Do we attend to our ability to see other road hazards and road users in front of us? I would like to refer not only to driver fitness and our ability to see with our eyes – but something as simple as a clear windscreen without cracks and dirt!
On our roads in South Africa we are experiencing a lot of maintenance work – and as a result an increased dangers of chips to our windscreens. These chips and scratches might result in reduced visibility and some other threats as well:
• drivers may take longer to re-adapt their vision following exposure to the stray light effects created through a worn windscreen (“dazzling”)
• detection distances to objects on the road ahead may be reduced when looking through worn windscreens
• the contrast of objects on the road ahead may be reduced – the consequence of which could be a reduction of visibility distances
• drivers reaction times to a secondary task may be slowed
• driving with a visually degraded windscreen induces fatigue and performance declines more rapidly than when driving with a non-degraded windscreen
• older drivers might find worn out windscreens to be even more debilitating compared with younger drivers
These dangers are even more threatening during night time driving and where road conditions are not up to scratch!
On the Arrive Alive website we have included safety suggestions and advice on how to increase safety and visibility.
We would like to invite road users to visit the section “road safety and your windscreen”
Road Safety & Arrive Alive Blog 