Three South African studies on the relation between road accidents and drivers' vision

Abstract

This report describes three studies of drivers' vision which have recently been carried out in South Africa. In the first, it was found that younger myopes constituted a substantial fraction of those drivers who failed to reach the acuity standards required for a South African driving licence: the acuity of almost all these drivers could be raised to an adequate standard by a proper refractive correction. In the second study, a comparison of the visual characteristics of a group of drivers who had been involved in accidents with those of a control group of accident-free drivers suggested that the former had mean acuities and depth perception which were worse than those of the accident-free group by small but statistically significant amounts. A third study, comparing the visual acuities of a group of randomly selected drivers with those of a group who had been involved in road accidents, showed that a higher proportion of the accident group had acuities which were below that required by the licensing authority.