving, our eye doctors can help you update your prescription and get AR-coated glasses for night driving.

Our prescription night driving glasses use anti-reflective-coated lenses to help reduce glare that can occur from bright lights outside. Prescription glasses with anti-reflection can:

• Reduce glare by up to 78%
• Offer UV protection
• Be scratch resistant

Whether you prefer large frames or cat-eye glasses, find the style you love with our broad collection of designer brands, such as Ray-Ban, Oakley, Coach, Vogue, and more. Find the perfect pair of prescription glasses for night driving with the help of our highly trained eye care experts and regain the confidence you need to get back on the road.

With many types of anti-reflective lenses to choose from, our eye care experts can help you find the perfect pair for your night driving glasses. Arrange an appointment at your neighbourhood Pearle Vision EyeCare Centre to update your prescription.

Sources:
https://www.healthline.com/health/vision-night-blindness https://www.healthline.com/health/night-driving-glasses#do-they-work