JUN 23

Enjoy the Scenery Better with the Right Prescription Motorcycle Glasses

When going on an extended sightseeing tour on your motorcycle, lots of planning goes into it. You might do extensive research on new routes and get your bike (and maybe yourself) into shape. One thing that may not get the same attention, is your eyewear. While eyewear is important from a safety point of view, such as protection from impact and UV, an aspect that’s probably overlooked by 99% of the riding population is whether the eyewear enhances your view of what’s “out there.” Why should this matter? Because a riding tour is an “experience” that can only be experienced through the five senses, and vision is the most important of these.

Your eyewear affects your perception of what’s out there much like the photographer’s camera affects the quality of her photos. A bad camera means getting photos that are blurred, overexposed, full of glare, or lacking in contrast. Likewise, using riding glasses that aren’t prescription means seeing blurry scenery. Glasses lacking sufficient tint make the world around you appear “washed out” like an overexposed photo. And like a photo full of glare, you can’t see the road or scenery when your eyes are squinting against the glare. Pictures that lack contrast make poor photos. Likewise, thick haze makes for a less than satisfying visual experience. However, you need not be satisfied with what your unaided eyes can see on a hazy day when contrast enhancing lens tints can cut through a lot of it.

Use Prescription Motorcycle Glasses

When riding a motorcycle, you get a better sense of the big picture of your surroundings than the motorists enclosed within their cars. However, that big picture looks so much better when it’s filled with crisp detail, and uncorrected vision makes this impossible. Wearing your regular glasses within riding goggles is uncomfortable, clunky, and gets in the way of your enjoyment.

A combination of contacts and riding goggles might work, except that your eyes become more prone to drying out. Contacts are impossible to readjust while riding should they become dislodged. In addition, they don’t fare well in dusty conditions because fine dust particles can get entrapped beneath them against the eye. Contacts are also high maintenance. Why mess around with them when a single pair of prescription motorcycle glasses does the same job without the extra fuss?

Polycarbonate vs Trivex

Polycarbonate is the most commonly used material for motorcycle riding glasses. It’s extremely tough in that it easily absorbs shock. In fact, trying to break a thin piece of it requires a lot of back and forth bending before it finally fatigues and snaps. Polycarbonate naturally blocks UVA and UVB, which is another plus for this amazing material. However, its optical quality, isn’t quite as good as CR-39 plastic (commonly used in ordinary prescription glasses). The clarity of the vistas and other sights on your trip will suffer somewhat.

Trivex is an alternative lens material that is very close to polycarbonate in toughness. Trivex also blocks all UV. However, the optical quality of this material is superior to polycarbonate, which means you can see with greater clarity. Trivex costs more than polycarbonate, but not excessively so.

Get Rid of Glare

Glare affects your enjoyment of your trip on a number of levels. First, it’s dangerous because glare interferes with seeing the road and traffic. Second, hours of squinting the eyes get downright uncomfortable, produce headaches, and the fatigue reduces your riding stamina. Finally, it degrades the experience when you can’t appreciate what’s around you because of the interference of glare and the discomfort that you feel.

Eliminating this problem amounts to choosing the right lens options with your prescription motorcycle glasses. For the best glare reduction, use polarized lenses to get rid of reflected glare, and a tint to cut down the overall brightness level. Polarization filters out light that reflects off horizontal surfaces such as water puddles, wet pavement, and when sunlight hits the flat back windows of cars at certain angles. Polarized lenses also diminish reflections off curved glass and metal. They’re very helpful when riding towards a sunset that’s over a body of water.

Another helpful option, is anti-reflective (AR) coatings. These prevent back reflection of sunlight off the inside surface of your riding glasses. When the sun is above you, your glasses may reflect parts of your face back at you. If the sun is behind you, you may get reflected glare from the sun or from the sky. If your eyewear is for night riding, the AR coating will reduce headlight glare.

Two other sources of glare are grime and scratches on your lenses. Both of these cause light to scatter as it passes through your eyewear lenses. Solving the problem of grime amounts to keeping your lenses clean. Unfortunately, keeping your lenses clear of scratches is more difficult. Get an anti-scratch coating and prevent scratches by taking good care of your prescription motorcycle glasses.

Try Contrast Enhancing Tints

Certain tints improve contrast in fog, haze, and even in clear weather. How is this possible? Because some tint colors such as amber, copper, yellow, red, brown, orange, and rose block blue light. Blue light tends to scatter when it hits air molecules, which is why the sky is blue. It also scatters as it passes through the fluid within your eyes. Ideally, all colors of light should travel in straight lines within your eye. Unfortunately, scattered blue light isn’t doing this. This effect reduces your perception of contrast, even on clear days. Many of the aforementioned tint colors will distort your color perception. However, brown does this the least.

If you require help, or need more information on getting the right prescription motorcycle glasses and lens options, contact us today.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© RX Safety - Developed by ISEA Media & Cosmick Technologies