THE 1980 AND 1981 ACCIDENT EXPERIENCE OF CIVIL AIRMEN WITH SELECTED VISUAL PATHOLOGY

In studies of the 1974-76 accident experience of U.S. general aviation pilots with static physical defects, all the significantly increased rates and ratios were for visual defect categories--blindness or absence of either eye, deficient distant vision, deficient color vision with no operational limitations, and contact lenses. A 1979 study was limited to accident airmen with 19 visual deficiencies. The 1,140 pilots with aphakia and 173 with artificial lens implants had significantly higher rates, but the monocular pilots and contact lens users did not. The present study examined the 1980-81 accident experience of 4,169 monocular pilots, 1,299 with amblyopia, 969 with aphakia, 285 with lens implants, 118 with a history of diplopia, 1,269 with a tropia, 2,601 with hyperphoria more than 1 diopter, and 2,711 with esophoria or exophoria more than 6 diopters by class of medical certificate held. Numbers were too small for statistical treatment, but first and second class medical certificate holders, who often have more accidents per 1,000 airmen, consistently had progressively lower accident rates per 100,000 hours. They fly more. Monocular, aphakic, lens implant, and amblyopic accident airmen had higher accident rates than did the total airman population. Bases were found to question the value and adequacy of phoria and field of vision testing.

• Record URL:
  • http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/1980s/media/am83-18.pdf
• 
• Corporate Authors:

  Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

  6500 South MacArthur Boulevard
  Oklahoma City, OK  United States  73128

  Federal Aviation Administration

  Office of Aviation Medicine, 800 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, DC  United States  20591
• Authors:
  • Dille, J R
  • Booze Jr, C F
• Publication Date: 1983-7

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 9 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air pilots; Airline pilots; Contact lenses; Crash rates; Vision; Visually impaired persons
• Old TRIS Terms: Monocular individuals; Vision characteristics
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00387787
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: FAA-AM-83-18, HS-036 456
• Files: HSL, USDOT
• Created Date: Aug 30 1984 12:00AM