It has been recognized on the Arrive Alive Road Safety website that vehicle fitness and aspects such as a clean windscreen are important components to ensuring safety on the road. Drivers need to recognize the dangers from environmental factors such as road works and guard against fallen debris and the impact that this might have on damaging their windscreens.
What are the dangers posed by damaged windscreens?
- drivers may take longer to re-adapt their vision following exposure to the stray light effects created through a worn windscreen ("dazzling")
- detection distances to objects on the road ahead may be reduced when looking through worn windscreens
- the contrast of objects on the road ahead may be reduced - the consequence of which could be a reduction of visibility distances
- dirty windscreens seemed to cause drivers to crash twice as often in a driving simulator (as compared to driving with a new windscreen) and when driving with a degraded windscreen, drivers reaction times to a secondary task may be slowed.
- driving with a visually degraded windscreen induces fatigue and performance declines more rapidly than when driving with a non-degraded windscreen
- older drivers might find worn out windscreens to be even more debilitating compared with younger drivers