Why you may fail eye tests

An optometrist says he has seen truckloads of people fail an eye screening test when they go for their driver’s licence for ‘‘no good reason’’.

And Mike Jowsey thinks he knows why.

‘‘It’s just what happens when people and machines mix,’’ Jowsey said.

‘‘They don’t always get on.’’ Jowsey is currently based in Taranaki and has been working in optometry since before the ‘titmus’ - an eye screening machine the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) supplies organisations like AA for driver’s licence tests - was first introduced in the 1990s.

‘‘It’s been an issue right from the beginning,’’ Jowsey said.

However, the optometrist of 35 years does not think the machine which tests for distance vision and peripheral vision - is faulty, nor does he think there’s an issue with everyone’s eyes.

He thinks it’s a matter of the machine ‘‘fooling’’ the human eye.

Jowsey wrote a letter to Stuff in response to a story about Taranaki twins failing their driver eye screen examination at an AA Centre but passing a test at an optometrist and then sat down to chat with us.

Grace and Sam George had issues with the titmus machine at the AA Centre in New Plymouth. They failed their eye screening because they could only see two columns during the test, as opposed to three, which resulted in them having to pay for an eye certificate at an optometrist - which they passed with flying colours.

After their story was published hundreds of people from around New Zealand responded online and said they’d had the same issue.

‘‘I’m sorry - there are three columns,’’ Jowsey said.

He explained that when most people look inside a box the size of the titmus eye screening machine they assume they’re only looking at the depth of the box.

‘‘It’s just this awareness that you think ‘I’m looking in a box therefore, I’m going to move my eyes inwards like I was looking in a box’.’’

This is where people with perfectly fine vision get caught out.

Jowsey said rather than both eyes looking into the distance of the machine one eye turns inward and evidently cuts off the third column.

‘‘It’s because when you’re testing someone’s vision for driving you’re testing them for distance seeing, but they’re testing the distance seeing by having the people look in a box.’’

In saying this, the optometrist thinks the titmus machine is the most cost effective device for the job it does.

‘‘You think about the number of people who go through and do the test,’’ Jowsey said

‘‘There’s thousands of people who go through and don’t have a problem at all.’’

His advice for people who could only see two columns is simple.

‘‘The only thing you can do to avoid that happening is almost think to yourself into ‘I’m not looking at the box here, I’m looking through the box on the floor at the other side.’’

NZTA agency principal advisor for driver and operator licensing Jim Furneaux said in an email statement that in 2014 around three per cent of applicants were unable to pass the screening with the titmus machine.

Furneaux said around two to three per cent of the population whose vision is adequate for driving may have failed for a variety of reasons.

When asked NZTA could not answer why people with close-to-perfect vision were failing the eye screening test.