Keep your eyes on the road, new drivers are constantly told.
But anyone who drives at night or into the glare of sunlight knows the problem. Drivers can’t always see cars or objects ahead or behind.
Aging also brings vision problems. Common age-related diseases such as cataracts and glaucoma can blur eyesight or restrict a person’s peripheral vision.
Now, an effort among eye-care professionals and the automotive industry is studying vision-related driver issues from simple mirror adjustments to high-tech sensing systems that can detect nearby and far-away objects.
A discussion also is under way about vision testing of the elderly for state driver’s licenses. Are current tests that measure only straight-ahead vision enough? Should states do more to give older drivers a chance to stay on the road longer with licenses restricted to short, daytime drives?
“This is a dynamically growing field of study,” said Dr. Philip Hessburg, a Henry Ford Health System ophthalmologist and president of the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. The Grosse Pointe Park-based institute sponsored a landmark conference, “The Eye and The Auto,” in June at DaimlerChrysler’s design center in Auburn Hills, Mich. It brought together a wide range of experts, many for the first time.
The institute plans to hold conferences biennially on the topic. (For information visit www.eyeson.org).
With 30 million U.S. drivers age 70 and older, a number that will increase to 38 million by 2020, the older-driver market is significant, Hessburg said. He projects older drivers will spend $475 billion on autos in 2020. Here’s how the experts defined the advances in vision enhancement:
Mirrors
Expect more cars to be equipped with electronically sensitive devices that automatically adjust mirrors inside and outside the car for glare.
About 15 percent of U.S. cars, mostly luxury models, have these electrochromic rearview mirrors, said Niall Lynam, senior vice president and chief technical officer for Donnelly Corp., a Holland-based auto-vision and information-display supplier. They cost about $25 each, compared to $3 for the typical prismatic mirror with a manual glare adjustment switch available on most cars, Lynam said.
Also ahead are new ways to display information, such as driving speed or how much fuel is left in the tank, on the rearview mirrors or dashboard, said Jeffrey Pike, senior technical specialist with Ford Motor Co. The challenge will be conveying information without adding distractions, he told the conference. “We don’t want a driver to focus too much on the display,” he said.
Hessburg agreed: “You can kill yourself trying to turn on the radio.”
Automakers also are looking at curved, or aspheric, mirrors widely used in Asia and Europe. Federal regulations allow aspheric mirrors (those that state objects are closer than they appear) only on the passenger side of autos driven in the U.S.
Studies in England and Finland involving 4,000 accidents showed that drivers using aspheric mirrors had fewer crashes, said Michael Flannagan, a visual perception researcher at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. He said U-M doesn’t lobby for federal regulatory changes.
Obstacle detection
Technology adapted from the military and the aerospace industry are driving new advances to provide better ways to see what’s around, ahead and behind a vehicle.
One system, Night Vision, detects heat emitted by an object, or what experts call the thermal signature. Then it displays it in miniature on the car’s dashboard. Systems differ in what objects can be detected and the quality of the picture rendered. But the technology allows drivers to see objects like moving animals three times farther than with high-beam lights alone.
Raytheon Commercial Electronics, a Dallas company, had a contract to produce 3,500 Night Vision units for Cadillac DeVille’s DHS and DTS lines for the 2000 model year, said Gary Finley, product marketing manager.
Within months, they sold out. Sales have stabilized at about 6,000 units, said Mark Clawson, assistant brand manager for the automaker’s DeVille line.
Now DeVille is using Night Vision as a marketing tool to appeal to customers who have not been Cadillac owners before, Clawson said. The system costs $2,250.
Another obstacle-detection system, PanoramicVision by Donnelly, uses four cameras mounted on the car to give the driver a wide-angle view of what’s to the side and in back of the car. It displays three merged pictures on a car’s dashboard.
Donnelly also has three related products now available through auto supply stores and the company’s Web site, www.donnelly.com.
LaneChek allows a wider view from a driver-side exterior mirror. Mounted on the directional signal switch in the car, it pops the outside mirror to a wider-angled view when touched. It aims to reduce the 244,000 U.S. crashes annually involved in lane changing.
BabyVue offers a drop-down video mirror so the driver can see a child in the back seat without having to turn around.
ReversAid is an exterior camera system mounted on the rear of a car to help drivers back up safely. The BabyVue and ReversAid systems each cost $499, or $649 for both. ReversAid can be modified to become a product called TowChek to help drivers towing boats or trailers back up without help. It costs $499.
These kinds of camera and sensor systems should allow greater safety in making a left turns, as well as provide a better view of sidewalks and cross streets when approaching an intersection, said Gary Strumolo, who heads a Ford accident-avoidance team in the automaker’s safety research and development department.
Ford developed a concept vehicle, CamCar, a Lincoln Navigator with camera systems to improve vision ahead, on the side and behind a car, as well as at night, Strumolo said.
Vision problems
Aging alone does not cause vision loss. But common vision problems increase with age. Still, older people could pass state vision tests because the measurements often judge only straight-ahead vision. People with glaucoma, a disease caused by fluid build-up in the eye, for example, often have poor peripheral vision.
Some states, Michigan and Illinois included, measure other aspects of vision, such as peripheral vision.
Regulations now are “all over the map,” said Eli Peli, professor of ophthalmology at New England Medical Center in Boston. He heads a vision-rehabilitation program typical of what many Detroit-area hospitals offer to patients to help people retain licenses by using magnified or telescopic lenses or by training themselves to pay attention to more than just the objects directly ahead of them.
But technological advances can help only so much, and experts say equal attention needs to be given to transit options for seniors, so they aren’t so reluctant to stop driving when their vision begins to fail.
“We need to make it easier for people to give up the keys,” said Robin Barr, deputy director of extramural activities for the National Institute on Aging.
