Do you drive at night?

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

SF VIP
Location
The Sticks, Northeast PA.
I'm 76. that's the age where doctors have "to watch" lab result numbers. And that's the age most stop driving at night. It's not that I can't drive, it's oncoming car lights blind me, at night. I have cataracts-not yet bad enough to remove. It does limit what you do. You kind of feel like Cinderella-she has to be back by 12; I have to be off the road by sundown. Do you drive at night?
And a question, if you had cataract surgery, did it improve driving at night?
 

I had cataract surgery at about 60 so you are doing better than me. I could still see at night OK. And not really much changed there. I got less of the halo effect, instead the lights were like projected stars. Both headlights and stop lights.

I've had to drive at night for years. Both going to work and coming home when I worked the PM shift. Of course, late at night, traffic was light. Driving in the winter at 5-6pm when everyone is off work and traffic is heavy is not fun.
 

I'm in my mid 60's.. I have no cataracts .. I wear specs to drive at night, but oncoming traffic lights blind me. In fairness our roads are very narrow ( outside of the motorways).. and generally only wide enough for 2 cars going and coming.. so literally the car coming towards us at night has their lights directly in our windscreens..

This is not my part of England but it gives an idea of the width of our roads..

 
I still drive at night, but have to be a bit careful not to look directly at oncoming headlights. Per my eye doctor, I need to get cataract surgery, and will probably do so sometime this coming Winter.
 
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Good question. In my mid 60s, I began to find night driving difficult. I lived in a rural area about 15 miles from a large town. So I'd leave the brightly lit town, or someone's house, and drive on a dark road. Everything looked black except the painted lines, and oncoming lights blinded me further.

Then, in my late 60s, I went on a road trip and did a lot of night driving on dark highways. Occasionally there was an oncoming vehicle, and I'd look slightly to the other side until it passed. But I didn't experience the night blindness I had before. I could see all the surrounding trees and other details.

So for me, I don't think the problem is really night blindness. It's that it takes the eyes longer to adjust from bright light to darkness.
 
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I drive at night but just personal prefer not to do so. One tip I learned when I was young going through Drivers Education from a former World War 2 pilot was to close one eye when driving into a bright light and then open the eye once you have passed the bright light and I do that still to this day. I have had cataract surgeries done on both of my eyes with newer style lenses installed for I have what is called stigmatism. There is a remarkable difference in my past nighttime driving with cataracts verses now with no cataracts. The eye doctor told me that he can replace the lens in the eye, but he cannot repair some medical things that are going on inside the eyeball itself. I still wear perception glasses when driving a car especially at night because I like my vision to be crystal clear when I am driving. I like to wear those yellow polarized glasses for they really help to reduce glare and bring a type of high definition into objects that a person in viewing. ----- PM I sure am grateful for the spell checking and the type of word correction that I have to use here for it helps me a lot.
 
hollydolly said:
I'm in my mid 60's.. I have no cataracts .. I wear specs to drive at night, but oncoming traffic lights blind me. In fairness our roads are very narrow ( outside of the motorways).. and generally only wide enough for 2 cars going and coming.. so literally the car coming towards us at night has their lights directly in our windscreens..

This is not my part of England but it gives an idea of the width of our roads..

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I kept thinking, Watch out! You're on the wrong side of the street!🤣
 
I drove nights for 27 years up to the car accident 14 years ago... I do not like nighttime driving, and whenever we go out, we try to be home before dark... Our fears of night driving is wildlife, and or people walking down the side of the road in dark clothing, and you see them at the last second... But I really hope I don't do a lot of nighttime driving...
 
StarSong said:
I kept thinking, Watch out! You're on the wrong side of the street!🤣
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lol. :D ..it's actually far worse for us out in the countryside, because there are no street lights on any of the windy country roads, so it's literally pitch black meaning we spend all of our time dipping our full beam not to blind the oncoming traffic.. and many people don't dip their full beam as they come around a bend.. and we get totally blinded. many people end up crashed into a tree or fence..

I have no problems driving in a country which drives on the right either .. sometimes I feel it's more intuitive
 
Only if I absolutely have to and then only for short distances on familiar non-freeway routes. I'm ok driving home from babysitting the grands because I could practically drive it blindfolded....LOL.

The last time I had to drive on the freeway at night, though, I thought it was going to be the end of the line for me. If I babysit the greatgrands, I spend the night because it's over an hour drive and freeway all the way. Nope, noper and nopest.
 
hollydolly said:
lol. :D ..it's actually far worse for us out in the countryside, because there are no street lights on any of the windy country roads, so it's literally pitch black meaning we spend all of our time dipping our full beam not to blind the oncoming traffic.. and many people don't dip their full beam as they come around a bend.. and we get totally blinded. many people end up crashed into a tree or fence..
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Same here. I suppose it wouldn't be too bad driving at night in a well lighted city, but then I detest driving in the city at any time of day.

hollydolly said:
I have no problems driving in a country which drives on the right either .. sometimes I feel it's more intuitive
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Yeah, same here. ;)
 
I am fine,as long as I`m familiar with the area-however,since I`m not at all familiar with Idaho,I rarely drive. Thank goodness Mr. Robinson drives lol. Ten months ago,when I drove back to California alone to pick up my dog,I started out for home later than I should have,forgetting that now that Daylight Savings Time was over,it would be dark before I got home.The last part of the drive is treacherous at night and I was trying to keep up with what little traffic there was so that I could kind of "follow",and not be out there all by myself. But everyone does 90 out there-and even then cars pass you. So I gave up trying to keep up. Lots of wildlife out there-including wild horses-would definitely not want to hit one of those. Doubt that I will drive to California alone again,but if I do,I`ll stay overnight somewhere before I come to that area and start fresh in the morning.
 
I had my cataracts removed this last Feb-Mar. Before I had to wear glasses for driving & watching TV. Best move I ever made! I now only use cheap reading glasses for close work (reading, computer,,,etc). It's so weird needing to take my glasses off to watch TV. I did have a little discomfort when stepping out on a bright sunny day, cool shades corrected that. No problem with night driving now.
 
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lost vision in left eye about 6 years ago... retinal occlusion. an inconvenience more than anything... losing peripheral vision on that side.

thn pandemic came to town and did very little driving at any time of day/night. had cataract removed from right eye in 7/2020. first night driving was back in March. didn't even think about it, but had an uncomfortable experience. think it was a bit like "snow blindness"?? it wasn't terribly dark and area was well lit, but scary. took a while for eye to adjust.

definitely not planning any night driving and would avoid it if at all possible.
 
Sure, otherwise would be stuck with activities only near where I live. Instead can do day trips at myriad destinations within about 5 hours of where I live in our state of California and then drive home during evenings. Have done so all my adult life. As a Tahoe resort snow skier, after the last day of skiing, always end up driving home at night. Driving at night has however always been difficult, dangerous. Sometimes will take back roads to avoid the white knuckle experience. Worst are 2 lane highways with high speed traffic in the other direction while your direction has few cars with none in front to help follow tail lights. My 70/20 eyesight when corrected is 20/20.
 
I have a cataract but my doctor told me my eye is adjusting to it and that maybe I won't ever have to have it removed. I had been avoiding night driving due to seeing halos and rays around lights. On this recent trip I took I was able to see better driving at night. Go figure. I had never heard of this before. I had gone in for the exam because I had gotten to where I could see better without the glasses than with them, and kept taking them off to see. He said he was now able to correct my vision to 20/20 and he could not do that before.
 

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