See Clearly, Drive Safely: How TechShield Can Help with Night Driving

Many drivers experience glare or a ghostly halo around headlights and streetlights at night, a phenomenon caused by diffraction (the bending of light as it enters the eye and the pupil contracts). Although this experience can signal other health conditions, it’s common in many patients, especially older ones. The precise technology of TechShield^® at the lab level can help these patients.

“After I turned 50, I started asking my husband to drive at night because I see halos around the headlights and questioned whether I could drive safely.”— Christine E., Charlotte, NC  

This is a sentiment Chris Smiley, OD, hears frequently from his patients who visit his Columbus, Ohio practice. “We see a lot of patients who complain about halos and glare while driving at night,” he notes. “It can happen at any age, but as we get older, due to the normal aging of the eye, the effects can seem worse.Examples of halos and glare while driving at night with and without TechShield Elite. 

One way to help patients confidently drive at night, according to Dr. Smiley, is to make sure the patient has the right prescription to combat glare and halos with TechShield AR.  “We tend to favor TechShield Elite over other coatings for patients with low-light driving concerns because of the anti-reflective and anti-glare layers combined with scratch resistance, hydrophobic, and oleophobic layers that make all the difference with visual clarity.”

Each Layer Has a Purpose

Less is more doesn’t apply to AR coatings because each layer is designed to block certain light wavelengths and perform different functions. TechShield Elite eliminates distracting glare from oncoming headlights, and TechShield Blue offers a blue light filter for patients who are frequently on digital devices.

Standard AR coatings will have two, sometimes three, layers of anti-glare and anti-reflective coatings, often with no hard-coat and no hydrophobic (water resistant) and oleophobic (oil resistant) layers. TechShield is a premium coating with a required set of specifications for reflection and transmission on all products, including specific reflectance, reflective color profile, and transmission of light through the lens itself. To use a baking analogy, the formulary or “recipe” for a TechShield coating is the same with no deviation, like a batch of cookies that comes out identically every time.  

“With a basic anti-reflective coating, there is no guarantee that it will have the same reflectance or transmission profile every time and you’ll see that in the reflectance color,” notes Jason Gentile, TechShield Product Manager. “Older or poorer quality ones will have a purplish-reddish reflectance because of inconsistent recipes or lab processes.”  

According to Gentile, if the hard coat doesn’t match up appropriately with the other layers, the lens can have birefringence, an optical property of a material that can produce all kinds of unwanted artifacts like Newton Rings that look like the inside of an abalone shell. “We want to maximize visual performance, cosmetic appearance, cleanability, and durability with TechShield lenses,” Gentile notes. “We require targeted specifications for all of the above to be maintained and quality checked on a weekly basis to make sure it comes out the same every time.” 

What about Those Other Layers?

Does a hard coat, hydrophobic, and oleophobic really matter? The answer is yes! A good anti-reflective coating will take all visual clarity into account, whether it’s scratch resistance, smudge resistance, or quick cleanability that gives patients the power to see clearer. If a patient’s AR coating eliminates glare and reduces halos but is smudged from fingerprints or scratched, a driver won’t see clearly, and that defeats the whole purpose.   

“TechShield Elite gives our patients the whole package for visual clarity at night, during the day, and for all seasons,” concludes Dr. Smiley. “It’s why we recommend it for every prescription.”

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