Night Driving Work Nightmare

[Pauly]

Stace will you be able to wear RGPs when the eyes heal up from the CXL. Have you ever wore them before and did they help?

[GarethB]

Many people post CXL wear soft lenses designed for KC, so this may help, I haven't had CXL but 25 years post graft and my transition from RGP to soft lenses has made night driving far easier.

One thing I have noticed recently is that driving someone else's car was much better. After some reading up it seems my windscreen has been scratched by previously bad fitting wipers... so I've ordered a kit to polish them back to how they should be. Although, the guys on the detailing forum told me there's no substitute for getting a brand new windscreen, unfortunately my insurance is only third party so that isn't an option for me.

Even fully comprehensive won't cover a windscreen replacement for minor scratches, only a broken window or one that is damaged that will result in an MOT failure. In my opinion using a polishing kit to remove external scratches is only temporary because as soon as you use wipers on a salt covered window (even with washers used) will soon result in fine scratches becoming apparent again and we usually only become aware of poor fitting wipers when they fail to clear a window satisfactorily and the damage is already done.

Another thing that I found really helped (still temporary and only a a few minutes each week) is simply cleaning the inside of the windscreen as even with cabin filter, oil & grease will still get through and coat the inside of the windscreen to which fine dust particles will adhere to. I do at least 500 miles per week which has been the norm for over 12 years and between my car and my wife's, this has meant I have used seven different makes of car and all have suffered this same problem to the same extent. In all cases when I clean the windscreen each week the white cloth is covered in black muck and it is this along with the oil and grease that scatters the light which is then scattered more by our damaged eyes.

I use either Autoglym Car Glass Cleaner or Meguiar's Perfect Clarity Glass cleaner; it is important to use a glass cleaner designed for cars as the cleaners used for your house windows can lead to delamination of the windscreen and can haze in bright light making things even worse.

This is by no means a cure, but I think does help significantly. Friends of mine that have no vision defects have also found this approach makes their night driving easier to.