Spectacles or contact lenses?

Wearing a helmet is a basic safety factor, but it is also a constraint for those whose sight requires a few adjustments. The helmet must let the air in (properly directed, if possible), to enable breathing, ventilation in hot weather, no misting in colder weather, and all in an extremely enclosed environment. As a result, certain contact lens wearers may be bothered by the air streams and the lenses may come off at speed!

So we still have spectacles: first of all, make sure that they fit inside the helmet, that they fit properly over the foam trim and are not a hindrance. Even with subscription spectacles, it is important to have soft sides, designed to resist impact.

In case of accident, and an impact on the helmet, metal or rigid frame spectacles can disintegrate and causes serious injury to the cheeks, skull and eyes. The same applies to the lenses, where polycarbonate is preferable to mineral materials. In both cases, riding with a clean, unscratched visor is essential.

Filtering the UVs

A helmet with a black or colour-tinted visor looks good, but most of these screens are not designed to offer proper UV ray protection, and some even amplify them, due to their magnifying glass effect.

This is why there is a burning sensation after a trip in the sun, and there is a danger for your eyes in the medium term.
Riding with a tinted screen means you need to have a transparent screen to hand in order to change it if visibility becomes reduced. With this in mind, we should sacrifice the aesthetics a little, by opting for polarising sun glasses and a conventional transparent visor.

Optimising vision

Even more than other motorcyclists, spectacles or contact lens wearers should optimise all factors which contribute to good visibility when riding.
The lighting capacity of motorcycles is generally inferior to that of cars (which are increasingly using directional xenon headlights)

So we need to regularly clean the screen visor, the wind-shield and headlight lenses…

And then don't forget the blind spot: this is the area in which you are invisible to the vehicle in front of you AND the area in which you may not see the vehicle following you. So, double your attention when riding through the blind spot, for example, when overtaking. )

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