Sensitive Eyes

[KAR IDEA]

My eyes have become very sensitive to bright lights at night. I think it's just an aging thing, although I would also say the eye surgery I had a couple of years ago also contributed...anyway, the headlights from oncoming cars, the display in the center of the dash (which lately I've been turning off), my GPS, all start to glare up and are hard to look at, especially during long road trips. Sometimes I have to squint to cut down on the light, which is dangerous. I purchased a pair of yellow lenses from a bike shop, the idea being to cut down on low light sources and brighten everything, but that didn't help.

Can anyone recommend a brand of night driving lenses I could wear to help me out?

Dave

[galaxee]

i've got pretty bad light sensitivity in general. can't walk outside on a bright sunny day without sunglasses, can't drive without tint and/or sunglasses but preferably both.
at night, oncoming headlights were painful, lights in the rearview would hurt, etc. i dim the display down and we put tint on the windows. 45% on the windshield clears up all the outside glare, stops the piercing pain and lets me drive a lot more safely. i have 30% on the rest.

i don't know if that's a viable solution to your problem or if it would make night driving harder- since my eyes are a bit younger and the origin of the problem is probably different- but that really helped for me. the state where our car is registered requires a prescription for windshield tint (and for the illegal percent on the front side windows too).

[KAR IDEA]

Mmmm, can't tint the front in NY. Windshield must be free and clear of it.

[galaxee]

according to tintlaws.com, NY allows medical exemptions for special tint. might want to look into that a little deeper if you're interested.

[KAR IDEA]

I'll look into it. It's not really the light coming at me from outside that bothers me so much as the light from inside. Localized light sources like the MFD and the GPS bother my eyes a great deal at night, especially if it's on a long distance drive, on a thruway. For example, there are parts of 95 coming through MA into CT and into NY that are fairly dark, so the localized light inside the car seems brighter. That's one example where it bothers my eyes.

To counter this problem, I've started to turn the MFD off, turned the dash lights off, and have dimmed my GPS to the lowest possible setting.* This has really helped, however, sometimes it's just not enough. I have heard about some night driving glasses that reduce glare, I'm just not sure which are the best ones, and I tried a pair of yellow ones that just didn't cut it. Perhaps there's a different color that works better.

Dave

*and this is actually quite cool looking too, because you are literally driving within a cabin that is dark. Try it, it's neat.