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Comment by ptaipale | Hacker News Reader

People do wear glasses for many reasons (in addition to correcting vision).

- Some think glasses look good - Glasses protect the eyes from wind, rain and flying particles

Yes, the glasses do get foggy and smudgy. But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes. Also, at the age of 50, I've had several eyeglass lenses scratched by things like a piece of metal or stone flying off an angle grinder, or dust/sand blown by a pneumatic nailgun. Without glasses, the same things would have hit my eyes.

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I think that there are better tools for that, however, such as activity specific goggles. Glasses you need to have to see, everything else you can take off if you need to or are done with the activity.

Yes, activity specific goggles have their strong points. My eyeglasses have the strong point that they're always there. Even when I'd forgotten the specific goggles.

Good points.

> But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes.

In my experience, they shield the eyes from sand and small debris, but they also tunnel the wind in from the top and bottom with more force, resulting in constantly flowing tears if going at any decent biking speed. I always hated riding with glasses because of that, especially as the tears would end up staining the glasses and making it harder to see.

Hmm, that likely depends on the shape of the glasses, and possibly the shape of face, and riding position. I have tried riding with contacts and find that I feel much better with my glasses.

When it rains (particularly -0°C water) the glasses are indeed quite difficult to see through, but then the eyes would be very irritated too.

Depends on the glasses. These days, I always ride with glasses, but they're cheap safety glasses, not corrective lenses of any kind. Safety glasses are made specifically to protect your eyes from flying debris, so theoretically they're safer if a big rock flies into your eye or something. But they also are shaped to fit closer to your face, so I don't have any problems with the wind-tunnel effect you complain about. Best of all, they keep the wind out of my eyes, which is a problem at speed.

Now if I could just find something comfortable to block out all the wind noise.

That's why they invented "safety glasses". They're specifically designed to protect against stuff like that, probably better than your expensive corrective lenses, and they're dirt cheap. They're required wear in any hazardous environment (factory, workshop, etc.).

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