night vision driving at night can be tricky anyway especially when it's raining outside
so in this video i wanted to give you three tips to make your night vision the best it can be
plus a bonus tip at the end of the video a little trick my dad taught me let's focus in
hey howdy this is dr neal guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, and i do videos all about the eyes to help you
with your eyes now let's jump into those tips to help you with night vision while driving
tip number one and you're probably expecting me to say this and that's to get an eye exam now this
might be the easy solution by getting an eye exam you could possibly find the cause or the reason
for the extra blurry vision at night number one you're going to get the health of your eyes
checked out now there could be many medical reasons that can cause extra blurry vision at
night time some of the top medical conditions include cataracts cataracts are infamous for
causing extra glare and blur at nighttime keratoconus is a big one other medical conditions
like glaucoma macular degeneration retinitis pigmentosa diabetes diabetic retinopathy and many
other conditions and so you want to make sure you get your health of your eyes checked out so you
can be monitored and treated properly for any of these conditions you might have next you're going
to have your vision checked and this is where they'll find out if you're nearsighted farsighted
if you have astigmatism and this is what's really interesting about this is that there are a lot of
people out there that have mild amounts of maybe astigmatism or mild amounts of nearsightedness and
they see fine throughout the day they have 20 20 vision their vision doesn't bug them and then at
night time that mild amount of astigmatism or nearsightedness becomes more pronounced
they notice their nighttime isn't as crisp or as clear and it can make it a little extra tricky
especially driving at night so sometimes this can be the easiest solution if you have mild amounts
of astigmatism or nearsightedness and sometimes all you need are glasses or maybe even contacts
there are a lot of people out there that just have glasses that they wear at nighttime they call them
their night driving glasses sometimes they just keep them in their car and put them on when they
go driving at night tip number two and this might also be a given but i'm going to call this one
make sure the windows to your eye are perfectly clean the obvious one here is make sure that the
windshield is nice and clean if it's dirty or if it has a film on it that's going to scatter
light cause glare and definitely make things a little trickier at nighttime now moving into the
next window and that's your own glasses if you wear glasses you want to make sure that those
are nice and clean if you have even the smallest smudge or speck on your glasses that can be huge
when it's really close to your eye and that little speck can scatter light or reduce your vision and
make things a little bit blurry if you're having trouble cleaning your glasses or maybe you have
a film on the lenses that you can't get off check out my video about how to clean your glasses i go
over the best ways to clean the lenses and i'll put that in the description below now let's go
over a couple windows that maybe you didn't think of one would be contact lenses if you wear contact
lenses and not glasses contact lenses can also develop deposits on the surface of the lenses
they can also get hazy or dry patches on there especially if you just had a long day staring
at a computer screen they definitely can dry out all of this can reduce the vision reduce the light
that's going into your eyes or scatter the light and cause more glare so that's one thing to be
aware of is your own contacts might be causing the problem the next window is your own cornea of the
eye your own eyeball same principles apply here if you just had a long day staring at computer
screens your eyes might be really dry you might be developing dry hazy patches over the cornea itself
and that can reduce your vision as well the tip for these are nearly the same if you think
you're experiencing these types of problems that might be with the contact lenses or your own eyes
then you want to be proactive during the day to try and keep yourself from getting to that point
to keep yourself from getting to where you might be getting deposits or hazy or dry patches on the
eyes or the contact lenses this can include the 20 20 20 rule every 20 minutes you take a 20 second
break look 20 feet away make sure that you're blinking re-coating the eyes with tears also
use artificial tears throughout the day to try and keep your eyes from getting to that point where it
might be reducing the vision and you can check out my video i did specifically about computer
eye strain computer vision syndrome those tips will definitely help you out here and speaking
of artificial tears if you know you're going to be leaving at five o'clock or seven o'clock
and it's dark outside try and be proactive and put an artificial tear in maybe 30 minutes before
you go driving or maybe 10 minutes before you go driving and that might re-coat the eye give
you a little extra tears so it can be clear for you when you go driving at night and if you do
wear contact lenses make sure that the artificial tiers that you use are approved for contact lenses
i'll put my favorites in the description below so you can check those out now i wanted to use tip
number three to talk about these babies driving glasses do they actually work yellow tint driving
glasses are actually really interesting and you'll see them advertised everywhere
but if you put on a pair of yellow tint glasses you'll notice that they enhance contrast it makes
things pop out a little bit more makes it easier to spot certain things these yellow tinted glasses
actually took their mark as shooting glasses they would enhance the target for competitive shooters
it's also advertised to gamers serious gamers would use these yellow tinted glasses to enhance
the contrast on the screens and also heavily advertised as night driving glasses to help
with night vision the question is do they actually work it does enhance contrast but so far studies
show that there isn't a benefit it doesn't enhance your vision while driving at night
in fact i'd probably say that it could make it worse the reason why i say that
is because it's still a tinted lens it's still a type of sunglass and so it's actually restricting
or reducing the amount of light getting into your eyes which can be a bad thing driving at
night usually what i do recommend especially if you wear glasses already is just to make sure
that you get a really good anti-reflective coating on the lenses this will reduce the amount of light
that gets bounced inside those lenses and it will reduce the glare and that can definitely help the
vision at night now before we get to the bonus tip of the video if you're finding these tips helpful
definitely hit that like button for me it'll help spread this video a little bit further
okay if you've made it this far into the video this is the bonus tip my dad taught me and it's
a pretty common and helpful tip for those people that really get affected by those bright oncoming
headlights and their vision is really bleached out right afterwards now what happens is when those
bright headlights pass by your eyes that causes a chemical reaction in your retina to try and adapt
to that light it becomes less dark adapted and so the trick here is you want to try and cover
one eye right before those headlights pass by this will make it so only one eye has that chemical
reaction and it keeps the other eye from being light adapted it'll keep that one eye dark adapted
and so when you uncover that eye right after those headlights pass you still at least have one
eye that can see better in the dark now this one feels weird to recommend to people it feels weird
to tell people to cover one eye while they're driving that can mess with depth perception
it can reduce visual acuity especially if one eye is better than the other one
and so take that one with a grain of salt but if you really are having a hard time
with those bright oncoming headlights and your vision's really blurry and bleached
out afterwards this is definitely a trick that you can use and if you get really good at it
then your vision can be a lot better right after those headlights pass another tip alongside that
is to turn down your dashboard lights also when you're going past bright headlights try not to
look directly at the headlights now remember if you're looking for more tips about your vision
and your eyes check out another one of my videos right there or right there and make sure you
subscribe for my future videos that will come out i'm dr. neal guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, stay focused