Are your sunnies unsafe?

Those are two of the conclusions from a new UK study into the dangers of wearing fashionable sunglasses while driving, which also found that 1 in 10 British women chose fashionable designs that dangerously restrict their peripheral vision. While no similar data is available for the Australian market, it would be reasonable to expect that number to be even higher under the brighter, glarier Australian skies.

Sunglasses that make you look fashionable may also be very dangerous to wear while driving because they can affect your vision, particularly your peripheral vision.

Peripheral vision is what we rely on to see a car approaching at an intersection, what we use to see a child running onto the road, and we need our peripheral vision working 100% because objects in our peripheral vision can be right in front of us in a few milliseconds, giving us very little time to react.

Do yourself and everyone else a favour and switch from your stylish sunglasses to your driving sunglasses when you get into your car.

What makes a safe pair of driving sunglasses?

Australian motoring associations and standards bodies don’t currently offer guidelines on what makes a good pair of driving sunglasses, but here are our recommendedations, based on advice from the UK's Eye Care Trust:

• Choose a design with a thin frame and arms so that they don’t obscure your peripheral vision. Thick chunky fashionable sunglasses are more than big enough to obscure something in your peripheral vision and cause an accident.
• Fashionably dark tints will impair your vision in anything other than the strongest sunlight, so we’d recommend a lighter tint.
• Coloured tints are designed for use in specific lighting conditions that may not always be present when you’re driving, so avoid these unless you are sure you have lenses for the current driving conditions.
• Choose polarizing filters if possible as they specifically cut the kind of reflected light created by the windscreen of the car in front of you, and reflections cast up from the road by water or debris.
• Many glasses are available with variable tinting which changes according to the amount of light, which can help make your glasses usable in a broader range of situations.
• Some manufacturers, such as Bolle and Serengeti, make sunglasses specifically for driving.

You can also download this free guide (.PDF) to good driving eyewear from the UK's Eyecare Trust.

What’s the best way to find a pair of sunglasses that meet these recommendations?

Go to your friendly, neighbourhood optometrist (not a sunglasses store) and ask them to fit you with a pair of driving sunglasses. They can ask you about your typical driving conditions and if necessary test your eyesight (if you’re male, they can test you for colour-blindness too) to make sure you have the best possible vision when driving. Many optometrists will test your eyesight at no charge.