Citation

Wood JM, Collins MJ, Chaparro A, Marszalek R, Carberry T, Lacherez PF, Chu BS. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2014; 55(4): 2284-2289.

Affiliation

School of Optometry and Vision Science, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Rd, Kelvin Grove Q, Brisbane, 4059, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology)

DOI

10.1167/iovs.13-13369

PMID

24618322

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the effect of different levels of refractive blur on real-world driving performance measured under day and night-time conditions. METHODS: Participants included 12 visually normal, young adults (mean age=25.8 ± 5.2 years) who drove an instrumented research vehicle around a 4 km closed road circuit with 3 different levels of binocular spherical refractive blur (+0.50 DS, +1.00 DS, +2.00 DS) compared to a baseline condition. The subjects wore optimal sphero-cylinder correction and the additional blur lenses were mounted in modified full-field goggles; the order of testing of the blur conditions was randomized. Driving performance was assessed in two different sessions under day and night-time conditions and included measures of road signs recognized, hazard detection and avoidance, gap detection, lane-keeping, sign recognition distance, speed, and time to complete the course. RESULTS: Refractive blur and time of day had significant effects on driving performance (p<0.05), where increasing blur and night-time driving reduced performance on all driving tasks except gap judgment and lane keeping. There was also a significant interaction between blur and time of day (p<0.05), such that the effects of blur were exacerbated under night-time driving conditions; performance differences were evident even for +0.50 DS blur relative to baseline for some measures. CONCLUSIONS: The effects of blur were greatest under night-time conditions, even for levels of binocular refractive blur as low as +0.50 DS. These results emphasise the importance of accurate and up-to-date refractive correction of even low levels of refractive error when driving at night.

Language: en