BUSINESS: Research + Stats Auto Fatalities and Eyeglasses By Staff Tuesday, June 19, 2018 1:15 PM Having to pass an eye test in order to drive a car legally might seem like a no-brainer. Yet the idea was recently debated in the South Carolina legislature, where lawmakers voted in April to delay until 2020 the implementation of a law requiring the state’s drivers to get an eye exam before upgrading to new, federally compliant Real ID driver's licenses, as VMAIL reported.A century ago, when automobiles were new, vision tests for drivers were uncommon. In fact, no driver’s licenses were required in the U.S. before 1910, and as late as 1927 only five states mandated vision tests for motorists.A strong correlation exists between the implementation of mandatory vision testing for driver's licenses and a decline in auto fatalities, according to Ted Gioia, an optical industry expert. Gioia writes the Deja View series of articles that are drawn from the archives of Carl Zeiss Vision’s Optical Heritage Museum that are published monthly in VMail Weekend. In the accompanying chart, he shows how the number of auto fatalities sharply declined from the late 1920s and 1960s, the period in which mandatory vision testing was widely implemented in the U.S. Although poor vision is no longer a major cause of traffic deaths, the number of deaths is rising. Traffic fatalities rose 6 percent in 2016, reaching an estimated 40,200 deaths compared to 37,757 deaths the previous year, according to the National Safety Council.To learn how eyeglasses and mandatory vision testing have made driving safer, read “The Long, Scary History of Driving Without Vision Correction,” a Deja View article VM published in March.In his next Deja View article, Gioia will examine the history of mobile vision testing for drivers. Look for “Bringing Vision Technology to the Scene of the Crime,” in the July 7 edition of VMail Weekend.