If, like AA Milne’s Rabbit, you have lots of friends and relations, you have the making of your own epidemiological study: how many of them wear glasses and what proportion of those wear them for cycling. You may of course respond that few of your relatives live by the bike, but that’s quickly changing, judging by this week’s figures from the London Cycling Campaign, which reveal that 500,000 cycle journeys are now made every day in the capital.
At least four of those daily journeys are made by members of my own close family, 50% of whom are short-sighted and none of whom wear glasses when cycling. Just how reprehensible are they being?
Under DVLA rules, a car driver must be able to read an old-style (ie pre-2001) number plate at 20.5 metres (67ft). That distance shrinks with new-style number plates to 20 metres. If you can’t pass the test, it’s illegal to drive without appropriate glasses (or contact lenses).
To optician Stephen Davies the issue is clear: “I think people are duty bound to see as well as possible, even though there are no eyesight requirements for cyclists. If you can’t see properly, you are a risk to yourself and everyone else. If you need glasses for driving, then you need them for cycling as well.”
But cyclists are notorious libertarians, as London mayor Boris Johnson showed this week in a newspaper column on helmets: “We should be allowed, in our own muddled way, to make up our own minds … The important thing is that we assess the risk, we make the decision, and be it on our own heads.”
This rejection of regulation isn’t just a Tory trait. The Bike Fixer General, as my partner is known, has worn glasses all his car-driving life but has never felt it necessary to put them on for cycling. “Shortsightedness is a continuum,” he argues. “I know I wouldn’t pass driving sight tests without my glasses on but I also know that I’m not short-sighted enough to be in danger on a bike.”
He insists that the issue involves both physical sight and perception, “and perception isn’t just to do with how an optician calibrates vision, it’s about a nexus of things including your history as a road user. So anyone who has been driving for 30 years should, one hopes, be able to see (in the sense of perceive) risks on the road in a way that a 17-year-old learning to drive with much better vision wouldn’t be able to.”
It’s true that he wouldn’t presume to advance this argument in relation to car driving, the average speed of which in London is as low as 11mph – considerably slower than that of a decent cyclist. But speed does come into it: the DVLA regulations are designed to safeguard motorists travelling up to 70mph on motorways.
Then there is the problem of the weather. If it’s raining, and your glasses mist up or get splattered with water, your vision is likely to be far worse than it would be without them. This isn’t a problem that afflicts car drivers, who also have shades built in to eliminate the sudden dazzle of the sun at a low angle.
A straw poll of my cycling colleagues reveals that, of those who wear glasses all the time, about half don’t regard rain as a problem while the other half will avoid cycling at all in it. One sorted it out through laser surgery. “When it rains, I just keep going, but it’s true that at times I can’t really see, and it’s probably dangerous,” says one, who has considered getting contact lenses to deal with the problem.
Nobody I talked to had invested in cycle glasses that can be combined with prescription lenses, though there are plenty on the market. The best cycle glasses have the advantage of variable lenses capable of reducing glare and accentuating the contrast between light and dark objects. One firm boasts that its polycarbonate lenses are capable of withstanding a shotgun blast. Now there’s something no city cyclist should go without.
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