Dizzy while driving 2020 Tundra

Wondering if anyone here has experienced something like this. Since mid-Feb I have been having fairly extreme dizzy spells while driving my pick up at highway speeds. I have since stopped driving my truck alone and if it happens I pull over and my wife drives. It only happens if I’m driving my truck. She hates driving and I hate being a passenger. I’ve been to the eye doctor six times and I’m on my 3rd pair of glasses. The type I’m wearing for the last week are contoured prism glasses called Neurolenses. I drove my truck yesterday and it happened after about 10min. Oddly, when I rolled the window down to get a cool breeze as I pulled over the feeling went away almost immediately. I drove another 1/2hr with the window open and was fine. During my lunch break, I took my truck into the dealership to have them go over it for some type of exhaust leak. They couldn’t find anything so I picked up a battery operated CO detector at Menard’s and drove the 45min back home with no alarms and no dizziness. Since these new lenses don’t seem to be doing anything the eye doctor is going to refer me to a neurologist. That doesn’t feel right considering that it’s only happening when I drive the truck. Not in the car, not if I’m a passenger, or any other time.

Just an opinion, but the rolling down the window and it going away, plus the fact it only happens in the truck, seems like pretty conclusive troubleshooting. I would keep experimenting with that before I got the neuro doc involved. Was the CO detector one that gave a digital readout or just an alarm? Perhaps you are super sensitive to CO, perhaps its not even CO that is causing the issue but some other gas.

Since the common denominator is the truck I’m going to focus on that. The CO detector was just a $20 one with an alarm, no display. I had been having some dizziness a couple weeks after a mild ‘rona infection last July that was diagnosed as positional vertigo. Fell over a few times while tending the garden. All of those cases I was leaning way forward or tilting my head to see underneath plants. A week of Dramamine took care of that. I’m wondering if it might be an inner ear thing. The truck bounces down the road a lot rougher than the car, but I would expect it to happen from the passenger seat regardless.

I have a 2020 Tundra and the bed bounce can be bad on some roads. Maybe toss in a little extra weight for a while and see if it makes a difference. You might also want to check your cabin air filter and be sure some critter is not holed up. I would think that it would stink but you just never know.

I dont know if this will help but a few years back my dad was going thru dizzy spells even in his sleep.. he ended up going to that dizzy clinic. They did tests and figured out the problem. Might be worth a shot. Good luck

Anybody else have this issue driving the truck?

what’s the dizzy clinic?

Google dizzy clinic..they have offices all over the cities. National dizzy and balance clinic. They will do all kinds of test to figure out issues. My dad’s issue was basically his eyes were processing information differently and had to be resynced.

Just out of curiosity, are your lenses polarized? I’ve heard of some people that don’t get along with them

Mark Spesard wrote:

Just out of curiosity, are your lenses polarized? I’ve heard of some people that don’t get along with them

Yes with polarized glasses I can see patterns in the windows and windshields of some brands of cars. Strongly suspect you’re on to something here.

I would look for the common denominator between the eyeglasses that you are wearing when the dizziness occurs. Are all three pairs polarized? Is there something else in common about them? What about your old glasses was different?

A number of years back I got a rental car out west. The dash was a light color that created a reflection in the windshield and combined with my polarized glasses it made me extremely nauseated when going down the highway. The only way I figured this out was on a cloudy day I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses and immediately noticed that I wasn’t getting car sick all of a sudden. I thought it was the new car smell that was bothering me.

I travel often for work and some rental car mirrors give me a dizzy, nauseated feeling going down the road if I use them to often, the rear view in particular. One was so bad I had to exchange the car for another after a couple days.

Have you tried adjusting your seat height so you are looking through a different part of the windshield?

If you wear a covid mask while driving you won’t have any issues. It must work otherwise why are there so many people in Toyotas doing it??

Another thing to consider, is the ear.
Try rolling the window down or up when you feel this. I have similar issues you described with our sequoia when the rear windows are down both a little or a lot. The way the air baffles in and out of the car with different speeds and windows opened different amounts raised heck with my ears. Something to consider maybe?

CO won’t happen that fast

It’s been happening with the windows closed, but I know what you mean about the “helicopter effect” I think it’s called when rear windows are opened. It is a similar feeling.

So far I’m on my third set of lenses since Feb and no change. I drove the truck for over two years with the pair I was wearing when this started. They’re not polarized. My left eye was only at 20/70 and I’m seeing ghost images of everything with that eye. Something to do with severe astigmatism that’s beyond lens correction. If I look at a horizontal line on the wall, I’ll see 2-3 more lines below it like shadows. This is why the eye doctor thought new lenses would fix the dizziness but it hasn’t.

The masked Toyota drivers must be a MN or cities thing. I hardly ever see a mask around here but they’re usually at the grocery store with IL plates since I live in vacation country for them.

I’m 6′ 3″ so adjusting the seat is pretty limited but I’ll give that a try.

It doesn’t look like we have a dizzy clinic in WI, so I’ll probably see my primary doctor or an ENT before neurology.

Thanks for all the responses.

Hope you find a solution to your problem. Dizzy and driving is not good. Dizzy in general just sucks unless self inflicted.
Keep us posted if/when you get it solved. Good Luck pr.

Hope you find the fix man, dizziness is not a good or fun feeling.

maybe you need to magically get a crack in your windshield so that you can get it replaced to see if that helps at all.

My doctor sent me to physical therapist for similar issue. They said my eyes and brain werent in sync or some shmit. Nothing worked til one day she made me close my eyes and stand on a balance ball. About 5 seconds of that flowered me up so bad I couldnt stand up for about 10 minutes while she held a garbage can by me cause I was gonna puke. After it wore off I felt pretty normal and never had to go back. They before that kept doing vertigo stuff and never helped at all. Never did figure out what was really happening but I feel for you it sucked. I still get it on occasion but dont last months like it did that time.

dhpricco wrote:

maybe you need to magically get a crack in your windshield so that you can get it replaced to see if that helps at all.

This sounds like the best advice I have seen on this thread.
My guess is you have some time of anomaly in the windshield that is acting like a lense, distorting your vision.

There’s been a tiny chip on the passenger side for about 2yrs. I just don’t think it would take almost three years for the windshield to mess with my equilibrium.

Last summer I was tipping over when I picked something up off the floor and when I was weeding the garden. The world just went sideways and so did I. They gave me a week’s worth of Dramamine at urgent care and it was gone right away. I’m thinking it’s something medical and I’ve ruled out my vision being the cause so far. Everything else is still on the table.

Thanks again for everyone’s input.

Could be related to eardrums…the tundra makes alot of noise….do you get dizzy only on driver side? My ears would ring a great deal after driving an hour in my tundra

So your dizziness is not only while driving?
You maybe suffering from ocular migraine’s.
I have been dealing with occasional bouts with this, but I have not figured out what triggers it.
One of my friends has a similar issue and found out that it was food related.
If he eats the wrong food he gets a dizzy spell.

Good luck with this, maybe a neurologist would be better than a hunting fishing forum?

Tom schmitt wrote:

Good luck with this, maybe a neurologist would be better than a hunting fishing forum?

I do realize that sometimes free advice is worth what you paid. I’m sure you’re right but the wife and I are pretty much loners so some free advice can’t hurt. I’ll look into ocular migraines and food triggers. I can’t think of a food related pattern offhand.

Kibble Geebig wrote:

Could be related to eardrums…the tundra makes alot of noise….do you get dizzy only on driver side? My ears would ring a great deal after driving an hour in my tundra

I’ve been driving a Tundra since 2015 but this is the first time I’m doing it at 50 years old. It’s only happened when I’m driving it. The first time I spent a good 15min denying to myself something was wrong. We were in traffic near O’Hare and I just pulled off at a random exit and had to walk around for several minutes before switching seats with my wife.

Thanks again.

If you google search on COVID dizziness there is a lot to read up on.

Some key takeaways:

COVID-19 can cause dizziness. Up to 1 in 5 people experience COVID-related dizziness when they’re sick.

COVID can also cause vertigo and trigger POTS (postural tachycardia syndrome).

COVID dizziness can take weeks to months to fully resolve. You can combat dizzy spells by staying hydrated, slowing down movements, and maintaining a healthy blood sugar level.

Know a guy that is going through some long covid problems and this is one of them.

Something to look into. Might just be something that goes away after some time.

-J.

Now that’s the first time I heard of actual reports of covid related dizziness.
I do know several people, myself included, who came up with dizziness after the covid vaccine.
When mentioning it I always got a no way response.
Thanks Jon Jordan you may be on to something.

Thanks Jon. I was wondering if someone would bring that up and how it turned out. I brought it up when I went to urgent care and got a “yeah, just about any symptom could be related. Hard to say.”

I have the height of the top of my bi-focals set to be right below my instrument cluster. When I first got bi-focals they cut right through the middle of of my dashboard instruments and I was constantly bobbing my head up and down to see them. That gave me head aches, neck aches and dizzy spells. I took those glasses back, had them remade and now no more problems.

Went to my primary doctor a week ago. EKG was good and they took blood. Got the results on Tue and my B12 level was 224. Normal is 213-816 so I’m taking a B12 every morning. Drove 3+ hours each way up to the camper this weekend and didn’t get dizzy. Low B12 can cause neurological symptoms among other things like numbness in hands and feet which I also have. Irritability is another, which my wife says I have, so that irritates me.
If this corrects the dizziness I’m guessing the next step is why is my B12 so low.