I can’t drive because I’m visually impaired. I know I’m too visually impaired to drive because I can’t even grocery shop properly with my shit eyesight - with a basket, let alone pushing a trolley!
But I pass the eye exams they make you take before you get a license and ive double checked with my optometrist and yes, my vision score is within the legal limits to drive as long as I wear my glasses… It’s baffling, because I absolutely should not be driving! I can’t see shit!
So I don’t drive.
When I say “I’m too blind to drive” some people ask if I can just lie about my vision and fake my way through, because “you really need a licence” and when I explain I can legally get a licence I just don’t, for everyone’s safety, they act like I’m being a selfish child for not doing the adult thing and getting my licence. Just because it can doesn’t mean I should.
I do cycle, pedalling a 20kg frame of metal at 15km/h on a bike path feels a lot safer than driving a 1 tonne hunk of metal at 80km/h on a highway. Without my bike I’d be pretty fucked in terms of my independence and being able to do what needs to be done as an adult. Fortunately my vision isn’t degenerative.
But in the last 5 years, especially since 2020 covid locksdowns, I feel like there are more people on the road that shouldn’t be. There’s just a huge increase in the frequency of “silly mistakes” - people swerving into the bike lane without looking to avoid a speed bump, people running a red turn signal because they’re looking at the green straight signal, people merging lanes at dangerously low speeds, no one putting their headlights on in the rain, everyone forgetting to indicate, people stopping more abruptly instead of slowing and anticipating a stop sign, and my personal favourite, everyone cutting corners in residential areas like they’re a formula 1 driver, just turning into the oncoming traffic of the street they’re turning into.
I can’t drive because I’m visually impaired. I know I’m too visually impaired to drive because I can’t even grocery shop properly with my shit eyesight - with a basket, let alone pushing a trolley!
But I pass the eye exams they make you take before you get a license and ive double checked with my optometrist and yes, my vision score is within the legal limits to drive as long as I wear my glasses… It’s baffling, because I absolutely should not be driving! I can’t see shit!
So I don’t drive.
When I say “I’m too blind to drive” some people ask if I can just lie about my vision and fake my way through, because “you really need a licence” and when I explain I can legally get a licence I just don’t, for everyone’s safety, they act like I’m being a selfish child for not doing the adult thing and getting my licence. Just because it can doesn’t mean I should.
I do cycle, pedalling a 20kg frame of metal at 15km/h on a bike path feels a lot safer than driving a 1 tonne hunk of metal at 80km/h on a highway. Without my bike I’d be pretty fucked in terms of my independence and being able to do what needs to be done as an adult. Fortunately my vision isn’t degenerative.
But in the last 5 years, especially since 2020 covid locksdowns, I feel like there are more people on the road that shouldn’t be. There’s just a huge increase in the frequency of “silly mistakes” - people swerving into the bike lane without looking to avoid a speed bump, people running a red turn signal because they’re looking at the green straight signal, people merging lanes at dangerously low speeds, no one putting their headlights on in the rain, everyone forgetting to indicate, people stopping more abruptly instead of slowing and anticipating a stop sign, and my personal favourite, everyone cutting corners in residential areas like they’re a formula 1 driver, just turning into the oncoming traffic of the street they’re turning into.