'The trouble with sight loss is that it is an insidious business'
Page 47
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
4 T he truck driver needs to he the most vigilant of all drivers since the truck
is potentially the most lethal of all road vehicles, if only because of its likely momentum at the moment of any impact.
Statistics show that when collisions occur with other non-LGVs it is the other driver who generally comes off worst. But truck drivers must also be aware, from their personal observation of motorway pile-ups, that in head-to-tail collisions with other trucks it is the driver of the LGV who may serve as the meat in the sandwich.
For all drivers vision is the paramount sense when at the wheel.
Vision is more than just reading a number plate at 25 yards, but this is all that car and other non-LGV drivers have to do. And this only once. If they reach the age of 70, all they have to do is to state that they can still read a number plate. There is no check on this.
Of course, if ordinary drivers have their eyes tested, the optician may find that the driver's vision has fallen below the required level. The driver needs to be informed and so does the driver's doctor, who may feel that the licensing authority ought to know.
The snag is that there is no longer any incentive for older people to have their eyes examined. For most of them a sight test is no longer free under the NHS and they can buy simple reading glasses over the counter which may more or less satisfy their near vision needs.
The trouble with sight loss is that it is an insidious business. Older people often think that all they need is stronger glasses when, in fact, their basic seeing ability is failing.
Commonly this is due to a cataract— clouding of the lens inside the eye. The clouded lens can be replaced by a plastic one and a truck driver who has had this operation is allowed to hold a licence provided that distance vision remains satisfactory. However, the eye can no longer focus for near distance so bifocals or reading glasses are needed to see documents and maps. There may also be some blurring of images in convex driving mirrors.
The number of people registered as blind and partially sighted increases dramatically over the age of 70. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has also discovered that perhaps only a quarter of those eligible to be classed as partially sighted are registered as such. And the Department of Transport has reported that the number of older licence holders is rising steeply. In recent decades there have been many more drivers in the middle-age groups and they continue to hold their licences when they retire.
But no one has any real idea of how many people are on the road incapable of achieving legal vision.
ln addition there is another, and probably much larger group, that needs to use contact lenses or spectacles to achieve legal vision but choose not to wear their optical correction at the wheel.
In some countries a driving licence contains a photograph— if the driver needs spectacles and is not wearing them when stopped by the police action can be taken. The most prudent attitude for truck drivers must be to assume when encountering another road user that the person is partially sighted, whether it is a pedestrian or another driver. /
_Thou want to sound off about a road transport issue write to features editor Patric Cunnane