“The last thing you think when you spend $300 on glasses is that they would leave you blind, but they did,” Hannah Oliver tells Inside Edition.
A bride-to-be was counting down to her wedding day. Just months before the big day, she was involved in a minor accident that set off her car’s airbag. She was wearing sunglasses, which shattered, causing her to lose an eye. Now, she wants to warn everyone of the danger.
“It was a beautiful day, like the last thing I thought was that my life was gonna change really in the blink of an eye,” Hannah Oliver tells Inside Edition.
Oliver was driving her car when another motorist pulled out in front of her and the two vehicles collided. When Oliver’s airbag deployed, the force of the airbag shattered the sunglasses she was wearing and shards of glass shredded her right eye.
“As soon as it happened my eye deflated right on impact. My retina was detached, and my optic nerve was severed, so there was no saving my eye all because of my sunglasses,” Oliver says.
She went through with her wedding. She wore an eye patch during her final fitting.
“I wanted it to be about me and him and it was a beautiful ceremony,” Oliver says.
Oliver has since been fitted for a prosthetic eye, which was an emotionally draining process.
“It’s hard for me to see myself like this and I’m really uncomfortable. It’s gonna take me a little while to adjust to this,” she said in a video posted to social media.
Oliver says she never expected her sunglasses could prove to be so dangerous.
She created a line of shatter-proof sunglasses called “Blue Eye.” She conducts her own product testing.
“It’ll never shatter into a million pieces like my glasses did,” Oliver says.
Ophthalmologist Dr. Christopher Starr says Oliver has hit on a good idea.
“Protect your eyes with shatter-proof, impact-resistant lenses,” Starr says. “Even while driving.”
Oliver says she hopes no one will have to lose an eye because of sunglasses.
“The last thing you think when you spending like $300 on glasses is that they would leave you blind, but they did,” Oliver says.
She is now pushing for new regulations that would make it mandatory for lenses to be made out of stronger material.
