While driving, it's important to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road since, despite all safety precautions, it can occasionally be challenging to see clearly, particularly when the sun is shining fiercely through the windscreen. Fortunately, wearing sunglasses increases safety, eases eye strain, and takes away the possibility of unintentionally losing vision while driving due to the sun.
Sunglasses also protect the eyes from harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. Long-term UV exposure can harm your eyelids and make you more likely to get skin cancer. In bad weather, such as rain and snow, they also lessen glare and vision.
Because of this, we'll examine every justification for wearing sunglasses while driving in this post.
1. Sunglasses Block Dangerous UV Rays
Let's begin with the most obvious justification: wearing sunglasses blocks dangerous UV rays. We are continually exposed to strong and harmful UV rays, which could harm or damage our eyes, when driving on a bright and sunny day, especially in hot climes like the one we have here in Malaysia.
There are several ways to shield our eyes from those sun rays if we were out and about. We could cover a little of our faces with our hands, a hat, or an umbrella.
Unfortunately, while we're operating a vehicle, that's not always the case. One reason is that it's dangerous to drive while wearing a hat or obscuring our eyes. It makes it harder for us to see the path ahead clearly. And occasionally, we have no choice but to drive in the direction where the sun is shining the brightest. Despite the fact that some of us have window tinting on our cars, it's frequently insufficient. Sunglasses can be useful in this situation. While driving, a pair of sunglasses functions as an extra layer of "tinting" in front of our eyes, blocking UV radiation and safeguarding our vision.
2. Reduce glare
When driving during the day, we can face glare in addition to UV radiation. Simply put, glare occurs when the light is shining on our eyes at an uncomfortable angle. As a result, we blink or squint more frequently, which limits our ability to see the road in front of us. We can keep our eyes open wide without too much glare even with simply a nice pair of sunglasses. So long as we preserve full sight, we can safely drive even when the sun is shining directly at us.
3. Stops Dust From Getting In Your Eyes
There is another threat to your vision, whether you're driving a convertible or simply have the windows down: dust. It's dangerous if dust or other debris flies in your direction and hits your eyes.
Having a bit of dust in your eye while driving might be an extremely dangerous distraction. You might respond by completely closing your eyes and rubbing them in an effort to solve the issue. Unfortunately, that little blurring of vision and focus could be enough to cause an accident.
The likelihood of that happening is greatly decreased when wearing sunglasses. Sure, the glare from the dust and dirt on your sunglasses could still be annoying. You could just take off your sunglasses and continue driving safely even if your vision is compromised.
4. Prevents Wind from Directly Blowing Into Your Eyes
Even in the absence of dust and debris, driving might be riskier if the wind is continually blowing in your eyes. Remember, we blink occasionally because our eyes need to remain moist.
But imagine that you were continuously exposing your eyes to the wind while driving with the windows down. They will quickly dry out and irritate if that happens. Naturally, you'll squint more or blink more frequently, both of which impair your vision when driving. Once more, wearing sunglasses involves putting up an extra shield in front of your eyes to protect them from wind exposure. You won't have any trouble keeping your eyes open and paying attention to your surroundings.
5. Gives You More Clarity When It's Raining or Foggy
It should be obvious by now that driving while wearing sunglasses can assist safeguard your vision. However, did you know that polarised spectacles can also improve your vision while driving in the rain?
That is correct! Additionally, sunglasses aid with driving safety in Malaysia's second most frequent weather condition: torrential rain. There is some science to support this. You see, polarised sunglasses effectively obstruct horizontal light scattering elements. When it's raining or even foggy, like it would be if you were travelling at a higher altitude, it typically happens. The best illustration of this would be if you were travelling through Genting Highlands or other such areas.
6. Enhances your style while driving
Last but not least, wearing the correct sunglasses while driving might make you look much cooler. Even though there are many other ways to seem more fashionable while operating a motor vehicle, at least sunglasses offer the added advantage of making you a safer driver.
How To Pick Eyewear For Driving
- Standard sunglasses are adequate for driving, however other styles are more advantageous. Polarised glasses are very useful while driving, as was previously indicated.
- Additionally, search for UV 400-rated sunglasses that block out UV rays.
- Additionally, lens hues matter. The finest choices are lenses that are brown, green, amber, or grey in colour. Because some of the light passing through is absorbed by these lens tints, you will be able to see more clearly.
- But stay away from brown and blue lenses at all costs. While brown glasses may make your eyesight appear a little foggy, blue glasses may make it harder for you to see clearly.
- More essential, make sure the glasses you select precisely fit your head. That will guarantee that it completely blocks off sunlight, preventing any from penetrating and shining directly into your eyes.