As part of their initiatives to support road safety, three vision care organisations - VisionSpring, India Vision Institute and Sightsavers India have announced their completion of more than a million vision screenings of drivers and transportation workers.
Through their joint efforts to make India’s roads safer, more than one million truck, rideshare, and autorickshaw drivers have been screened for vision impairment and provided with on-the-spot access to eyeglasses, a release from the vision care organisation stated.
The announcement follows the vision and road safety conference recently co-hosted by these organisations. While much attention is given to speeding, seatbelt use, and driving while intoxicated, eyeglasses are a simple and powerful tool to address road safety issues, and vision care is an essential component to solving this problem, the conference observed.
The potential impact of eyeglasses on road safety is significant, and getting eyeglasses immediately onto the faces of the people who need them has been key to this project’s success, the release said.
Ella Rain Gudwin, CEO, VisionSpring Global, said, “In a study of 275 truck drivers who acquired their first pair of glasses through our ‘See to be Safe’ programme, VisionSpring found that one in four drivers did not meet the visual acuity requirements for their licensing. In other words, they could not see road signs and hazards just 20-30 meters away.”
Vinod Daniel, CEO, India Vision Institute, said that nearly 24% of unscreened drivers have explained that their lack of time has prevented them from seeking eyecare previously; another 25% said they were unaware they had vision problems altogether.
N Mohanty, CEO, Sightsavers India, pointed out that road crashes claim 1.3 million lives each year globally, and of those, 90% of deaths are in developing countries.
With more than one million vision screenings completed, the three organisations have set an ambitious goal of completing another one million screenings of drivers and transportation workers by the end of 2025 in collaboration with a broad coalition of government and private partners, the release added.