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 Researchers found that yellow-lens wearing volunteers operating a
driving simulator were no better at spotting a pedestrian when
confronting oncoming headlights than those who wore clear lenses,
according to the study published in JAMA Ophthalmology. And there
was a suggestion that the yellow tinted lenses might even be making
the situation worse.
Buyers of these products "have the concept that somehow these magic
glasses can improve nighttime driving," said the study's lead
author, Alex Hwang, an instructor in ophthalmology at the Harvard
Medical School and an investigator at the Schepens Eye Research
Institute at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. "Wearing (tinted) glasses,
whether they are yellow, red or blue, cuts out a chunk of light.
Which means this is the same as wearing sunglasses while driving at
night."
Hwang's advice: "Don't waste your money on these kinds of glasses
for night driving."
Despite there being no evidence of effectiveness, yellow-lens
glasses are sold widely, Hwang noted.
An ad for one brand of yellow-lens glasses sold on Amazon claims
that "night vision glasses help reduce night driving glare and eye
strain, yellow lenses help to enhance night vision, improve color
clarity and optical definition, enable to see better when driving at
night or cloudy, rainy days, making night driving safer and easier."
To determine whether yellow-lens glasses could actually improve
drivers' night vision, Hwang and his colleagues set up an experiment
using a specially designed driving simulator that included the
option of bright oncoming headlights.
The researchers recruited 22 volunteers who, wearing either one of
three brands of yellow-lens glasses or clear glasses, completed a
total of eight night driving scenarios, each of which lasted about
10 minutes. Of the 22, 18 were younger, with an average age between
27 and 28, while the other four, all men, had an average age of 70.
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During the experiment, volunteers were told to press the horn as
soon as they saw a pedestrian. Pedestrians were clad in either a
dark blue navy shirt or an orange shirt. In some runs, the
volunteers were subjected to bright headlights and in others they
were "driving" in the dark.
While glare from headlights did seem to slow the speed with which
the younger group spotted the pedestrian, wearing yellow-lenses did
not improve things. In fact, the yellow lenses appeared to slow
their response time, but that finding was not statistically
significant. The findings were similar among the older volunteers,
but their overall response time was slower than that of the younger
volunteers both with and without the yellow lenses.
Dr. Douglas Frederick hopes drivers take note of the findings. "The
biggest issue is that we don't want people to have a false sense of
security because they are using something that does not (improve
vision)," said Frederick, deputy chair of education in the
department of ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount
Sinai/New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. "Motor vehicle accidents
involving pedestrians are a common problem."
An important secondary finding is that "older people are more
sensitive to headlight glare compared to younger people," said
Robert Masoff, a professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Eye
Institute and author of an editorial that accompanied the new study.
"This is a real problem that needs to be addressed."
The reason older people are more sensitive to bright headlights is
that "changes occur in people's lenses with aging," Masoff said.
Those changes lead to more glare, he explained. "Glare can cover up
what you're trying to see. It's like having a dirty windshield.
Cataract surgery may make things better for people, but that study
hasn't been done yet."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2YC1iaH JAMA Ophthalmology, online August 1,
2019.
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