Literally me for decades. My astigmatism wasn't diagnosed until 2-3 years ago despite yearly (or semi-yearly) visits to the optometrist. Thought that was just how lights looked in the dark lol.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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I was at the optometrist explaining the streaky lights AS I WAS WALKING OUT WITH A PRESCRIPTION FOR MY ASTIGMATISM and the doc was like "you were probably squinting, causing that effect". Bro
I was getting my pupils dilated for the optometrist to properly measure the extent of my astigmatism.
Had never had that procedure done before.
...As I am leaving, with eyes blurry as fuck from being dilated...
Receptionist tells me if I leave now, I might be able to dodge rush hour.
... I wish I could have actually seen the expression on her face when she said that, but I couldn't.
Due to being temporarily legally blind.
From the procedure that she had just-
sigh
So yeah I made it about two blocks in my car, said NOPE, and just fucking sat in a parking lot for something like an hour, till I could fucking see again.
American health care just literally is a sadistic joke.
Receptionist isn't an opthalmologist, and she probably had no idea that you'd just been rendered temporarily legally blind.
Lol I had the same procedure and sat in my car after calling someone to come pick me up, but they took too long and I decided to just drive myself anyways. I couldn't read signs, but traffic lights and other cars were visible enough. I bet there are a lot of old people on the road driving around regularly with eyesight that bad or worse.
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You know, I don't think you have a good eye doctor?
Same. “If you get laser surgery you might get a starburst” but that’s what I see already, I don’t know what you mean. It took a while to get the rotation properly tuned in too.
(Since they tuned in the astigmatism and with the risk of side effects I decided no laser.)
Consider that once the laser you, your astigmatism is gone: even if you need corrective lenses, they're much simpler than they could be.
As an example, my twin got his eyes done when he was rocking some serious coke-bottle lenses and working the fancy FAANG jobs and livin' large. He's had a coupla tune-ups, but never for the astigmatism. (and, even now, they've tuned one eye for close focus and the brain still copes, drastically reducing his need for presbyopia lenses)
I have 20/15 with glasses and astigmatism correction has eliminated the starbursting issue, so my (difficult) decision was that unnecessary surgery that could leave me with some combination of still needing glasses, poor night vision, starbursting, and especially dry eyes led me to decide to just settle for glasses.
I’m up to about $700 a pair these days (high fashion frames ain’t cheap, and they match my sweatpants) every two years or so, but it’s almost 100% insurance covered and they’d only cover 10% of my eventual laser bill.
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I used to see images like this explaining what an astigmatism was and just thought "well your windshield can cause this too so that's probably what I'm seeing"
I genuinely don't know why this was the conclusion I came to. Got an Rx for glasses a few years ago now and like most of my family I have a mild astigmatism.
I've NEVER noticed this; but I did notice that my vision was getting worse over time, I finally went to an optometrist, and yeah, I needed a bit of correction, but I also found out I have an astigmatism. so that's something.
Lights don't look any different than they always have, no blooming or streaks or halos or star lines or anything; but I still have it, and it makes things blurry and it sucks.
This can also really depend on the windshield. It looks exactly like this in my ~40 year old car due to all the microscopic scratches the glass has accumulated over time. I should probably have it replaced at some point.
This is me, but replace the windshield with my eyes.
You’ll need eyes at least two times larger to fit a car, Derek.
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Mine isn't that bad - only 20 years old but has seen all sorts of things from rocks and sand to hail and is just pitted bad enough to be annoying. But it's that fact that I've seen the abuse it's gone through without the first hairline crack that makes me cautious to get rid of something that's stood the test of time. It's either the angle or the glass (doubtful), but at this point it can't be just luck, right? I just hear horror stories of replacement glass that isn't fitted right, leaks, or breaks early on. I can deal with it a bit longer.
Polish it.
The streaking was so bad on mine that I bit the bullet and just replaced the windshield.
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I don't need to imagine.
Young friend of mine was checking out my new red-dot sight.
"Why does it look like a star?"
"Oh. I have bad news for you."
Don't think he believed me but he's in the Air Force now and no corrective lenses. 🤷🏻♂️
At least the starbursts make street lights pretty at night 🫠
I used to think my own sight was bad enough. I get little tiny Starbursts around lights. And I mean tiny. This dot - • - would look like the same dot with a / plastered on top.
Finding out the OP picture is how my wife sees the world at night was a little mind blowing. I knew it could get bad, but damn.
Yeah, driving at late night... especially with more and more people using billion lumen hyper UV headlights?
Basically, its the old starfield screen saver, but with the those starburst patterns.
Extreme brightness/contrast difference between the lights, and everything they are 'rendered on top of'.
Double or triple polarized lenses do cut it down a bit, but god help you if you don't have them.
Fuck those headlights are the bane of my existence! Seriously I don't understand how a chain of supposedly rational actors, from the engineers, through all the way down the supply chain to the end user, thought it was a good idea to sear the retinas of oncoming drivers.
"Can we sell this for money?"
Thats it.
The entire problem is that there is no attempt at regulating any part of the entire production to consumer process, and cops sure as fuck ain't gonna be able to pull over and ticket everyone using them, even if they are technically illegal in your area.
To be fair some people aren't aware of this, I wasn't until I saw my uncle dimming lights for oncoming cars when I was visiting him with family and made the connection mentally
We need a public service type ad for this
and that's without the LED headlights pointing at you!
Due to a childhood accident, I have a vastly different astigmatism in each eye so the lines and streaks are all double vision and ghostly.
Rubber band to the eye? C'mon tell us more! My astigmatism is pretty bad too.
When I was 6 our cursed VCR ate my Aladdin tape. I took apart the VCR to try to rescue the tape and ended up with a small spring tearing the cornea and iris of my right eye.
I am insanely lucky that a family friend just happened to be one of the nation’s foremost pediatric ophthalmologists and that my hometown has an excellent optometry school or I may have lost my eye. Somewhere there are case studies that were done on my eye. I ended up having to wear an eyepatch for a few weeks too which made me the coolest first grader ever.
Wow! Much more interesting that I would have expected. When I was a kid I met another kid who was blind due to a rubber band paperclip dart to the eye. Well he wasn't blind just had two pupils that made things weird to see.
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im so glad i started wearing glasses in high school. i had no idea my vision was bad, but i saw this in the car when my parents were driving. i thought this was normal.
i always wondered if my vision would be as good as theirs when i got older because they could read the street signs. i did not own a smart.
Me when people tell me I should use dark mode: How do you read the blurry letters?
Lemmy's dark mode seems ok as long as the screen's not too bright, I think the letters are gray and not white which helps.
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Don't worry, car collisions are only one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the US.
Who cares if you're blind, you need to go places. Here's your license. The other shiny dots are just NPCs.
Anything but public or active transit.
And like a driver can get used to things on the windshield, you can also tune out star bursts. I do agree they're distracting but it doesn't necessarily mean you can't drive safely with those.
U Uber or Lyft bro?
I was thinking how to use a special application to the windshield to fix this - apparently I completely missed the point.
Clean your glasses!
I know it's not glaucoma.
My glasses prescription says I have some astigmatism but I don't see this unless I squint with wet eyelashes. Maybe I've got the good kind of astigmatism :)
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