Corrective... windsheilds?

[OVerLoRDI]

Now I know very little about glasses and how they work, but I had this idea while I was driving home today. This is a bit of an elaborate situation but, imagine if you were a race car driver and late in your career your vision starts to go bad and you need glasses. Now obviously for a race car driver glasses won't be ideal so what if the windshield of the particular car was curved and thickened properly to provide the vision correction that glasses would. Could this even be done?

 

[imported_Truenofan]

well it would have to meet shatter requirements as well. it would be very expensive and not very efficient you could say. getting lasik would be cheaper i would imagine.

 

[mwmorph]

Or you could wear sports goggles...

Theres no good reason to do this.

It would require complex engineering
It would cost incredible amounts of $$
The thickness would add weight, making you lose the advantage over your opponents
Not all race cars have windshields

 

[imported_Truenofan]

it wouldnt be very feasible on a regular car as well, considering that someone else may have to use your car as well, its just not a good idea in general.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I don't think it would be possible to have the entire windshield be corrective - it would have to be limited to a particular region of the windshield, creating tunnel vision in that the driver would only be able to see well facing straight ahead. It would also provide no benefit in peripheral vision or in the mirrors. While corrective lenses may not be ideal, they are a lot closer to ideal than any corrective windshield could ever be. Respectfully, this is a stupid idea.

 

[steppinthrax]

There are a couple of problem with this (not to shoot down your idea)

1. Due to some legalities of this (what the driver has to see). You would probably have to make the side as well as driver rear window the same.

2. Very expensive. Remember how they had to make the mirrors for Hubble space tele. If you study any upper level math or eng. Whenever you take something and increase it's scale (size) it's errors increase in response to decreasing error tolerance. Example, my daughter builds a small tower with building blocks it keeps getting higher until it falls. That is because when she starts out it's not balanced anyway. But eventually as its size increases the "unbalanceness" has more effect on the structure vs. when it was small. Eyeglass lenses are precision ground by a machine. You have to do something similar to that one a much more precise scale. Much more precise then eyeglasses. I'm sure eyeglass lenses are not pretty precise.

3. Take you glasses for a sec and move them off your face still try to look in them. If you adjust your headrest or move your seat back and forth it will mess it up.

4. The most important and crazy thing about all this is that the car will only fit you. There are some legal aspects of this. Imagine trying to sell your car. It would be like selling contact lenses to someone. You have to match the prescription. There could be accidents or issues with this.

 

[imported_Imp]

I think you'd be better off with a parascope or LCD screen like in Strykers/modern armor. Hey, can even make the camera manouverable or widescreen it...

That or get contacts.

 

[jagec]

To be a professional racecar driver, you need better vision than your average person. Once your vision starts to go, you might be able to compensate for nearsightedness/farsightedness slightly, but once you can no longer get an instant clear snapshot of everything on the track in front of you at a glance, you've lost your edge and will stop winning.