Driving With Dry Eyes: Safety Tips

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Nearly five million people in the U.S. experience dry eyes, which can cause itchiness, redness, stinging, burning, watering, blurred vision, and sensitivity to light. Understand how dry eyes interfere with safe driving, and what you can do to lessen dry eye symptoms.

Our eyes perform specific tasks while we’re driving to keep us safe. They identify multiple objects at rest and in motion at one time, determine their distance and speed, and trigger our response time. Research has shown dry eyes cause more objects to go unseen and slow down response times, particularly at crossroads and roundabouts. The impact of dry eyes on driving tends to be worse at night than during the day. 

These tips can help you drive more safely with dry eyes:

• if you wear contacts, consider switching to eyeglasses for driving—you may need different glasses for day and night
• use eyedrops before your drive
• position air vents to blow away from your eyes
• blink regularly as you drive, as staring makes dry eyes worse
• keep eyeglasses, windshield, and headlamps clean

Some people need more than nonprescription eye drops and tweaks to their routine to continue driving safely. Many effective treatments are available to ease dry eyes and improve your vision on the road:

• prescription eye drops or eye inserts that help eyes produce more tears
• tear duct plugs that keep tears in your eyes longer
• medicine to reduce inflammation in the eyelids or cornea (eye surface)
• surgery to tighten loose eyelids and make sure tears are functioning properly

If you wear contacts, your doctor may suggest trying new options made for dry eyes, like scleral lenses or bandage lenses. Some people also benefit from light therapy, eyelid massage, and warm compresses.

We need tears to lubricate our eyes and keep them moist. Dry eye occurs if we don’t produce enough water in our tears, tears don’t include the right balance of lubricants, or tears evaporate too fast. To help determine if eyes are dry, doctors can measure the volume and quality of tears your eyes are producing.

Certain groups of people are at higher risk of dry eye than others, including women, people over 50, people who have a vitamin A or omega-3 deficiency, those with specific underlying medical conditions (diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid disease), contact lens wearers, and those who have had laser eye surgery to correct vision.

Anyone can have dry eye, though, so if you have symptoms, get them checked out by an optometrist or ophthalmologist, specialists in diagnosing and treating eye problems.

If you think dry eyes are making you a less safe driver, you’re probably right. When simple steps don’t help the situation, talk with your doctor about what to try next.