Mesopic contrast sensitivity and glare disability in drivers.

Abstract

Visual Acuity is a poor predictor of driving ability and it is likely to be a poor predictor of many aspects of real-world vision, because the real world is not composed purely of fine objects with sharp edges at high contrast. Although not all objects are at contrst treshold either, it has been shown that a loss of contrast sensitivity (CS) is roughly equivalent to a loss of image contrast in the normal eye (OWSLEY, 1994). The extent of contrast loss required before real-world performance is reduced depends on the real-world task being performed. Somo tasks, such as optimal speed reading and mobility orientation in a well-llit room, tolerate large reductions in contrast (Elliot, 1996; Leffe, 1993; Pelli, 1986). These tasks would probably only be affected in patients with a severe loss of contrast sensitivity. However, other tasks such as speed reading newspaper-size print and face recognition are moderately affected by contrast reduction (Elliot, 1996). Further, mobility orientation under dim illumination has been shown to be seriously affected by reduced contrast. Thus, under low-iluminance conditions and when a subject is working near his or her acuity limit, tolerance to contrast loss is reduced (Legge, 1993)