Eye protection for night riding?

JpMcG · Sep 20, 2023

Stahr_Nut said:
Agree. However, I've purchased my last few pairs of glasses from SportRX. What's nice about them is if they have even the slightest concern about a particular frame being able to take your prescription they'll have their opticians "mock up" your lens first to check it out before having you place your order. The last two pair I've got from them are progressive bifocal WileyX P-17 with a slight prism adjustment for a muscle imbalance in my left eye and before they made the first pair for me they did mock-up lens to check them. At 54 years old and having worn glasses since age 12, I can easily say they are hands down the best prescription safety/sport glasses I've ever owned. Zero distortion even with all that going on with the lens, even better than my everyday wear glasses.

WileyX makes great stuff!

teK-- · Sep 22, 2023

I'll never ride at night without clears on. The risk is just too great to cop a branch or something in the face that you'd normally see in the daytime.

Good quality lens with some antifog/rainX on it will keep condensation and water drops off.

JonF1 · Sep 22, 2023

I also night ride with clear glasses mostly because its the cooler/windy seasons. But is there a better lens option for low light that would enhance visibility? Nothing is going to add light, but is there anything that makes the contrast or whatever better with what little light there is?

teK-- · Sep 22, 2023

JonF1 said:
I also night ride with clear glasses mostly because its the cooler/windy seasons. But is there a better lens option for low light that would enhance visibility? Nothing is going to add light, but is there anything that makes the contrast or whatever better with what little light there is?

I wouldn't think so... contrast modifying lens work by blocking out certain colours.
At night time you want all the light you can get.

Jayem · Sep 22, 2023

teK-- said:
I'll never ride at night without clears on. The risk is just too great to cop a branch or something in the face that you'd normally see in the daytime.

Good quality lens with some antifog/rainX on it will keep condensation and water drops off.

I did a few years ago, hit right below my helmet line and pretty close to my eye socket. My eye swelled shut for a few days. No broken socket bones, but damn, driving with one eye at night was challenging as heck, I leaned heavily on my active cruise control. Depth perception IS possible...it's just a lot harder. So my other advice is ditch the visor at night. That's a big issue.

But unfortunately, there's no glasses or goggles that don't fog here. Even holding your breath, your goggles/glasses will ice up while you are stationary. If you can go fast enough (skiing) you can keep it in check, but you can't hit those kinds of speeds riding and as soon as you slow down, it starts up again. High humidity coupled with cold temps and high pressure.

Jayem · Sep 22, 2023

JonF1 said:
I also night ride with clear glasses mostly because its the cooler/windy seasons. But is there a better lens option for low light that would enhance visibility? Nothing is going to add light, but is there anything that makes the contrast or whatever better with what little light there is?

Yes, lights. Even when it's in the early day or night, I'll leave my lights on pointed further down a lot longer than one would think, because our snow blends in with the background due to flat light. This helps to burn through it.

So more light. No such thing as enough lumens. You can "get by" with less, but more is almost always better IME, for visibility.

JonF1 · Sep 22, 2023

Jayem said:
Yes, lights. Even when it's in the early day or night, I'll leave my lights on pointed further down a lot longer than one would think, because our snow blends in with the background due to flat light. This helps to burn through it.

So more light. No such thing as enough lumens. You can "get by" with less, but more is almost always better IME, for visibility.

OF course i have lights, both helmet and bar. Wondering if any type of lens color would further augment that--was curious about those old school yellow lenses trap shooters use. Some cursory reading seems to indicate they do not help at night.

JKA · Sep 22, 2023

Completely clear lenses reduce the amount of light getting to the eye by about 8-10% due purely to reflection. ANY tint at all will reduce that even more. A very light yellow tint (shooting glasses) will reduce the amount of light getting to the eye, but does help some people with reducing glare by filtering out the short wavelength light that scatters more inside the eye. This is really only an issue for night driving with oncoming headlights or for shooters in bright light that can cause glare to make the target harder to see. It won't help you on a dark trail with bike or helmet lights. Keep your lenses clear and if you want the very best vision, get good anti-reflective lenses. The problem with those is that they smudge up VERY easily and make things worse. They are very hard to clean well and any dust or sweat on the lenses will make vision way worse.

Eye protection for night riding?

JpMcG

teK--

JonF1

teK--

Jayem

Jayem

JonF1

JKA

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