The Relationship of Fields of Vision to Safety in Driving*

The Multiple-Pattern Method of Visual Field Examination

“…We agree with Danielson 10 and McGough 18 that the test should be conducted in a quiet room and that attention should be paid to the comfort of the patient, lighting of the cards and avoidance of shadows, explana¬ tion of the test, and position of the examiner so that he can watch the patient's fixation. To minimize false-positive tests, those per¬ sons whose responses indicate a visual field defect should be reexamined on the screener, and if there is still doubt, a tangent-screen examination is indicated.…”

Driver Vision and Traffic Safety

“…Once the salient visual factors have been isolated and the relative contribution of different visual factors to the driving task determined, consideration should be given to assigning a weighting to each. For example, Danielson (1958) suggests that a relatively poor visual field may be compensated for by "good" visual acuity. Using a weighting system, the vision test scores could be combined and cutoff points selected to define whether a person is to be classed as visually competent to drive or not.…”

“…Throughout the twentieth century, investigators have been looking at the relationship between accident-involvement and vision test scores (reviewed in Danielson 1958;Goldstein, 1961). No significant relationship was found in most early investigations, although there were methodological defects in the early studies which may have masked the effect, e.g.…”