Driving at this time of year

I am getting less confident about night driving, so I might follow your example shysal and have a look at E-bay.

I used to dislike driving in the dark, hated the glare and reflections. I bought some night-driving specs on ebay which have solved the problem. Clip-ons are also available for those who wear prescription glases.

Keep your eyes on the verge, petallus. That helps avoid the oncoming glare.

I use photochromics. The modern ones change very quickly and I've never had a problem

I do find the sun a problem sometimes but what I particularly hate when driving in the dark is when a car appears from the opposite direction. Even when the lights are dipped (which they are not always) the sudden glare hurts my eyes for a few seconds until they adjust.

I will do some experiments and report back. It may take a while.

Flip-ups are useful, yes, but then the sun dazzling problem occurs when they are flipped. It's only with the low early morning sun in Autumn when I find there's a problem.

But it should with those flip up ones clipped onto prescription glasses.

I can see it wouldn't work with prescription sunglasses.

Perhaps there isn't any deep shade around here. I nearly always wear sunglasses when I'm driving, even when it's cloudy because of reflected glare, and I've never, ever had a black out problem. I have noticed a change when driving into a multi-storey carpark, but it takes less than a second to whip the s/gs off (and, significantly, you can anticipate the moment so you aren't taken by surprise) so what's the problem?

.... so 'I' never wear sunglasses at this time, it should read.

I have prescription sunglasses - so quickly whipping them off when the sun is suddenly blocked wouldn't work either.

Try it, Bags. go out and find some deep shade, put your sunglasses on and see what you can see, especially when it's a sudden change.

I have Macular disease in both eyes so I can no longer drive in dusk and dark. When I did, I bought a pair of night drive glasses from one of those free magazines that pop out of a Sunday newpaper and I found that they helped me a lot.

I had my eyes tested recently and the optometrist suggested photochromic lenses which can accommodate the change in light. They are better but not 100% and are very expensive.

Do all sunglasses do this?

Quite agree anno. I'm often driving before 9.00am, and the early morning low sun can be completely dazzling - but sunglasses give a black-out when the sun is suddenly blocked, so never wear sunglasses at this time.

Just remembered where I got my sunvisor: www.oneupgolf.co.uk/.
Had it a few years so I'd forgotten.

That's worth knowing. It has never been a problem for me though. Whether this is because I've always anticipated the change of light and taken the sunglasses off, or whether there is rarely that much contrast where I drive (only tunnels come to mind and there aren't any where I drive), I don't know.

Wearing sunglasses when driving at this time of year can be dangerous if you suddenly move from sun into deep shade.

I'm supposed to move my head, as I wear varifocals, so that might work for me.

Last year I bought some anti-glare glasses (the sort you wear over your ordinary glasses), they were fine when there was other light, i.e. street lights, other cars etc, but the moment there was no other light they made everything too dark to see safely.

My mum taped a piece of cardboard to the car sun visor to make it come lower. I think you can get flippable ones that you can see through, bit like car sunglasses.

Wear sunglasses as well.

I keep a sun visor something like these (got it from a golf shop online) in the car for winter driving. It helps a lot. Only disadvantage is that I have to move my head to use the rear view mirror rather than a quick eye flick, but that is overcome by more use of the wing mirrors which otherwise I really only use when reversing.