Sunglasses for truck drivers: ten hours of glare, a high seat, and a dashboard full of screens

Truck driving is the hardest daytime driving case a pair of sunglasses faces. Ten hours behind glass, a high seat that looks down onto a wide field of road glare, the sun through the side window on one side of your face all afternoon, and a dashboard and a logging tablet that are both LCD. The lens that handles it is a medium polarized brown or grey, on a frame light enough to forget. And the screens get checked through the lens before the pair is bought, because a display that goes dark at highway speed is not a small problem. Everything else is about fatigue: less squinting over ten hours is the whole point.

What is different in a truck

Hours. A commuter wears sunglasses for forty minutes. A driver wears them for a shift. Every small discomfort, a frame that presses at the temples, a lens that is slightly too dark for the shade, compounds. Our headache post lists the frame causes; on a shift, all of them matter.

The seat. A truck seat is high. You look down onto the road at a steeper angle than a car driver does, and that angle is where a wet or sunlit road throws the most polarized glare. Polarized lenses help a truck driver more than a car driver, not less.

The side window. For a car driver the sun moves across the windscreen. For a truck driver on a long westbound afternoon it sits in the side window, on the left side of the face, for hours. Windscreens block most UV; side windows block less of the UVA. Coverage at the side of the frame, the side visor, and sunscreen on the driver's-side arm and face all matter.

The screens. Modern trucks have LCD instrument clusters, an infotainment screen, and an electronic logging device on a tablet mount. All three are LCD. Through a polarized lens at certain angles, any of them can dim or black out.

The lens

Polarized. The road glare from a high seat is the largest single fatigue source, and polarization removes it. Our polarized vs non-polarized post covers the mechanism.

Brown or grey, medium. Brown for contrast and haze, especially at the ends of the day when low sun flattens the road; our low sun post is written for exactly that drive. Grey for true colours and flat bright sun. Neither dark: shaded underpasses, tunnels and the interior of the cab are all in your view. Our driving lens post covers the tint choice in full.

That is the T01 Brown for most drivers and the T01 Grey for those who dislike a warm cast.

Not photochromic. Windscreens block the UV that darkens a photochromic lens, so it stays light behind glass. Our photochromic post explains.

The screen check

Before buying any polarized pair, sit in the cab and look at the cluster, the infotainment screen and the logging tablet through the lens, at the angles you actually use. Most modern displays are fine. Some older clusters and some tablets go dark. If one does, rotating a tablet mount often fixes it; a cluster cannot be rotated, and a non-polarized pair is the answer for that truck. Our screen post explains why it happens.

The frame

Light, and not pressing anywhere. A plastic frame with straight arms that do not clamp; if the temples ache after an hour, the frame is too narrow, and our measurements post shows how to check width against your face. Wide lenses and a frame that reaches the outer corner of the eye help with the side-window sun; a side visor helps more.

Keep a second pair in the cab. Sunglasses left on the dashboard in summer warp; our hot car post covers the temperatures. The glovebox or a door pocket is the place.

Night

Take them off well before dusk, and never wear a tint at night. The yellow "night driving" lenses sold at truck stops do not help and controlled testing found they slightly hurt; our night driving post covers the evidence and what does help: a clean windscreen inside and out, and an eye test.

Frequently asked questions