Aussie cull on colour deficient lenses

Crazy as it sounds, last week it was reported by the Canberra Times that shades with brown, yellow or reddish tinted lenses will be unacceptable for driving in.

Those with rose-tinted rage were told that traffic-lights use a green-blue hue to help colour deficient road users (about 8% of men) detect green traffic signals, whilst sunglasses with a brown lense designed to block the glare from blue skies actually end up blocking out the blue light emitted from traffic-lights.

Professor Stephen Dain of the University of New South Wales, Australia and former head of the School of Optometry and Vision Science discovered that in a study of "49 colour-deficient males and 20 with normal vision were given various tinted sunglasses and asked to identify colours of simulated traffic lights.

"About 20 per cent of colour-deficient subjects wearing tinted glasses could not correctly identify the lights. His report notes that "response times for colour-deficient people were slower than colour normals for red and yellow" lights."

The interesting news for those style, rather than, science conscious wearers of sunglasses is that according to Professor Dain, European countries are trying to avoid imposing legislation on sunglasses manufacturers in an effort not to hamper sales.

If you fancy being particularly responsible, have a look at some high standard lenses to protect your peepers...
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