Driving and sight: a third of accidents are due to vision defects

It is estimated that 30% of road accidents are caused by defective sight: just to give an example, at night some people can't see the brighter red of brake lights. This subject have been discussed in Florence at the International Ophthalmology Conference which will bring together 3,500 specialists until May 14.

According to Matteo Piovella, secretary of Soi - the Italian Ophthalmology Company, tests for the renewal of driving licenses held by the over 70s are often carried out by 'doctors who are anything but specialized and all too frequently the way renewals are issued is superficial'.

'Everyone knows that with the average increase in age, physical and mental efficiency decreases', Piovella continued. 'And it should be the same for sight. But the license renewal test data shows the opposite: with age, drivers' sight problems seem to be fewer compared to the population in general'. A fact that is not borne out by the figures. 'Many accidents are directly or partly due to eye disorders that can only be diagnosed by a thorough examination carried out by a specialist. I refer to cataract (500 thousand operations a year), glaucoma, and macular degeneration'.

And that's not all. 'According to recent assessments, in Italy almost 1 million people have early signs of macular degeneration', added the ophthalmologist Giuseppe Panzardi from Florence, '1% of the population over 50, 14% over 75 and more than 30% of the over 80s are affected by the most threatening form of macular degeneration, the neovascular or atrophic forms'. Despite the 20 thousand new cases of neovascular macular degeneration recorded in Italy every year, many of these people pass the license renewal sight test.

(Source: Il Corriere della Sera)