visual fitness of public vehicle drivers in southeast of iran

background: although visual impairment of drivers is a very important risk factor for car accident, a few published papers have explored this issue in iran. this study aims to evaluate the visual fitness of public vehicle drivers in kerman province, southeast of iran. methods: a total of 4,003 public vehicle drivers were examined by one ophthalmologist for visual fitness in kerman province between january 2009 and june 2010. data are presented as mean±sd or percentage, and with 95% confidence intervals (cis). pearson chi-square and mcnemmar tests along with crude odds ratio (or) were used to compare vision deficit between groups. results: almost 361 drivers (9.0%; 95% ci: 8.1-9.9) had insufficient vision to drive public vehicles before the refractive errors (re) correction and this number, was reduced to 68 drivers (1.7%; 95% ci: 1.3-2.1) after the correction. a number of them including 200 drivers (5.0%; 95% ci: 4.3-5.7) had insufficient vision to drive personal vehicles before the correction and this was reduced to 30 thereafter (0.8%; 95% ci: 0.5-1.0). we also found out that the vision status got worse with aging, and re was the most prevalent cause of sight defects. conclusion: it seems that visual fitness of public vehicle drivers is a point of real concerns which might somewhat explain the high rate of car accidents in iran.