Vision Tips for Safe Night Driving

Dr. Mohammed Kamil Mohammed In its 2007 technical report entitled Road Transport Lighting for Developing Countries, the International Commission on Illumination (ICE) reports that ,a global survey of road safety made at the turn of the century has estimated that between 750 and 880 thousand people die each year in road accidents, and that between 23 and 34 million are injured. Only 14% of these deaths take place in the highly motorised countries of the world in Europe, North America and Japan. The great majorities, some 86%, occur outside these regions, with Asia accounting for nearly half the total. In Ghana, we have been told by the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) that the great majority of deaths from road accidents happen in the night. This is not surprising because under poor illumination, nuances of driving become pretty much exaggerated and exposes all road users to accident. We are able to see through the agency of light. When light is diminished or absent, our visual system reacts in such weird ways that our behaviours and interpretation of the environment is altered in a significant way. One such behaviour is night-time driving! The following tips are therefore meant to help improve night-time visibility and thereby enhance night-time road safety. The most essential aspects of safe night driving are good vision and healthy eyes. Under reduced illumination, drivers safety and that of passengers depend on the drivers eyes. Any existing eye condition or disease is bound to make night driving very risky. If you are aided to drive by the use of prescribed lens or contact lens, it is important that you have regular review of such prescriptions. Clean your pair of lenses thoroughly before hitting the road at night. Avoid sunlight if you intend driving in the night. Too much exposure to ordinary sunlight prior to night driving can cause dark adaptation to start far later than usual such that normal night vision is not achieved until several hours later than usual. This implies that the induced night myopia due to the poor illumination is further degraded at night. Night myopia simply means that, if you are trying to see something a few meters away in the dark, your eyes focusing

mechanism will refuse to oblige because of the absence of visual stimulus. Therefore this spontaneous loss of focusing power at far further reduces visual confidence as to what motorist is looking at in darkness. Hence obstacle identification is severely impaired. Visual field is restricted while driving at night due to the reduced night luminance. This is made worse by the largely featureless nature of most of our roads. While driving at night motorists can expand their visual field by a combination of good scanning skills and intermittent head turn, left, right, up and down as the situation permits. Before starting out on night driving, motorist should clean the windshield both inside and outside thoroughly. They should inspect the integrity of the windshield. Debris and cracks on or within the windscreen can amplify reflections from oncoming vehicles which can in turn give rise to ghost images at night. Vehicle lighting serves two purposes namely, lighting to see and lighting to be seen. Ensure that vehicle headlights are properly aligned and tail lights are functioning. Ensure that luminaires (casings) for these lights are not faded so that they serve their purpose better. Where oncoming lights cause glare, motorist may consider closing one eye while keeping the other eye on the road. This way and while the exposed eye is struggling to dark adapt after the exposure, motorist could still maintain some degree of good vision through the unexposed eye. It is apparently for conditions such as this that DVLA regulations require motorist to have good vision in both eyes before passing driver licensing test. Another challenge of night-time driving is what is broadly termed as visual illusions. Though pilots are more prone to experiencing these visual illusions, their effects on drivers is no less hazardeous. The two most common of this illusion are autokinetic effect and black hole illusions. Autokinetic effect is a visual perception of stationary target, dot or lighting in the dark that seems to move about. Perception of motion is always relative to the surrounding references or cues. But in the dark or featureless environment there is no reference point/cue and therefore stationary light source or target appears to move about. This phenomenon can also occur when there are two dim lights such as that of a dark coloured vehicle parked on the road and in the dark with only its faded parking lights left on. But it would normally disappear

when the eyes can see three or multiple lights. Autokinetic effect is exacerbated especially when one is tired and taillights begin to jump around in random motion at night. Drivers on night driving can easily mistake a stationary vehicle for a moving vehicle. Autokinetic effect can also lead to poor distance perception as well as spatial disorientation with fatal consequences. Autokinetic effect can be reduced by avoiding staring at lamp posts or oncoming-lights head-on. If a motorist experiences this illusion she/he is advised to turn the highlights on and off a couple of times while carefully scanning the driving environment. Since our highways are generally poorly lit, additional lighting accessories can be added to vehicles to obviate or minimise the incidence of this phenomenon. Black hole illusion occurs when a driver surveys an unlit road from an elevated point (such as when initiating a mountain descent) at night or deep overcast skies. Without the needed spatial cues for visual stability to help her/him read the road situation ahead, the effect is akin to looking into unlit hole. And drivers may briefly tend to perceive that their vehicle is stationary or falling into a bottomless pit or valley. Black hole illusion can easily give rise to disorientation on the road. And once disoriented, a driver may easily veer off the road. Motorists are thus cautioned to be aware of these visual illusions and exercise greater caution when driving at night. Just as drink driving increases the risk of road accident, so does smoke driving or smoking while driving at night! Smoking makes eye dry and it is additive to the dryness caused by the strong wind blowing across a drivers face while driving. This can cause serious distraction for safe driving .Besides, smoke can form tiny films on windscreen and spectacles which in turn reduces contrast. Contrast is the single most critical visual function under poor illumination. Road safety activity is a multi-faceted exercise and calls for the collective contributions of a wide range of people with different skills and specialization. The above, has thus been a humble contribution to help improve our road accident record. Dr. Mohammed Kamil Mohammed Optometrist (e-mail:mohammed24mohammed@gmail.com)