PARIS-CHARENTON—To honor the United Nations’ fifth annual Road Safety Week, Essilor and Groupe Renault have announced their joint signing of a Memorandum of Understand (MOU) for two years, with the goal of together raising awareness about how good vision is related to road safety, as well as to explore innovative solutions that will improve drivers’ visual experiences. According to Essilor, research shows that 1 in 5 drivers worldwide has uncorrected poor vision. Since 90 percent of the information needed to drive comes from the eyes, this can make driving extremely dangerous.

Essilor and Groupe Renault’s partnership aims to achieve two things:
1.   Develop global and local awareness and poor vision detection campaigns among customers and employees of Renault.
2.   Improve the combined vision and driving experience through cross-expertise and product innovation. Part of this will involve expert investigation workshops on cases such as day and night glare, road/cockpit visual transition, peripheral and central attention focus, and man-machine interfaces like legibility and color perception.

Nadine Leclair, SVP expert fellow of Groupe Renault said, “With this leading cross-sector collaboration with Essilor, we want to highlight the importance of vision for drivers and further improve our knowledge on the matter. Groupe Renault proves its commitment to safe mobility and shows an innovative way to keep placing the customer experience at the center of our cars’ specifications and features, with a look ahead on the future benefits of a connected world.”

Laurent Vacherot, chief executive officer of Essilor International said, “This collaboration with Groupe Renault promises to drive outcomes that will improve people’s vision on the road. We are certain this partnership between two leaders in their field creates a unique opportunity to mobilize public awareness across a broader audience. Combining our respective expertise will result in a better visual experience for drivers and contributes to Essilor’s mission of improving lives by improving sight.”

Road safety is one of the pillars of Groupe Renault’s social responsibility strategy called Mobilize.

In 2017, Essilor partnered with Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) to promote the FIA-created “check your vision” golden rule, which encouraged drivers to understand the link between corrected vision and safe driving.