Why Is My Night Vision Getting Worse?
Struggling to see at night, in fog, or against glare is often a contrast-sensitivity problem rather than a sharpness one — which is why you can have crisp 20/20 vision and still find dusk driving hard. It tends to increase with age and can accompany cataracts, dry eye, or an outdated glasses prescription. If daytime detail is fine but low light isn’t, contrast sensitivity is the axis to check.
Test your contrast sensitivity →Sharpness vs. seeing in the dark
Eye charts measure sharpness with bold black letters on white — maximum contrast. But night, fog, and dusk are low-contrast worlds, and detecting faint differences is a separate ability called contrast sensitivity. It can soften while your letter acuity still reads 20/20, which is exactly why “my eyes are fine but I hate night driving” is such a common, real complaint.
Common causes and when to act
Reduced night vision and contrast can come with normal aging, cataracts (which scatter light and gray-out contrast, adding glare and halos), dry eye, or simply an out-of-date prescription. Less commonly, difficulty in truly dim conditions (night blindness) can relate to retinal conditions.
You can screen the contrast axis with an on-screen contrast test, but the real move is an eye exam: if night driving has genuinely gotten worse, an optometrist can check for cataracts, update your prescription, and rule out other causes. Worsening night vision is a common and very treatable reason to get checked.