Glaucoma patients have unsafe driving behaviors despite eye-scanning compensations
Individuals with glaucoma driving in a virtual environment demonstrated unsafe driving behaviors, despite driving and eye-scanning compensations, according to a case-control pilot study.
Fourteen participants with glaucoma and 9 healthy control subjects performed 4 driving scenarios with 1 to 2 hazardous situations on urban streets.
Patients with glaucoma demonstrated poor driving performance compared to the control participants. Glaucoma participants had a longer reaction time to hazardous situations including pedestrians crossing the road from the left (P < 0.022) or from the right (P = 0.013), and vehicles coming from the left (P = 0.002).
A longer mean duration of lateral excursion (P = 0.045) and more lane excursions in a wide left curve (P = 0.045) were found in participants with glaucoma, as well as a higher standard deviation of time-headway (P = 0.048) with preceding vehicles.
Participants with glaucoma were also found to stay closer to the center line in large (P = 0.006) and small (P = 0.025) left curves and on small right curves (P = 0.041), and on straight roads, they had longer mean time-headway (P = 0.032) and lower mean speed (P = 0.04).
Participants in the glaucoma group also had a larger standard deviation of horizontal gaze (P= 0.034) than the control participants.
Reference
Adrian J, Authié C, Lebrun J, et al. Driving behavior and visual compensation in glaucoma patients: Evaluation on a driving simulator. Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2022;doi: 10.1111/ceo.14062. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35195335.
