Driving with "Blinders" on!... (literally)

I have been wearing glasses for about 25 years now. I had excellent vision for my first 5 years of driving, then my eyes starting going bad and continued to get worse over a span of about 15 years.

Now I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, yet oddly enough my license still reads "no glasses required". No vision test has ever been required of me by the Ministry of Transportation, so I can only assume this is not an area the MTO feels is important.

I can distinctly remember the first time I drove with my glasses on. I immediately noticed just how limited my field of view now was. The ever visible frames seemed to remove all peripheral vision that I took for granted as being very important when facing various challenges during daily driving.

Crossing intersections, changing lanes, even reversing seemed so much more difficult now that I was forced to gather visual input strictly from light received through those curved lenses in front of my eyes. If I turned my eyes too far, I was confronted with a double image; one clear at the inner edge of my glasses; one blurry from the view just outside the limit of my frames.

I found this so disturbing that I chose not to discuss it with ANYONE for fear I might lose my license somehow.

Over the years, I managed to adjust my driving habits to suit my limited field of view. When I would get new frames, I would bend them inwards at the sides in an attempt to get them to wrap around my head a bit more. Eventually, I became dependant on that puny circle of real clarity found right in the centre of the lenses.

Somehow I managed to drive for 30 years without a single accident. But as I've aged, I have even less faith in my ability to easily see obstacles on the road, especially at night. Fine details that used to make night driving such a pleasure are now all but completely gone.

So I've decided it's my duty to pay the big bucks and have Lasik surgery performed. In 4 weeks, I'll walk out with a whole new outlook on the world. I am extremely anxious to see how it affects my night vision. I went for the most expensive option which has been touted as the most effective way to drastically improve night driving. At $4,000, it's not cheap. But what would just one accident cost? I'm done gambling... I want my eyes fixed!

I'll follow up this post with my honest opinion on whether my confidence behind the wheel improves, and if so, how much and is it worth the price?

In the mean time, let me point out a significant safety issue I have noticed over the last several months. Somewhere along the line, fashion trends regarding eyewhere have completely abandoned any attempt at providing drivers some measure of safety. The huge planks making up the arms completely obliterates all peripheral vision.

Tell me, how the heck can she drive with these?:








Don't we do this to horses so they aren't bothered with unnecessary input derived from their peripheral vision? Is this really how we, as a society, feel about driving; that we should only be concerned with whats immediately in front of us? Good Lord, we're a friggin' mess!!

OK! You look GREAT!! But you just lane-changed right in to the side of my car!!