Poor vision | road safety link highlighted

Many drivers in LMICs have poor vision (image courtesy of Tron Le WB)

New research led by Queen’s University Belfast has highlighted the link between poor vision and road traffic safety in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

The research review, ‘Vision impairment and traffic safety outcomes in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis‘, has been published in the Lancet Global Health and was supported by Clearly and the Ulverscroft Foundation.

Key findings include: many drivers in LMICs have poor vision; there is a major policy gap as the majority of these drivers never had vision testing; there is a clear correlation between poor vision and the risk of crashes.

Nathan Congdon, professor at the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast and Ulverscroft chair of global eye health, said: “It may seem obvious that poor vision is connected causally with unsafe roads, but in fact prior reviews, and most research in the area, has focused on rich countries, where we actually do a pretty good job of keeping drivers with poor vision off the roads. But once we focused solely on low and middle-income countries, a very different picture came into focus. There are many drivers with poor vision on the roads in these settings, and it seems apparent that they explain an important part of the high number of road traffic accidents occurring there.

“Our review shows that more needs to be done to urgently address the link between poor vision and road safety and to reduce the high rate of road mortality in LMICs, especially among young people,” Professor Congdon continued. “We expect that these new findings will be used to inform major trials on vision and traffic safety in LMICs and in turn to guide strategies to address visual impairments among drivers, the very large majority of which are readily treatable. Tighter enforcement of existing regulations is needed, combined with on-site access to vision services for those failing testing.”

James Chen, founder of Clearly and chairman of the Chen Yet Sen Family Foundation, commented: “This research should be a major warning sign for governments on the need to act on the UN resolution on Vision for All, which was passed unanimously last month. There is strong evidence that good vision makes roads safer and governments need to seriously consider making eye tests mandatory in issuing driving licences.”

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