Sunglasses, do you wear them?
Why?

I’ve been wondering if there are two types of people in this world, those who wear sunglasses and those who don’t.

In my time I’ve had clip-on sunglasses, prescription sunglasses, and transition lenses, and never found any of them to be the slightest use.

Over a period of a minute or two, my eyes adapt to the level of ambient lighting, making sunglasses superfluous.

The lights I find painfully bright are bright lights at night, particularly badly designed or adjusted car headlights. These lights are very bright against a dark background meaning that while my eyes are adapted to low light conditions, they sear my retina – painful. And sunglasses are no help at all at night.

The only valid reasons I can think of for wearing sunglasses are:

• to protect against snow blindness when skiing in bright sunlight
• when you have a bad hangover
• to hide the bags under your eyes or the madness in your eyes

Driving into the sun doesn’t count as a valid reason, or shiny reflections off cars, or shiny reflections off water. Not driving into the Sun because the eyes adapt to the light anyway. Not shiny reflections because sunglasses don’t help.

I have worn them for many years. Prescription, transition, clip-ons.
I’ve also found out that transition lenses require clip-ons when in a vehicle.
Glare makes me squint and I get sore around the eyes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviator_sunglasses

a good read

very handy for seeing an approaching torpedo, or enemy fighter plane

Yellow glasses do help at night. Much of my problem is the reflective signs blank out everything I should be looking for past the signs.
I don’t think it is badly adjusted headlighhts I believe that problem is badly adjusted drivers who don’t dip their lights.
I’ve never worn sunglasses. Can’t stand the things.

When I first trained it was considered that children did not need sunglasses. However, the thinking has changed. The reasoning now for wearing sunglasses is not only for glare. It is to reduce the UV dose to the eyes over a lifetime. Life expectancy is longer now, and cataract is in part caused by UV. Like sunlight makes plastic brittle, it changes the chemical structures in the lens inside the eye. So, it is possible (not proven) that reducing the lifetime dose may delay cataract, at least to some extent. However…most of the plastic spectacle lenses used since the 1980s also filter out most UV. So we have had a big experiment going on in my generation of glasses wearers. It’s still going to be difficult to pick out the genetic and environmental factors from each other.

I generally advised people to wear sunglasses for glare if they found the glare difficult. Some people simply have better natural reactions, retinal adaptation to high light levels, pupils that pull in smaller to reduce the amount of light getting in. People with blue eyes suffer more glare than people with dark irises because the blue iris has less melanin and lets more light into the eye itself by being a bit translucent.

For the reflected glare off other vehicles you need polarized lenses…reflected light off water or shiny surfaces is polarized. For people working outdoors a lot, it seems reasonable to suggest reducing the lifetime UV dose by wearing sunglasses when working in the sun. For outdoors sunglare a visor/hat brim is in fact very useful as most of the bright light is coming from the sky.

Bright headlights there is nothing you can do about except avert your eyes. On country roads, use the fogline, look at the fogline well ahead of you until you are past the other car and you will not get so much glare. In urban areas choose something along the left side of the road, although it should be much less of a problem in lighted areas because high beam isn’t used as much.

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who divide people into binary groups and those who don’t.

The Rev Dodgson said:

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who divide people into binary groups and those who don’t.

That’s a little polarising.

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who divide people into binary groups and those who don’t.

That’s a little polarising.

I like to make a spectacle of myself on these matters.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who divide people into binary groups and those who don’t.

That’s a little polarising.

I like to make a spectacle of myself on these matters.

Ho Ho. :)

buffy said:

When I first trained it was considered that children did not need sunglasses. However, the thinking has changed. The reasoning now for wearing sunglasses is not only for glare. It is to reduce the UV dose to the eyes over a lifetime. Life expectancy is longer now, and cataract is in part caused by UV. Like sunlight makes plastic brittle, it changes the chemical structures in the lens inside the eye. So, it is possible (not proven) that reducing the lifetime dose may delay cataract, at least to some extent. However…most of the plastic spectacle lenses used since the 1980s also filter out most UV. So we have had a big experiment going on in my generation of glasses wearers. It’s still going to be difficult to pick out the genetic and environmental factors from each other.

I generally advised people to wear sunglasses for glare if they found the glare difficult. Some people simply have better natural reactions, retinal adaptation to high light levels, pupils that pull in smaller to reduce the amount of light getting in. People with blue eyes suffer more glare than people with dark irises because the blue iris has less melanin and lets more light into the eye itself by being a bit translucent.

For the reflected glare off other vehicles you need polarized lenses…reflected light off water or shiny surfaces is polarized. For people working outdoors a lot, it seems reasonable to suggest reducing the lifetime UV dose by wearing sunglasses when working in the sun. For outdoors sunglare a visor/hat brim is in fact very useful as most of the bright light is coming from the sky.

Bright headlights there is nothing you can do about except avert your eyes. On country roads, use the fogline, look at the fogline well ahead of you until you are past the other car and you will not get so much glare. In urban areas choose something along the left side of the road, although it should be much less of a problem in lighted areas because high beam isn’t used as much.

Thanks Buffy, I have blue eyes.
My father taught me to line up the centre of the bonnet with the edge of the road and concentrate on that until the oncoming car has passed.

buffy said:

Bright headlights there is nothing you can do about except avert your eyes. On country roads, use the fogline, look at the fogline well ahead of you until you are past the other car and you will not get so much glare. In urban areas choose something along the left side of the road, although it should be much less of a problem in lighted areas because high beam isn’t used as much.

That’s pretty much what I do to keep the headlight glare to a minimum. I used to wear sunnies all the time when flying as the atmosphere was much thinner at 35,000’+ and was often dazzling. And back then I didn’t need specs for close-up & reading like I do now. I still don’t need specs for driving, etc, though.
I found out the hard way – though fortunately no damage was caused – to not use polarised sunnies in the cockpit as there were a number of LCD displays for the engines. The first time I was starting an engine with the polarised sunnies it took me a few seconds to realise that I couldn’t read the EGT (exhaust gas temperature) LCD gauge during spool-up and it’s critical to monitor that for an over-temp. So I quickly threw them off and from then on used regular sunnies.

So just use AR to mask out the bright regions, makes sense.

I drove the same route twice a day on a 6 lane highway 5 days a week
part of the road takes a dead reckoning East/West trajectory straight
into the rising and setting sun every morning and evening.
So I took to wearing clip-on Amber Blue-Blockers that I could flip down
when I anticipated the sun glare as I transversed that stretch of road.

Never flash your lights at at a Kennelworth B-Double.

mollwollfumble said:

Sunglasses, do you wear them?
Why?

I’ve been wondering if there are two types of people in this world, those who wear sunglasses and those who don’t.

In my time I’ve had clip-on sunglasses, prescription sunglasses, and transition lenses, and never found any of them to be the slightest use.

Over a period of a minute or two, my eyes adapt to the level of ambient lighting, making sunglasses superfluous.

The lights I find painfully bright are bright lights at night, particularly badly designed or adjusted car headlights. These lights are very bright against a dark background meaning that while my eyes are adapted to low light conditions, they sear my retina – painful. And sunglasses are no help at all at night.

The only valid reasons I can think of for wearing sunglasses are:

• to protect against snow blindness when skiing in bright sunlight
• when you have a bad hangover
• to hide the bags under your eyes or the madness in your eyes

Driving into the sun doesn’t count as a valid reason, or shiny reflections off cars, or shiny reflections off water. Not driving into the Sun because the eyes adapt to the light anyway. Not shiny reflections because sunglasses don’t help.

My distance specs are photochromic as I have trouble with glare.

My future’s so bright I have to wear shades