Customer Service Lines Open Mon-Fri 9am-6pm
Closed Saturday & Sunday & Bank Holidays
Drivers are being urged to have an eye test every two years, to help improve the safety of roads and attempt to reduce the number of casualties on the British roads.
Brake, the Road Safety Charity has teamed up with the DVLA and the RSA car insurance company to campaign that drivers take regular sight examinations. The call is for compulsary eyesight checks for drivers ever 10 years.
It is already an offence is your eyesight doesn't meet the legal standards when you are in control of a vehicle, the offence is actually punishable by three points on your licence. If you refuse to have an eye test then you will be issued with the same penalty.
Though, drivers in the United Kingdom usually only have their eyesight checked during the driving test, this only consists of reading a regulation car number plate from 20 metres away, using glasses or corrective lenses if necessary.
The new sharpen up campaign is calling for a more rigorous test for new drivers, with retests at ten year intervals. A survey that was carried out on behalf of the campaign found that over 1.4 of motorists had not had their eyes checked in the last two years, whilst 3%, which accounts for around 1 million motorists, had never had their eyes checked.
The research also found that around 9& of drivers who require glasses or contact lenses don't always wear them when they are on the road. According to the Department for Transport, 6,000 motorists had their licences removed for sight related reasons in 2011. Police have had the power, with permission from the DVLA, to remove driving licences from a person who has poor eyesight.
This procedure apparently used to take days, though following the death of Cassie McCord, who was 16 years old in 2011, who was involved in an accident with an 87 year old driver who failed to take an eye test, though would not surrended his licence just three days earlier, the relevant authorities now have the power to remove driving permits from motorists immediately, based on these grounds.
Allegedly, biennial eye tests along with compulsary checks every decade could actually see 3,000 fewer casualties on roads in the United Kingdom every year.