Good vision key to making roads safer

Eyecare practitioners are urging people to have their vision checked in a bid to make the nations roads safer.

While this year’s national holiday road toll was lower than last year, Dr Richard Smith, Sydney ophthalmologist and spokesperson for Sight for Life, said more needs to be done to highlight the problems associated with vision impairment and driving fatalities, and encourage people to have their vision tested.

“It is all about eliminating the factors that lead to road accidents. We know poor vision is a factor and by addressing that we can impact the road toll,” he said.

Dr Smith said there are a number of vision factors that are vital for safe driving.

“Distance acuity – the ability to focus and see clearly at far distance – is probably the most important vision requirement for driving. Poor distance acuity becomes more and more dangerous as speed increases and time to react diminishes.

“Depth perception is necessary in order to accurately judge distances between moving objects. Like poor distance acuity, depth perception deficiencies worsen as speed increases.

“Field of vision is also very important when driving as it is desirable to view a wide area without much movement of eyes or head. Normally the field of vision is about 180 degrees enabling a driver to see cross road traffic and pedestrians at the roadside without looking away from the road ahead. It is reduced with increasing speed and is only 40 degrees at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour.”

Dr Smith said vision testing and correction are very important preventative measures that can be undertaken to remove yet another factor in road accidents.

Eyecare practitioners are encouraging people to do the simple one minute quiz at www.sightforlife.net and to consult an eyecare practitioner for a formal eye test.