6 ms·

I've almost given up on night driving. These super bright headlights really really messes with my astigmatisms (both eyes) with either my corrective contact or

by vuln 4y ago

I've almost given up on night driving. These super bright headlights really really messes with my astigmatisms (both eyes) with either my corrective contact or normal glasses. Anyone else in a similar boat that's found relief? I haven't tried night driving glasses.

tylerag 4y ago
I've heard anecdotally to just get super bright headlights on your own vehicle. That way your eyes are already adjusted to the brightness. I don't know what to if you have a conscience, though.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  At least for me, it isn't really a matter of eye adjustment. I still get halos and whatnot against the dark sky and environment.
- Avshalom 4y ago
  the less sociopathic version of this is to drive with your cabin lights on.
- yetihehe 4y ago
  Retroreflecting band covering upper side of your windshield? This way anyone who shines his lights too high will be blinded with his own reflected light. Doubly so if he tries flashing actual high beams.
  - cnelsenmilt 4y ago
    Tempting, but then maybe you're escalating blindness into a head-on collision...
- AlanYx 4y ago
  That's not a good solution in my experience. I recently purchased a vehicle whose stock headlights (properly height adjusted) are overly bright, and when you're stopped in traffic right behind a vehicle with a white license plate, a significant portion of that light gets reflected right back into your eyes by the white plate. Basically it ends up punishing yourself too. These days I do all my city driving with headlights off (just the daytime running lights) for this reason.
vanilla_nut 4y ago
I haven't found a solution yet. But I find this especially crippling when our country also forces us to drive to do literally anything, even go for a walk. Particularly during the wintertime, it's crippling my ability to go anywhere or do anything.
- abcc8 4y ago
  The only solution I can think of is for myself to buy a lifted truck or other similar unnecessarily large vehicle. I haven't done this, of course, but if I did I'd then be part of the problem but at least my eye line would be above that of the majority of other drivers. We have a sedan and a small SUV - I don't drive the sedan at night ever because of the headlight problem. My eyes hurt just thinking about this.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  There are places in the US where that's not true. You made the personal decision not to live in one of them.
  - srcreigh 4y ago
    Such as?
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    Actually I made a personal decision to live in a walkable place. Repeatedly. But of course people still insist on driving their cars (often dangerously) in my area, regardless of how walkable that place is. Please share some walkable, bikeable places in the USA here. I really want to live in one but my research reveals very few options where you aren't extremely likely to be run over by a vehicle if you dare to walk or bike exclusively, especially at night. My criteria requires a grocery store, a coffee shop, and some kind of watering hole with food (brewery or pub) an easy walk from my door. It's amazing how few of those places exist in the USA, and how expensive they can be when you find one.
  - happytoexplain 4y ago
    When arguing about societal/legal/political things that have anything to do with location, people frequently imply that there is no friction to picking where you live or moving. As if people are born into the world as adults and the first thing they do is pick from a list of every available home in the country in their price range, with infinite time and information to make their choice, and then they and their job and family and friends and possessions are all teleported there. And they can do this again as often as they want at any point. It's frankly nuts. "Uncharitable" and "oversimplified" are not really strong enough words for how dramatic the fallacy of "just live somewhere else" is.
foxyv 4y ago
Mostly I just don't drive at night. I'll take my e-bike or moped instead if I need to grab groceries. Also I'm really good about keeping my windshield clean and polished. About to replace my 10 year old windshield with a new one soon to reduce pitting. I also bought a dash mat to reduce the internal glare. But sometimes, you just can't do anything about taking 10_000 lumens to the retina except slow down and pull over.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I agree about keeping the windshield clean - that helps a lot. I don't really have the option of not driving in the dark - for most of winter it's dark well past when I need to drive to the office, and too cold for me to want to take public transit (which would also require me to wake up an hour earlier). I think it needs to be well regulated and well enforced by police. Nothing else will work.
  - foxyv 4y ago
    I agree. Roadside inspections and fix-it tickets would make a lot of sense. Most people won't spend a cent on maintenance unless they absolutely have to.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I'm in the same boat, no relief found, though. Do your lenses correct astigmatism?
- vuln 4y ago
  Yes, both my contacts and glasses correct, but it doesn't appear to make a difference.
SilasX 4y ago
Expensive solution, but … LASIK fixed it for me. Edit: I had astigmatism in one eye as well.
- vuln 4y ago
  Yep, no thanks. Not even for free when the military offered it to me as a carrot to reenlist. You only have one set of eyes. There are no guaranteed results. I have blue eyes and astigmatisms which I was told by multiple doctors could affect the results. I've met more than a couple people that have had chronic dry eye and other issues after their LASIK. I'm totally fine with my glasses and rare use of contacts. I'm not gambling my only set of eyes with perhaps half my life left on this planet.
- adrenvi 4y ago
  LASIK is known for causing night vision difficulties e.g. bright lights causing starburst patterns or halos. This can happen when the pupil widens to the point where light is entering the eye from both the corrected and uncorrected areas of the cornea. I think the issue decreases over time as the eye heals but in some cases it can remain as a long-term side effect. https://lasikcomplications.com/starbursting.htm https://lasikcomplications.com/starbursting.htm
  - SilasX 4y ago
    Right, for a month or so I saw halos around lights at but then they went away. But definitely a risk to be aware of. I had a friend who was considering LASIK by doing one eye at a time to reduce the possible downside.
officeplant 4y ago
I started driving cargo vans that both sit me up straight and put me higher than a lot of the traffic. Also the lack of rear windows is pretty nice for when you're in front of a new F350 riding your ass in the slow lane.
msluyter 4y ago
I have keratoconus and scleral contact lenses reduce the flaring enough to make night driving possible.
madduci 4y ago
If possible, I avoid driving at night. Even if the article is focused on US status, also in Europe it's becoming a nightmare, especially if you see big trucks mounting also super-bright LEDs and everyone has Xenon/LEDs nowadays
buffington 4y ago
I avoid driving at night because of other people's headlights. My wife as well, and we're in our 40s. We've just assumed it's because our eyes are getting old and tired, but reading comments in this thread suggest it has less to do with that and more to do with an actual universal problem. I've often thought of how cool it'd be to have a transparent LCD windshield that could use an eye tracking camera and a forward facing camera to calculate where to best draw an opaque circle in your line of sight so that'd it block the most intense points of light. Sort of like holding your thumb up to block the light, just automatically and for multiple points of light.
- nolanhergert89 4y ago
  There doesn't exist an addressable transparent LCD yet in mass quantities. But I'm working on a dimmed piece of plastic moving around on a stage. The computer vision is sorta straightforward actually.
gnyman 4y ago
Have you tried yellow tinted glasses? I found it helped me a lot. I think night driving glasses are supposed to do the same, filter out the blue light but not sure if they do it as effectively as yellow lenses, maybe try both?
- vuln 4y ago
  I have not. Do you have any solid recommendations?
  - gnyman 4y ago
    sadly no, I just had a pair lying around at home which I got for biking I believe, they are unbranded plastic ones. But I don't think it matters as long as they are yellow :-) In the other thread someone mentioned that normal "blue light" glasses do not work which is too bad, so maybe just grab some cheap plastic yellow glasses and see if they help. If they don't I'd like to hear so I can update my recommendation and try to figure out why mine work so well.
matthew28845 4y ago
Window tint? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Doxin 4y ago
Make sure your glasses and windscreen are very clean and free of stripes from wiping them. It'll not help with the astigmatism, but at least the glasses and the windscreen aren't making it worse. Another thing to try is the various kinds of night glasses, My mom swears by those. As a last resort you can try untinted polarized sunglasses. While those do make your view less bright they also make it lower contrast which might help.

by vuln 4y ago

tylerag 4y ago

I've heard anecdotally to just get super bright headlights on your own vehicle. That way your eyes are already adjusted to the brightness. I don't know what to if you have a conscience, though.

heavyset_go 4y ago
At least for me, it isn't really a matter of eye adjustment. I still get halos and whatnot against the dark sky and environment.
Avshalom 4y ago
the less sociopathic version of this is to drive with your cabin lights on.
yetihehe 4y ago
Retroreflecting band covering upper side of your windshield? This way anyone who shines his lights too high will be blinded with his own reflected light. Doubly so if he tries flashing actual high beams.
- cnelsenmilt 4y ago
  Tempting, but then maybe you're escalating blindness into a head-on collision...
AlanYx 4y ago
That's not a good solution in my experience. I recently purchased a vehicle whose stock headlights (properly height adjusted) are overly bright, and when you're stopped in traffic right behind a vehicle with a white license plate, a significant portion of that light gets reflected right back into your eyes by the white plate. Basically it ends up punishing yourself too. These days I do all my city driving with headlights off (just the daytime running lights) for this reason.

vanilla_nut 4y ago

I haven't found a solution yet. But I find this especially crippling when our country also forces us to drive to do literally anything, even go for a walk. Particularly during the wintertime, it's crippling my ability to go anywhere or do anything.

abcc8 4y ago
The only solution I can think of is for myself to buy a lifted truck or other similar unnecessarily large vehicle. I haven't done this, of course, but if I did I'd then be part of the problem but at least my eye line would be above that of the majority of other drivers. We have a sedan and a small SUV - I don't drive the sedan at night ever because of the headlight problem. My eyes hurt just thinking about this.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
There are places in the US where that's not true. You made the personal decision not to live in one of them.
- srcreigh 4y ago
  Such as?
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Actually I made a personal decision to live in a walkable place. Repeatedly. But of course people still insist on driving their cars (often dangerously) in my area, regardless of how walkable that place is. Please share some walkable, bikeable places in the USA here. I really want to live in one but my research reveals very few options where you aren't extremely likely to be run over by a vehicle if you dare to walk or bike exclusively, especially at night. My criteria requires a grocery store, a coffee shop, and some kind of watering hole with food (brewery or pub) an easy walk from my door. It's amazing how few of those places exist in the USA, and how expensive they can be when you find one.
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  When arguing about societal/legal/political things that have anything to do with location, people frequently imply that there is no friction to picking where you live or moving. As if people are born into the world as adults and the first thing they do is pick from a list of every available home in the country in their price range, with infinite time and information to make their choice, and then they and their job and family and friends and possessions are all teleported there. And they can do this again as often as they want at any point. It's frankly nuts. "Uncharitable" and "oversimplified" are not really strong enough words for how dramatic the fallacy of "just live somewhere else" is.

foxyv 4y ago

Mostly I just don't drive at night. I'll take my e-bike or moped instead if I need to grab groceries. Also I'm really good about keeping my windshield clean and polished. About to replace my 10 year old windshield with a new one soon to reduce pitting. I also bought a dash mat to reduce the internal glare. But sometimes, you just can't do anything about taking 10_000 lumens to the retina except slow down and pull over.

LegitShady 4y ago
I agree about keeping the windshield clean - that helps a lot. I don't really have the option of not driving in the dark - for most of winter it's dark well past when I need to drive to the office, and too cold for me to want to take public transit (which would also require me to wake up an hour earlier). I think it needs to be well regulated and well enforced by police. Nothing else will work.
- foxyv 4y ago
  I agree. Roadside inspections and fix-it tickets would make a lot of sense. Most people won't spend a cent on maintenance unless they absolutely have to.

heavyset_go 4y ago

I'm in the same boat, no relief found, though. Do your lenses correct astigmatism?

vuln 4y ago
Yes, both my contacts and glasses correct, but it doesn't appear to make a difference.

SilasX 4y ago

Expensive solution, but … LASIK fixed it for me. Edit: I had astigmatism in one eye as well.

vuln 4y ago
Yep, no thanks. Not even for free when the military offered it to me as a carrot to reenlist. You only have one set of eyes. There are no guaranteed results. I have blue eyes and astigmatisms which I was told by multiple doctors could affect the results. I've met more than a couple people that have had chronic dry eye and other issues after their LASIK. I'm totally fine with my glasses and rare use of contacts. I'm not gambling my only set of eyes with perhaps half my life left on this planet.
adrenvi 4y ago
LASIK is known for causing night vision difficulties e.g. bright lights causing starburst patterns or halos. This can happen when the pupil widens to the point where light is entering the eye from both the corrected and uncorrected areas of the cornea. I think the issue decreases over time as the eye heals but in some cases it can remain as a long-term side effect. https://lasikcomplications.com/starbursting.htm https://lasikcomplications.com/starbursting.htm
- SilasX 4y ago
  Right, for a month or so I saw halos around lights at but then they went away. But definitely a risk to be aware of. I had a friend who was considering LASIK by doing one eye at a time to reduce the possible downside.

officeplant 4y ago

I started driving cargo vans that both sit me up straight and put me higher than a lot of the traffic. Also the lack of rear windows is pretty nice for when you're in front of a new F350 riding your ass in the slow lane.

msluyter 4y ago

I have keratoconus and scleral contact lenses reduce the flaring enough to make night driving possible.

madduci 4y ago

If possible, I avoid driving at night. Even if the article is focused on US status, also in Europe it's becoming a nightmare, especially if you see big trucks mounting also super-bright LEDs and everyone has Xenon/LEDs nowadays

buffington 4y ago

I avoid driving at night because of other people's headlights. My wife as well, and we're in our 40s. We've just assumed it's because our eyes are getting old and tired, but reading comments in this thread suggest it has less to do with that and more to do with an actual universal problem. I've often thought of how cool it'd be to have a transparent LCD windshield that could use an eye tracking camera and a forward facing camera to calculate where to best draw an opaque circle in your line of sight so that'd it block the most intense points of light. Sort of like holding your thumb up to block the light, just automatically and for multiple points of light.

nolanhergert89 4y ago
There doesn't exist an addressable transparent LCD yet in mass quantities. But I'm working on a dimmed piece of plastic moving around on a stage. The computer vision is sorta straightforward actually.

gnyman 4y ago

Have you tried yellow tinted glasses? I found it helped me a lot. I think night driving glasses are supposed to do the same, filter out the blue light but not sure if they do it as effectively as yellow lenses, maybe try both?

vuln 4y ago
I have not. Do you have any solid recommendations?
- gnyman 4y ago
  sadly no, I just had a pair lying around at home which I got for biking I believe, they are unbranded plastic ones. But I don't think it matters as long as they are yellow :-) In the other thread someone mentioned that normal "blue light" glasses do not work which is too bad, so maybe just grab some cheap plastic yellow glasses and see if they help. If they don't I'd like to hear so I can update my recommendation and try to figure out why mine work so well.

matthew28845 4y ago

Window tint? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Doxin 4y ago

Make sure your glasses and windscreen are very clean and free of stripes from wiping them. It'll not help with the astigmatism, but at least the glasses and the windscreen aren't making it worse. Another thing to try is the various kinds of night glasses, My mom swears by those. As a last resort you can try untinted polarized sunglasses. While those do make your view less bright they also make it lower contrast which might help.