UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

Well tomorrow is my 17th birthday, and have my driving lessons organised to start tomorrow. Really looking forward to it.

I was just wondering, what sort of things should I tell my instructor about KC. I was thinking about light sensitivity, contact elnses having a very slight chance of falling out etc. Any ideas of any other info I can provide him?

Also, I went to my opticians to get some advice to combat the light sensitivity when driving. She advised polarised sunglasses, possibly with a anti-reflection coating with a 25% tint (25% is the highest for driving legally.) Does anybvody have anything similar to these, and would you say it is worth it?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Amarpal,

Singlasses is what I use as described by your oprom. Mine are plane lenses with the anti glar, UV and light tint.

My cars have an ati-glare UV protection screen tint which is really light but works wonders. This may be a bit much to ask your instructor have installed.

When telling your instructor stuff, just say you wear contact lenses. However askyourself how likely are your lenses to fall out and under what circumstances.

I turn my head slightly to use the side mirrors and never move my eyes to their extreme side to side as that is when one is likely to fall out. Take the time to adjust the seat and mirror to suit you. It may take a couple of attempts but just say to your instructor you do not feel happy with the mirror set up and he will tell you where to pull over just to set things correctly.

Good luck for the lesson and Happy Birthday for tomorrow.

How light sensitive are you Amarpal?

I was very light sensitive before I had a graft but the only problem when driving was on white concrete motorways. Otherwise light rarely falls directly on your eyes in a car and was never a problem to me. Oncoming headlights can dazzle but I don't think much can easily be done about that.

Would suggest you see if you have a problem and then try some off-the-shelf solutions you can evaluate before buying in the first instance .

Most of all enjoy it. Driving a car for the first time is great fun and still is for me. (I passed my test first time after ten one hour lessons at 17 so hope you're as lucky. I think the tests were a bit easier then.)

The benefit of the optician sunglasses is that you know they are properly UV protecting and secondly they have a wider range of tints for you to try.

Mine only cost £34 from the opticians, all the off the shelf glasses did not give a satisfactory level of anti glare. They polarise some claim to give UV protection but are not really taht good and they were either evry dark or funny shades of brown which changed the colours around me that was very off putting.

Thanks for your replies and help.

Barney, my eyes are sensitive to light, and have become increasingly sensitive in the last year or so. Even when I sit in the passenger seat of the car, I find the light irritating, and always have the sun visor down. Have tried using sunglasses from the high street, but sometimes I feel as if they aren't very useful at all unfortunately.

Thanks again

Happy Birthday Arampal

All the best with your first driving lesson.

Yours aye

Andrew

Good luck! Just dont crash and youll be ok!!

Thanks everyone! Well, the driving lesson was excellent! Dare I say it was 'easier' than I expected. It was good, and eyes were fine, should be OK.

In the meantime, I went to my opticians about sunglasses. She was going to get me some polarised lenses put into a basic frame, but she advised me to just go for the polarised sunglasses she had instore, just to try out first. So far I think they are an improvement on my previous sunglasses. However, i want to know why I could buy a half decent pair of polarised sunglasses on stock clearance reduced from £30 to £15, whereas the optician would have charged £60 on the polarised lenses, on top of the frames themselves...

All down to economics.

I think that I remember something about elastic and inelastic demand. Intersection of demand and supply curves.

In short: sunglasses are worth whatever the shop can get the customer to pay. Bespoke sunglasses are worth more because people will pay more.

End of season sunglasses are worth less because next year the manuracturers will bring out a new frame or lens shape and this year's supply will be old fashioned.

This is called planned obsolescence.

Andrew

ps I hope you always enbjoy driving as much as you enjoyed your first lesson

Glad it went well.

You might find it works slightly differently in different cars. One where you sit back from the screen and with your head close to the roof might suit best. Becomes trickier when the light is reflected from the road. If you still have problems with the off-the-shelf sun specs could then be the time to look at those more expensive bespoke options.