Ask BikePortland: How do I see clearly in the rain?

I wear glasses now and then when I ride and I find that wearing something similar to a running hat (thin so it fits under a helmet) works great. The brim (could be called something else) helps keep rain droplets from hitting the glasses. Sure you get some droplets on the glasses from splash up during the ride, but you’ll be able to see for the whole ride.

Oil sounds cool. I usually just wear a decently brimmed hat (baseball hat or the like). It keeps most of the rain off.

I wear polarized shades, non-corrective, during all my daytime riding. Fogging is a problem in cooler weather because the brim of my helmet or hat prevents the vapor in my breath from escaping when I come to a stop. But the brim does help prevent raindrops from blinding me.

I don’t know about using oil (I’d expect smearing). However…

Two surefire tips for fog prevention–one from divers, and the other from skiers:

1) DIVER TRICK; Spit on the lenses and rub them dry. In a pinch, prevents fogging for a little while.

2) SKIER TRICK: No-fog cloths for wiping your lenses are sold in ski shops, but they’re basically just soaked with mild soap, so make your own with a handkerchief dampened with any old hand soap diluted in water. Totally works, and lasts longer than saliva. I do this to my bathroom mirror so I can make use it following a shower, in an otherwise steam-filled room.

For keeping rain off, a brim is definitely the way to to.

Riding in the rain with a brimmed at (pulled low) with glasses on is, IMHO, vastly superior to riding in the rain without glasses and a brimmed hat.

As for fog, there’s a dandy product called CatCrap that cleans lenses and helps to reduce fogging. Hot breath+cold lenses will always add up to fog though. Usually its only bad when you stop cycling and walk inside a warm/humid room.

For raindrops, I just carry a small hand towel to wipe my glasses. (and I have a brim on my helmet… though it doesn’t help much when going down hills.)

For fog, I smear a tiny bit of dish soap with glycerin on the lenses and rub dry with a soft cloth. Not perfect but it does reduce fogging.

I do have prescription sports glasses… mostly because I want to be sure that if I crash or get hit by a pebble from a car that glass won’t shatter into my eye.

RainX if you want to keep applying it every so often. Aquapel(harder to find) if you want to do it once a year. I’d try it on a pair of dollar store glasses before applying it to prescriptions. Ask your optometrist first. But darn I never have to turn on my wipers in heavy downpours. To remove, you have to use a paste sold in glass shops to scrub off residue. Motorcycle riders have been doing this for years, but they’re going really fast so water just flies off their visors as on a car windshield. Only apply to the outer surface, not towards your eyes.

Anyone tried RainX? This is one reason I switched to contact lenses, but I also wear a cycling cap under helmet to keep the rain out of my eyes.

I can see how a cap would help – I wear a wool driving cap with a brim almost every day riding, and while I don’t have glasses, I notice a huge difference as to how much water is getting in my eyes depending on whether I’m wearing the hat or not.

Andrew: Most glasses aren’t glass. I don’t know of anyone who wears glass glasses anymore. They’re usually a fancy plastic. Not shatterproof though.

It’s true that what I fear most about minor bike accidents is damage to my glasses…I can’t really function (certainly not bicycle) without mine and I can’t afford to replace them.

Surface tension which creates the drops can be reduced with a simple application of dish soap. Put a drop on a soft cloth and rub the lenses until clear. Reapply every few days.

The other issue is condensation from warm air hitting cold lenses usually from your breathing or just body heat. This requires well ventilated glasses.

Otherwise contact lenses are the way to go.

Go into an auto supply store and pick up some windshield defogger. it usually comes in a spray bottle and it will help keep your lenses less foggy. It’s not magical, but it helps. Perhaps this “RainX” to which others are referring is something similar…

To combat droplets on my lenses, I just make sure that I have a handkerchief or some other soft cloth stashed in a dry, accessible pocket. When I have to wait at a red light or the like, I whip out the cloth and wipe off the wet.

Salamander helmet visors work well with bike helmets. They attach and remove easily and will shield you face from rain AND the occasional sun. Google “Salamander helmet visor” for sources.

I asked my eye doctor about this when I got new glasses a few months ago. He also bikes. He recommended a hydrophobic coating, said it worked very well, wrote it down on the prescription for me. Then I found out how much that adds to the cost of the lenses, and I realized that while both of us bike, he makes a lot more money than I do. 🙂

cycling caps…created for this reason. they aren’t perfect, but if pulled down far enough they’re quite effective to hide under…find one that works with your glasses. may take a few different brands.

The super-dorky looking baseball cap under helmet combination. Looks dumb, works great.

I use two items:

A foam, crescent moon shaped, visor with a coil shaped elastic cord. This was from my local grocery store in the pretty stuff for girls section. The foam also doesn’t get mushy when wet like my old bill caps used too.(manufacturer unknown)

Clear safety glasses keep the drops off of my prescriptions. This keeps off the road grime from car/truck spray. Plus the drops are farther away from my eyes and I can accumulate more before I need to wipe.

Most of the time that foam visor tucked up under my helmet and just over the lenses is all I need so I don’t bother with the safety glasses.

I use a cap for light rain, and an umbrella in heavier rain. The umbrella thing works suprisingly well if you don’t mind riding a little bit more slowly (though not all that much) and you ride a bike with a pretty upright riding position. If you’re on a typical road or mountain bike it wouldn’t work, I imagine.

Never tried it, but ski shops sell those crazy little squeegees that clip onto your thumb.

Personally, I use a baseball cap and look down at my wheel too much.

Ha, a use for Vance surfaces. I quickly skimmed comments looking for a good answer, so if somebody has already mentioned this, forgive. But having glasses one can see through while riding in the rain is as simple as a trip to their Optometrist.

There is this product, and sorry for the non-free solution, that is a little waxy stick made from a chem we’d probably just as soon not know the composition of; of an international-orange color. Anybody ever seen that stuff, it is marketed under too many names for me to remember any of them? At any rate, it’s marketed as an anti-fogging solution, but works to shed water too. There are applications for automobiles too referred to as, “Wiperless”, compound for smearing on a car window, and that stuff works good as well.

This last sometimes has odors from the synthetics largely gleaned from plant turpenoids, so the eye-doctor one is ‘prolly better in this sense, but the over-the-counter stuff at any auto-parts store will do if you’re not squeamish about such things as toxic-chemicals.

jim #34 – Are you sure it was the ‘rainX’ that did it? I’m not arguing with you but consider. Automobile glass, by law, is coated with a thin sheet of plastic on both sides. This is often, erroneously, referred to as ‘safety glass’. Typically, products containing Trichlorylethaline (Think ‘contact-cleaner.), the most common plastic-eating solvent, aren’t used in products intended to work on plastic.

I’d heed your advice about being cautious applying any chemical to plastic eye-glass lenses. However, I’m fairly certain ‘rainX’ can’t be corrosive to plastic else-wise it would eat the plastic cover off of the automobile-glass upon which it was intended to be used.

For that matter, any laundry soap lingering in a ‘rag’, even the detergent languishing from post-manufacture, is quite corrosive and will damage plastics, and plastics derivatives.

All of which I point out only so that you might avoid setting a contaminated rag on your car again, thinking that only because it doesn’t have ‘rainX’ on it, that you are safe to do so; and not just to argue with you. Savvy? Plus too, if in fact ‘rainX’ were that corrosive, that’s remarkable, because as I said, it is intended to be applied to plastic, and you may be onto a product deficiency worth noting.

The prescription goggles at zenni optical cannot be considered expensive. So if that’s your desired option, just do it.

And I hope the ABP gets back to legal issues, I’ve got a whole list of questions. Happy cycling !

Unless you are extemely blind, just go without the glasses. I am farsighted so I have to have them for reading but can cycle fine without them. Oncoming cars are probably big enought that you can see them.

Just embrace it.

I find I use windshield wipers much less than most when driving, since I’m so used to looking through spotted glass. 🙂

Look for Raincoat and Fogtech from Motosolutions.com
REI sells some of their product as does Cyclegear in East PDX.
This stuff works way better than RainX.
Johnsons Baby Shampoo applied and wiped off of the inside of the lens with a cloth works great o cut the fog.

First: NOT Rain-X. Had it on my car’s windshield and couldn’t see a thing at night, as it made glare much worse, blocking my view. Plus it’s likely to kill whatever coating is on your glasses.

Second: For those with glasses: pay a bit extra for coating that helps them shed rain. It helps a bit.

Third: I have bought or made a series of “windshields” for my helmets. The tinted ones make me look like a state trooper, and avoid the need for sunscreen on my face. The light or clear ones get rain on them, but the drops are a couple of inches in front of my eyes, thus out of focus and really don’t interfere with my view.

Here’s another Yes for the cheap baseball cap under the helmet. Someone above mentioned that the brim only helps for the first 10 minutes or so, but I’ve never had this problem — just need to be sure you have a long enough brim (standard baseball cap is fine; $2 at Goodwill).

Also, it’s easiest to do this if you have a helmet with one of those adjustable dials on the back; otherwise you’re fiddling with your straps every time the weather changes.

I commute year-round and am blind as a bat without my glasses. I nearly always wear some kind of cycling cap and it does help a lot with the rain, but honestly, drops on my glasses has never really bothered me too much. Fog, however, is a totally different story. I don’t care what coating you use, riding in thick fog with glasses is the scariest riding I’ve ever done. I usually kept a small hanky or cloth in my breast pocket and just wiped them off at every stoplight, or relied on the smudgy and barely effective finger swipe.

But the best thing I ever did – at 49 years old – was get my first prescription for contacts. Holy cow, what a difference in bad weather. I wear glasses on the days I don’t ride, and contacts the rest of the time. Can’t believe i waited so long. And they’re cheaper.

I’d be curious if anyone could confirm my other suspicion about glasses and the rain. I need a fairly strong prescription, so my glasses have been high-index, coated, and way spendy. My last couple pairs the coating began to disintegrate after the 2-year warranty, but before they were 3-years old. I suspect – but only suspect – that constant exposure to rain on my commute was partly to blame. Anyone know whether that could be true?

I have to wear glasses to drive and to bike so this a problem I am all too familair with. I have prescription sport gogles that help a bit, if I have them with me. the goggles are a bit nerdy looking and create the fishbowl effect because of their curvature.
Normally, the sight problem in the rain is just a problem i have to endure when caught unexpectedly in the rain.