Should sunglasses be worn for driving?

Sunglasses are the favorite "necessary accessory" worn by drivers to reduce glare and increase comfort during driving. Under bright conditions sunglasses are very helpful to drivers to reduce the brightness and glare, thereby allowing better vision under those driving conditions.

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Medium to dark lenses are used for driving, picnicking, and general purpose sunglass use. The important aspect to remember in selecting the darkness of a lens is to let comfort and visibility in the expected use conditions, be your guide. A caution, however, extremely dark lenses (below 8% visible transmittance) should not be used for driving.

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Can polarized sunglasses help when driving a car?

Yes. Those pesky bright reflections of the sun on the cars ahead can sometimes be attenuated a good deal. They tend to be horizontally polarized, thus perfect for vertically polarized sunglasses. The reason is that the surfaces that you see on the car in front of you (the back window, the trunk door, and even the roof) will be slanted towards you, while the sun will be more or less aligned in the vertical plane through both cars (if not you wouldn't see its reflection from those surfaces). However, if the sun is relatively low behind you, the sun rays will be near perpendicular to the reflecting (vertical) surfaces which won't polarize the light. The sunglasses will help more with the reflections from the glass than from the metal as the former are polarized to a higher degree.

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What about the brightness of the road itself?

That light is also partially polarized, but by scattering (as opposed to reflection). The direction of polarization will change with the direction of the road with respect to the position of the sun. The rule is that the polarization is tangential to a circle centered on the sun. That means that if the sun is in front, behind, or high above, the road brightness will tend to be horizontally polarized and the filter of the sunglasses will provide some help. However, if the sun is to one side, the polarization will rotate vertically the lower the sun happens to be. Of course, if the road is wet you get the same anti-glare power as at sea.

Tinting    

The color of the tint determines the parts of the light spectrum that are absorbed by the lenses. Manufacturers use different colors to produce specific results.

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Mirroring

Reflective sunglasses often have a mirrored look. The lenses in these sunglasses have a reflective coating applied in a very thin, sparse layer -- so thin that it's called a half-silvered surface.