Research
Visual Health Among Spanish Drivers and The Impact on Road Safety
This report is an Executive Summary of the Vision and Driving study conducted by the Traffic and Road Safety Research Institute at the Universitat de València (INTRAS), the Spanish Road Safety Foundation (FESVIAL), and Essilor España, S.A.
Approximately 1,800 people per year die on the roads and over 120,000 suffer serious injuries from accidents.
The main objectives of this study are :
To determine the habits, attitudes and beliefs of Spanish drivers in relation to vision and road safety
To carry out a diagnosis of the main parameters of the visual health of Spanish drivers, through special vision screening for driving, complementary to standard vision checks, carried out by eyecare professionals.
To determine whether or not there are any significant correlations between the different variables evaluated in the two analyses.
Face-to- Face Personal interviews and diagnostic tests were performed on 3,249 drivers selected at random when purchasing fuel at service stations across the country.
Main results of the study are:
One in every five Spanish drivers admit to having vision problems. Specifically, 18.3% assess their own vision as average or poor.
29.5% of Spanish drivers present deficiencies in refractive error (myopia or hyperopia).
Drivers who consider that they don’t have good vision in the one-to-one interviews are those who objectively suffer most frequently from refractive error in the checks for same.
The cases of refractive error show a sharp rise among drivers who recognise they suffer from blurred vision when driving.
14.1% of drivers have difficulties with vision even in conditions of optimal light (deficiency in photopic visual acuity).
32.6% of drivers say they suffer glare from another vehicle fairly or very frequently.
37.8% of drivers have difficulties with vision in situations of poor light (deficiency in mesopic visual acuity).
23.5% of Spanish drivers show deficiencies in visual field.
El 44.2% of drivers take 20 seconds to fully recover central vision after glare and 9.4% have serious problems recovering full vision.