Day: October 20, 2025

One of my concerns before getting LASIK was how it would impact my night vision, especially while driving. Often my eyes before LASIK would get dried out and be irritated making for unpleasant driving on dark, rural roads as the day was coming to a close. I would avoid night driving. Things got better when I got in the habit of regularly cleaning my windshield, adjusted my headlights so they pointed at the road and didn’t blind other drivers, and used the white fog line to guide my truck while passing other vehicles in the opposing direction at night. But driving with contacts, especially in my big jacked up truck, was not exactly a pleasant experience.

Half a week after LASIK I was in Downtown Albany after an event, waiting for the bus, I noticed something I found quite surprising. The night-time was just clearer. Things were brighter, in a higher-contrast sort of way, the colors more richer – less falling back to the black and white rods in your eyes. Apparently LASIK has a side effect in some people of increasing night-time contrast. Not more glare, but just brighter, like they turned up the street lights to a brighter setting but not in a bad overly bright way. Some of it is the switch to LED lighting, but I also have been noticing it in other places with conventional street lighting and no street lighting.

The flip side might be I’ve noticed that halos are worse on lettering for reflective street signs, especially in real dark environments. Small lettering after dark can be hard to read, such as those numbers on the mile markers on the Adirondack Rail Trail, riding in the pitch black. The view is like over-exposed camera image – the reflective letters are just completely blown out, the image is too bright. That said, I am happier being able to see non-reflective signs and objects better at night, even if I can’t always make out the fine print on the road signs. And my focus is clear both on the distance, along with all the gauges, buttons and controls on my truck. I never was very good at driving at night with glasses – while I didn’t have the irritation with glasses when driving at night compared to contacts – I found it challenging to read the speedometer in focus with glasses while focused on the road ahead.

The impact of LASIK on night vision is not at all what I expected or fear. I was concerned about glare and irration of contacts, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore. It’s just the night is almost too bright, especially with small letters on reflective surfaces. But I’m happy with losing good vision on fine print road signs that as long as I can see deer, cars, people and other things on the road that I don’t want to hit. It’s rare that I’m on a road at night, where I actually need to read the fine print – like small scale street name signs. And certainly freeway style signs – and even warning signs and speed limits are no issue. I’ll take overly bright, non-irrating with some blow out on image quality of reflective signs for excellent night vision.