Reasons You’re Struggling to Drive at Night

Driving poses challenges regardless of the time of day, but for many people, nighttime driving is especially troublesome. Low-light conditions, bright headlights, and the pattern of light and dark created by passing streetlamps can make it harder to focus or create other issues that interfere with your driving ability.

Rodrigo Belalcazar MD, PLLC, and our team at Advanced Eye Center in Hialeah, Florida, understand how vision problems like difficulty driving at night can take a toll on your quality of life. Here, learn why these problems happen and what we can do to help.

Vision changes with age

Nighttime driving issues can happen at any age, but they become far more common as we get older. Many age-related eye diseases and even natural changes in your eye muscles can lead to difficulty seeing in the nighttime environment.

Presbyopia and dry eye

Presbyopia and dry eye are two conditions that tend to become a lot more common with age. Presbyopia refers to age-related farsightedness, or problems focusing on objects up close. While driving generally requires better distance vision, difficulty focusing can impact your ability to see your dashboard at night. 

Dry eye happens when your eyes aren’t lubricated as much as they should be, usually because of a problem with the structure, production, or distribution of your natural tears. Dry eye also becomes more common with age, but if you use a computer often, you can wind up with dry eye too. At night, dry eyes can lead to blurriness and problems focusing.

Cataracts

Your eye contains a natural lens located behind your iris. As you get older, proteins inside your lens tend to form clumps, resulting in a general clouding of your lens called a cataract. 

Cataracts usually affect both eyes, causing symptoms like glare, halos around lights, blurry vision, and significant problems seeing in low-light conditions, including nighttime and cloudy weather. Cataracts can also affect your ability to distinguish colors.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is an eye disease that gradually damages your optic nerve located at the very back of your eye. This nerve carries vision signals from your eye to your brain where those signals are interpreted as objects.

Glaucoma often causes no symptoms initially, leading to its nickname: the silent thief of sight. As the disease progresses, you can experience night vision problems, along with problems with peripheral vision.

Diabetic eye disease

Diabetes is a chronic disease that can happen at any time but tends to become more common with age. Unmanaged glucose levels impair blood flow to your eye and can damage your optic nerve, increasing your risk of vision problems.

Diabetic retinopathy happens when diabetes damages blood vessels in the light-sensitive retina at the back of your eye, causing general problems with vision, particularly at night.

Macular degeneration

The macula is the central part of your retina. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an eye disease that happens when the macula is damaged, interfering with your central vision.

In addition to causing central vision loss, macular degeneration makes it harder to gauge distances and takes a toll on overall depth perception.

Avoiding nighttime vision problems

Nighttime vision problems can happen gradually, and it’s tempting to ignore them for as long as possible. However, delaying treatment can lead to worsening issues, along with an increased risk of dangerous accidents.

If you’ve noticed changes in your nighttime vision, it’s time to make an appointment. But even if your nighttime vision is clear, regular eye exams are still important to spot problems early, including issues like glaucoma that cause no symptoms until permanent vision loss occurs.

If you’re having difficulty driving at night, we have treatments that can help. To learn more, call 305-707-6011 or book an appointment online with Dr. Belalcazar and our team at Advanced Eye Center today.