Can your taxi driver see where he’s going? Essilor, the French prescription lens company, asked 2,100 taxi drivers in 21 major cities worldwide this question, and their answers weren’t always a yes.

The eyesight survey found that one in every five taxi drivers does not have normal vision. A person with normal vision (a visual acuity of 10/10, or 1.0) can comfortably read a road sign 100 metres away. The standard legally-required vision threshold is, however, much lower at 0.5, where a driver can read the same sign only if it’s not more than 50 metres away.

Most drivers meet this requirement, but Essilor says the vision bar is set too low. “When driving at 50 km an hour,” the study explains, drivers without normal vision suffer a “3.6-second time lag in perception, which delays braking or avoids reflexes, making a significant difference in terms of safety.” Of all taxi drivers in New Delhi, the study found that 63 per cent do not have normal vision.

Thirty nine per cent of drivers with adequate vision told researchers they had difficulty driving at night, and 49 per cent said they couldn’t drive in very bright light. A 3-D perception test also showed that four out of five drivers had trouble judging distances, especially while parking.

A YouTube video that Essilor released along with the report explains how the survey was done. The video begins with a cab driver in New York admitting he can see straight but not what’s to the sides when driving at night. Later, a cab driver in London says: “I’m alright for distance, but not for reading door numbers or (normal) reading.”

Eye test

The researchers first asked them if they’ve had their eyes checked in the last five years. Twenty per cent of drivers said no. Bangkok did the worst on this count, with 57 per cent of drivers not having undergone an eye test.

Next was a far-vision test, where drivers had to read out letters from a chart 5 metres away, right there on the road with their cars parked on the side. (One driver burst out laughing in the process. Another, much older, owns up that “it’s blurry.”) The final exam was the Lang stereotest, random-dot pictures of a star, a crescent, an elephant and a car, that serves as a 3-D perception test.

The survey grouped cities into three clusters based on the vision quality of their cab drivers. From 80 to over 90 per cent of cabbies in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, London, Singapore and Mumbai have normal vision. With fewer than 80 per cent of drivers in Delhi, Seoul, Bangkok, Istanbul, Mexico, Shanghai and Tokyo being able to see clearly, Essilor says these cities have a lot of work to do.

Given the global survey results, a quick neighbourhood check was in order. Madhavan, a 45-year-old auto rickshaw driver in Chennai, has the usual bloodshot eyes of a man who has spent more than his share of hours squinting at the road. The only time in 20 years of being a driver that he checked his eyes, he says, was at a free eye camp at his daughter’s school. He uses reading glasses when not driving and says he has trouble at night when headlights flash. “But I’ve learnt to block that out.”

Jayanth Bhuvaraghan, Essilor’s Chief Corporate Mission Officer, says: “We in Essilor will now work with eye-care professionals and consumers to improve awareness about eye-care and improve the frequency of eye examinations. This, we believe, will help everyone, see the world better.”

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