I had that 'glare' both with dots and when night-driving but about 5 years ago my ophthalmologist had been giving me 'iridotomy' laser treatments for glaucoma and finally decided that developing cataracts were threatening eye damage so I got both cataracts removed. Now NO glare (as long as my windshield is clean) AND newspapers , books etc are Black and WHITE instead of 'beige'. So the glare was partly due to the cataracts and prob partly due to dirty glasses
Now I want to wear sunglasses most of the time - very sensitive to bright lights. And only glasses for reading.
And I had the cataracts done by local surgeon and paid for by NB Medicare, Not a private surgeon. I don't have $10K to spend on that.
Not an Optometrist but wore eyeglasses for 61 years due to short sightedness and astimatism And stayed at a Holiday Inn Express!
Astigmatism is an imperfect sphere or mishape of the eye. Generally it does not cause "flare". I would describe it more as a smear or in some cases almost a double vision and yes when you get your eyes checked they check for it, of course. They do have soft contact lense that will correct it if you are a candidate. If you are older as in my case the "flare" was/is the beginning of cataracts and they correct your vision with lenses for that until you reach a very bad point. In my case I was told it would be years but for whatever reason cataracts developed faster than average. Solution at that point is lense implants. I have got to say if you reach that point find a world renowned surgeon like my wife and I did. With the implanted lense he gave me 20-15 vision(better than 20-20). bye bye eyeglasses after 61 years excep tfor some reading. Got it done within a few months at a private clinic or here in BC you can go the government way which can be a year waiting(being very blindish) and they will not pay for lenses to correct astigmatism but you may have the opportunity to pay. The reason the surgeon we chose was private was because they limited his operations and also his outcomes weren't as good because of the poorer equipment in BC hospitals. He would have done both my eyes on one day but the college of surgeons did not allow that so I had them done on back to back days. First one I got up from the operating platform and shook his hand as I could immediately see very well!
My .02.
flare is not cataract luckily for all of us ...just a reduction of what your eye can handle in quantity of ligth. just getting older cataract will come in time and i will do an annual check up for now on.