Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers across the United States. For both men and women, drivers aged 16 to 19 years of age have the highest average annual crash and traffic violation rates of any other age group.
Teenagers tend to take more risks while driving partly due to their overconfidence in the driving abilities. Young novice driving are more likely to engage in risky behaviors like speeding, tailgating, running red light, violating traffic sings and signals, making illegal turns, passing dangerously, and failure to yield to pedestrians. Teenage drivers have not yet completely mastered basic vehicle handling skills and safe-driving knowledge they need to drive safely. They also have low risk perception which involves subjectively assessing the degree of threat posed by a hazard and one's ability to deal with the threat. Young drivers tend to underestimate to crash risk in hazardous situations and overestimate their ability to avoid the thread they identify.
Therefore, good vision is essential for the proper and safe operation of a motor vehicle.
Generally, available vision-testing instruments can be used to ascertain if a person has adequate vision to meet specific licensing jurisdictions. Because of the increasing injury and death toll resulting from traffic accidents, many of which may be related to visual impairment, physicians consider it a medical obligation to diagnose visual deficiencies and to inform the patient of potential hazards involved in driving with such deficiencies.
There is no practical way of testing alertness or cerebral perception of what the eye focuses on but it is important for drivers to have their eyes periodically examined for defects that can be evaluated.If you are a teenager or a parent to a teenager please make sure his or her vision has been tested and is safe to drive. To schedule an eye exam please call us at Doctor & Associates-203-227-4113.
