One thing is that water has absorption bands at 970nm, 1200nm, 1450nm, and 1950nm, and eyes have a lot of water in them. So they simply aren't very transparent in the near infrared.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_b...
Which is to say, eyes were made for seeing the light that was bouncing around in the sea (and not the frequencies that had already been absorbed).
So yes, the simplest answer you can imagine.
I was answering the broader question of not wanting light to penetrate "your surroundings" - ie the desk in front of me or walls around me. Would make life difficult if everything was transparent. Normally when one talks about "surroundings" it means that stuff, not the air (analogous to the water for marine life) both of which obviously need to be at least somewhat transparent for vision to be useful.
Note this is instantaneous, human vision deals with after images which adds blur.
However in the rain, on a highway, we have water falling, water splashed up from the ground, a mist formed by cars, high humidity, and a wet layer on the outside of the car. These factors reasonably could impact this device if the laser is emitting at water's absorption frequency.