Transitions glasses have some great benefits, particularly when wearing them as everyday spectacles. The photochromic lenses in the glasses darken as they are exposed to the ultraviolet rays in daylight-but they have one significant disadvantage in that until now they have not been appropriate or beneficial for use as driving glasses.
When wearing glasses for driving, you are typically trying to address two primary concerns (apart from the prescription eyeglass lenses remediating vision of course) – glare from either oncoming traffic, or reflections from road surfaces caused by moisture for example, and as prescription sunglasses that can attenuate or reduce the brightness of incoming sunlight. Modern windscreens, however, take away one of these benefits as they are designed to absorb the ultraviolet light that has been necessary to activate the photochromic reaction in the glasses lenses.
Drivewear lenses resolve this conflict by using unique and patented dyes in the transitions lenses which do respond to visible light as well as ultraviolet light. This enables the driving glasses to change colour tint as the light intensity changes and consequently improving the driver’s vision. They also block 100% of incoming UVA and UVB sunlight.
In almost every driving situation where there is strong sunlight, these lenses provide optimized comfort and safety for the driver. When the daylight is of lower intensity, these glasses lenses have a slight yellowish tint which is known to provide high contrast and so enable the driver to easily distinguish between objects in his field of vision. When they have activated behind a windscreen of a car the yellowish tint changes slightly to a more copper tint which also reduces glare and actively filters out some of the visual sunlight while maintaining excellent visual characteristics.
Another benefit of this colour tint is that it is optimized to allow strong pass-through of colours in the red and green spectrum and so makes it easier to first see traffic lights from a distance and then to differentiate easily between the colours.
When worn as everyday spectacles outside of the car, the transitions photochromic lenses continue to darken and filter out visible light in proportion to the intensity of the daylight being received the lens-providing active comfort in changing sunlight conditions and filtering out excess daylight.
Like all tinted glasses, they should not be worn for night driving however as there is a wide agreement between experts and institutions that no attempt should be used to filter incoming light at night time as it is bound to reduce the visual integrity of the driver and so negatively affect safety.