Many are also opting to don a mask while driving and for some, this is a necessity if you are a taxi or bus driver you have to wear a face covering while driving passengers around.
But, for anyone who wears glasses, the complications are evident straight away and you can find your vision impaired within minutes as your lenses steam up. There are of course ways you can prevent this, but for those that haven’t, foggy glasses, rearranging masks and scrambling to clean your glasses while driving could all land you with a £1,000 fine if the police pull you over and deem that you were distracted while driving.
In addition to this, Google Trends data suggests that more and more glasses wearers are now realising the problems with face coverings with searches for ‘foggy glasses’ up 30% mid-July compared to the month prior suggesting more people than ever throughout lockdown are now covering up.
The data was even more staggering when you looked at those actively searching for how to combat the issue of how to stop them from fogging over or which types of masks were best for glasses wearers, which incidentally we have written about here!
So, how can you avoid a £1,000 fine, a potential accident on the road and impaired vision?
First, consider how distracting the problem is if you drive a lot and it is really impairing your vision and you are constantly cleaning the lenses you might want to rethink whether you really need glasses? Perhaps switching to a set of cheap contact lenses would be wise to avoid the problem altogether.
Alternatively, there are other actions you can take:
- You could invest in a face mask that moulds to your nose, meaning that the gap at the top for hot air to travel up through and on to your glasses will be closed, preventing the stream.- Ensure that your glasses are tight and well-fitted to your face and if you can, sit your face mask underneath the bottom of your frame so that it holds the mask to your face.
- There’s an old wives’ tale, that cleaning your glasses with washing up liquid and letting them dry naturally will prevent fogging as the soap leaves a thin film over the lens.
- If washing up liquid doesn’t work, you could polish the lenses with shaving foam, add a bit to each lens and rub in. Once dried, polish away - again, this should create a thin film on the lenses.
The important thing here is deciding how much foggy glasses impact your day-to-day and if you have to wear a face mask as part of your job! Commenting on multi-tasking while driving, UK motoring expert Ranjen Gohri, of breakdown firm 24/7 Vehicle Rescue said:
“Long-established research has shown that the human ability to multitask declines with age, but it’s important to stress that older drivers are not ‘worse’ drivers than younger people. However, it does point to them suffering a reduction in their ability to perform two unexpected tasks at the same time and to switch easily between tasks.
“It also reinforces the message that any distractions while driving can be seriously detrimental to concentration and performance.”
