Attitudes towards drivers’ vision continue to trail behind other simple precautions in life.
Far too many drivers rank their vision somewhere between making the effort to eat a healthy breakfast and the separation of different plastics for the recycling bin.
As the pages of Optician report this week, a third of those responsible enough to obtain vision correction are forgetting to wear their spectacles.
It comes as more than 70 people continue to be killed or seriously injured on UK roads each day.
Eyewear should be pride of place on the driver dashboard and mindset, alongside wearing a seatbelt and following the speed limit, but in so many polls it emerges as a ‘nice-to-have’.
Since the summer, three separate police forces have been performing random sight checks based on the 20-metre number plate test. Working with road safety charity Brake, the campaign has resulted in a three-fold increase in people booking eye exams.
It would be a relief to see this initiative rolled out nationally now austerity has officially been declared a thing of the past and investing in public services can apparently resume.
Speaking of glasses half full, Brake has also been calling on the government to lower the drink-drive limit and review national speed limits. Both would make roads safer for drivers and pedestrians to help reduce deaths and serious injuries but aligned to all these measures there is a duty to educate and inform the public.
Optics is playing its part and should be congratulated for winning a high-profile campaign award encouraging the use of up-to-date prescriptions.
Further lobbying can only help, plus encouraging patients to wear the spectacles they have purchased. The threat of being randomly pulled over by police should be enough to jog the memory.
