the light wars

[gordonbennet]

I'm a bit nostalgic about many things, but am i the only bugger who now hates driving a car at night, my mrs mentioned this earlier in the week and got me thinking.

 

Look years ago we only had 55w halogen bulbs at best up front, at the back we had a couple of 5w sidelight bulbs inside thick red lenses and two 21w buggers for brake lights.

The lights weren't wonderful but (yes i know we were younger) maybe our night vision wasn't so completely destroyed that we could make out enough of the surroundings to still drive reasonably safely.

In that there lundun especially, night driving was a pleasure, everyone on sidelight alone, kept your good night vision and as such pedestrians, cyclist etc that were unlit didn't disappear into the backround.

 

Fast forward to today and its getting out of bloody hand, far too powerful headlights, new car owners trying to outdo each other in how blue my spectrum is and how bloody awful my DRL's look.?

led's by the thousand flickering away, stop lights enough to blind you, they arn't safe at all cos you haven't a bloody clue whether the driver in front has lent his foot on the pedal or he's stopping at 2g cos you're blinded temporarily, indicators scrolling looks bloody silly, ten years ago i could imagine some spotty youth buying them from helfords now fitted to some horrible cars, not forgetting led advertising boards that can probably be seen from the space station, you can't even get away from leds during daylight cos every new car is festooned in too camp by far bloody fairy lights.

 

Is it just me, its not so bad in the lorry except due to the height instead of just the bloke in front you can hundreds of bloody tail/stop lights at any one time, and its not so bad in the old landcruiser either, helped cos my screen bloke popped a new screen in for me and its that bit higher than a car, but i detest night driving in a low car now.

 

 

[carlo]

No it's not just you at all.

 

I've just got back from a 300 mile drive at night and have vowed never to do it again.  Especially on the motorway with blinding lights coming up fast behind you (often seem to be from great big SUVs), I found the whole experience quite frightening.  I don't understand how people can shoot past me at 90mph, in the rain too.

 

There's nothing pleasurable about that.

[eddyramrod]

I drive an MR2.  Nuff said! 

 

I agree.  Far too many times a day I have to avert my eyes from a car that's either approaching or following me.  Of course if I'm averting my eyes, I obviously can't see the cyclist or dogwalker who is unlit and clad in black.

 

Taking a slight diversion: on my commute to work I often meet a van from another bakery, delivering to their shop around the corner from our place.  The van is normally parked outside the shop, facing the traffic.  Which would be fine if the driver turned off his headlights...

[captain_70s]

MY current tactic for night time driving is to aim to the left of the lights coming the opposite direction and hope for the best because I'll be buggered if I can see anything past the glare. Add to that indicator lights built in to headlight surrounds and next to LEDs that may as well be invisible and people who insist on having their fog lights on 24/7 and it's fucking miserable out there.

 

It was worse in the Dolomites because you sat down low and the 1850 didn't even have a tinted screen or door mirror so even cars behind you would be blinding. Going down the dual carriageway was horrific, using low beam because of constant traffic coming the other way leaving me barely able to see in front and crawling along at 55mph while 4x4s are right up my arse.

 

I nearly took out a kid walking a dog while on my way home today. Van coming the other way with his lights + a billion afermarked LED jobbies on, just as he passed me I saw the golden retriever and swerved into the middle of the road. Kid was wearing black trousers and a black hoodie with a grey hat and walking down the side of an unlit country road at about 5:30pm. Madness.

[OwdChina]

Agreed. Driving in the dark is getting to be a pain the older I get. It don't help much over here mind with morons having their full beams on for no reason, those bloody driving lamps blazing away, fog lamps on........why? and loads and loads of badly aimed / damaged headlights.

[danthecapriman]

I hate those modern, really intense headlights. I find they actually blind you when they come towards you. I'm sure they're great if your in the car that has them but everyone else is screwed!

Similarly on some moderns I find that when they have the lights on and then use the indicators, the indicators light is actually obscured by the light emitted from the head/tail lights they are so intense so you have a real job seeing if people are indicating or not.

[richardmorris]

It's a lights arms race. Basically the sod you lot I'm ok society. The fiat's lights (original bulbs) are the worst, but ok. The merc I put the Osram nightbrakers that someone on here recommended and they're a lot better than standard. 2cv has upgraded halogens which make the switch warm!

There's no need for more really, modern led and hid are too bright and rob you of your night vision as they go past. I also find myself needing to dip the rear view mirror more often than i used to too, as many more cars seem to park on your bumper flooding the inside of your car with light making it damned hard to see anything outside.

 

On the other hand...Coming home this evening ( on the bicycle) at 6pm there was a discovery coming the other way who didn't seem terribly well lit - he only had the drls on, no headlamps and no rear lights at all. Plenty of other cars flashing at them, but totally oblivious.

 

I also counted twelve cars today with defective lights. Some with one broken dipped and using the fog lights instead, some with only one of three brake lights working.

[I_am_Diesel]

I'm thinking that they are on full beam half the time. I am usually about to flash them when I realise that they aren't. Trouble is that I own an Astra G, a Defender and Mk2 Golf all of which have notoriously poor head lights.

[richardmorris]

Try an xm's headlamps- a coal miner's safety lamp gives off a more useful glow!

[RichardK]

I have absolute sympathy with this, but it's because of a couple of optical flaws in my construction.

 

First, a botched operation to sort out being crosseyed, which made it worse.

Second, right eye does not focus. Cannot focus.

Third - reason for both, Keratoconus, which does not mean I have slightly downmarket and tragic/laughable ex-Atomic Kittens in my eyes, but that the corneas only partially 'set' as lenses; not diagnosed until too late to get the operation to fix them. My corneas are like a part-cooked fried egg white, though now they're probably set but in the shape of bumpy glass.

 

The upshot of this is that my right eye is fundamentally blocked out of my vision, though it works for 'spatial' awareness and movement (have a 175° field of vision) and when driving, it can monitor mirrors whilst I look straight ahead. Freaky. Don't ask about depth perception. I can choose which eye is in use, the "disconnected" one looking inwards, but as the right cannot focus on anything the left is generally in use (if I appear to be looking over your shoulder, that's why. Also if I disengage eye contact in a conversation it's because I'm aware I can have a very intense stare, and it makes me uncomfortable let alone other people).

 

All this info is to explain the light thing. Where you see a pair of lights, I see four, a ghosted lower set about 45° down and right. Foglights - that's 8 lights coming towards me. Rain, 16. Leave high beams on and I switch eyes, making the right eye take the brunt of the dazzle and switching back to left without being blinded. For comparison of lens, my left eye sees an individual point of light as 6-8 "soft edged" points in a pattern a little like an atomic symbol, right down to lines of blur/trace.

 

Blue lens glasses help by reducing the red/green light and spreading the focus over the wider area of the retina.

 

All that guff aside, I actually don't mind projector lights when they're factory correct. What I hate are the prats (taxi drivers seem common) who put 80/100W bulbs in, or HIDs without levelling/alignment. After all that, too, I found driving in America in the '90s when sealed beam, constant height lights hitting my right eye (so less blurred) a revelation. So much nicer.

[RichardK]

Oh, and first against the wall before all of the headlight abuses - cyclists with flashing LEDs, or worse, flashing LEDs and blinding 'head-lights' that look right at you when they're coming the other way. Top tip on flashing rear LEDs - if you're passing a set of railings in town, and I see the flashing LED, I'm going to interpret that as you being on the pavement behind the railing.

[Richard]

One thing I've noticed about HiDs is that they seem to be invisible from the side. If there is a car with HiDs in a side road in town I nearly always see the car before I see the light from it.

[FakeConcern]

The headlights on my C4 are xenon & steer around corners a bit like the old DS except not mechanical, great to drive by, don't know what they're like for other drivers. Contrary to what I've read, I don't find driving the XM at night a problem, not as good as the C4, but quite adequate. Driving Mrs FC's tiny Clio Mk1 the worst thing is the huge SUV/soft road/crossover/4x4 etc with really bright lights that are level with the rear view mirror making it hard to see in front.

[Uncle Jimmy]

people who insist on having their fog lights on 24/7

I may be wrong but I thought that front fog lights are supposed to only be used on single lane roads in the UK?

I find the current police emergency lights are painful. Yes, they can likely be seen from the moon but they make me feel like I'm going to have an epileptic seizure.

[forddeliveryboy]

The comment that with even, but less bright lighting, unlit objects weren't invisible if there was background light (moon, reflected bright city lights from clouds) but today they are, is something our legislators ought to be considering. There's only one set of traffic lights for miles around here, it's a pedestrian crossing on a main road. The bulbs were replaced with LEDs a few years ago, and everybody has to shield their eyes as they drive past at night - it's so dark otherwise. They're a real hazard, cyclists' lights vanish into nothing unless they're flashing ones, pedestrians are invisible on the side of the road.

 

I think people's eyesight is less good than it used to be - so many are glued to back-lit screens for more than half the day, whether ipads or work terminals. Add that to the 'sod you I'm ok' attitude which is the norm when it used to be the exception and there's little wonder things are as they are. I bloody hate them, they're more than annoying when on a 4x4. It doesn't matter how well they're adjusted, the slightest crest on a levelish road means they're frying your retinas.

 

My Dad used to tell me to switch off the torch if we were out at night - "you'll see more without it". I realised years later that it was almost always true.

[robinmasters]

This subject had been discussed before, but I'm still going to drag it out again by commenting in this thread.

 

LED or project headlights are too bright. Fine on a dead straight road, assuming there aimed correctly, when the oncoming car is driving in a straight line, but any slight bend, hill, or minute deviation from dead straight, and you get caught in their beam and totally blinded.

 

Whilst completely unable to see, you come up being another similarly equipped car who doesn't realise they only have DRLs on, so no lights at the back (worst idea ever).

 

I've just had my headlights replaced; it was a revelation. I didn't think they were that bad, but the reflectors had obviously deteriorated quite badly. I can see where I'm going now, when there isn't an Audi coming towards me.

 

Modern drivers, apparently, can't be trusted to decide when to brake, to brake properly, when to put their windscreen wipers on, how and when to accelerate so as not to lose grip, they don't have to dip their rear view mirror, and they shouldn't be expected to remember where their keys are. In spite of all that being automated, they still have to decide which lights it's appropriate to use based on light/visibility; and they invariably get it wrong.

[Bobthebeard]

Not only the headlights though. Blinding as they are. Some of the latest LED tail/brake lights leave red spots in your eyes after the car has gone. Hardly good for road safety. I was in a queue behind such a vehicle tonight. The driver had his/her foot on the brake for ages. Had to look away as the brake lights were so bright it actually caused discomfort looking at them. Not only me either. Both passengers commented.

[gordonbennet]

bugger me, touched a nerve there, pleased me and 'er arn't the only ones.

 

The first time this light wars thing hit me was driving back down the M6 past Brum in me lorry one wet warm but clear evening in the early 80's, mk 5 Cortina was a really popular car and had soddin bright rear fog lights, to show off their status as tits nearly every driver who owned a set of rear fogs had them turned on, not many lorries on the road of an evening back then so i was treated to the glare of dozens of bloody 21w red lights as far as the eye could see ahead of me like a long red snake going round the curves and into the distance, the lights reflecting on the wet road increasing the glare.

A vision of the hell that is now.

If you could have had a meaningful conversation with these tits and explained that their safe rear fog lights meant that a sudden application of brakes would go unnoticed just wouldn't have computed.

 

Whats it going to be like in another few years when the vast majority of cars will be LED/DRL/HID equipped and gawd nose wot the next surge in lighting will be, that'll be summat to look forward to, not.

[forddeliveryboy]

LED tail lights flicker in a really odd and annoying way, too. First noticed it on buses, really distracting. We obviously need to return to an age where manners counted and a gentleman wouldn't even take a seat recently vacated by someone of the fairer sex, let alone shine a bright light in her eyes. The French had a good system wherby you ran around on sidelights when another vehicle was coming, and had to flash your lights when approaching any junction to warn any other vehicles you were approaching. Hence the two different setting on old French cars, V (ville) and R (route).

 

richardmorris, if your light switch gets hot, then consider fitting relays for the lights - they'll melt out sooner or later and new switches aren't cheap.

[dollywobbler]

Just be grateful that we get bloody cats eyes here. What a marvellous invention. Someone tell the French. But yes, XM headlamps are dreadful. My Dyane on old-type bulbs is actually better on dipped beam.

 

 

LED taillights flicker in a really odd way, too. First noticed it on buses, really distracting.

 

I thought I was the only one! I seriously get narked by this. First noticed it on Peugeot 307CCs. 

[gordonbennet]

Ah, not everyone can see the led flickr, was describing it to my lad today, he didn't seem to know what i was talking about, yes 307CC's are really bad for it.

[Bobthebeard]

Lots of the cats eyes appear to be being dug up locally.... Apparantly no longer needed! Probably because the reflection blinds drivers with LED/HID lights.

Automatic Emergency Braking is being advertised on some new car or other now. What about Automatic Self Dimming Windscreens along the lines of welding masks?

[forddeliveryboy]

I heard that all our old-fashioned reflective catseyes are going to be replaced with ones with LEDs powered by solar and battery. The reason given is that they'd be more reliable. When snowploughs have scraped them up, will they carry on shining wherever they happen to end up, I wonder?

[eddyramrod]

Automatic Emergency Braking is being advertised on some new car or other now. What about drivers exercising a bit of sense?

EFA

[Noel Tidybeard]

I'm a bit nostalgic about many things, but am i the only bugger who now hates driving a car at night, my mrs mentioned this earlier in the week and got me thinking.

 

Look years ago we only had 55w halogen bulbs at best up front, at the back we had a couple of 5w sidelight bulbs inside thick red lenses and two 21w buggers for brake lights.

The lights weren't wonderful but (yes i know we were younger) maybe our night vision wasn't so completely destroyed that we could make out enough of the surroundings to still drive reasonably safely.

In that there lundun especially, night driving was a pleasure, everyone on sidelight alone, kept your good night vision and as such pedestrians, cyclist etc that were unlit didn't disappear into the backround.

 

Fast forward to today and its getting out of bloody hand, far too powerful headlights, new car owners trying to outdo each other in how blue my spectrum is and how bloody awful my DRL's look.?

led's by the thousand flickering away, stop lights enough to blind you, they arn't safe at all cos you haven't a bloody clue whether the driver in front has lent his foot on the pedal or he's stopping at 2g cos you're blinded temporarily, indicators scrolling looks bloody silly, ten years ago i could imagine some spotty youth buying them from helfords now fitted to some horrible cars, not forgetting led advertising boards that can probably be seen from the space station, you can't even get away from leds during daylight cos every new car is festooned in too camp by far bloody fairy lights.

 

Is it just me, its not so bad in the lorry except due to the height instead of just the bloke in front you can hundreds of bloody tail/stop lights at any one time, and its not so bad in the old landcruiser either, helped cos my screen bloke popped a new screen in for me and its that bit higher than a car, but i detest night driving in a low car now.

now you know why honda fitted a split rear screen on the spaceship civic- it blocks these cock lights perfectly!

[gordonbennet]

They had those led cats eyes on the B road that runs from Silverstone to Banbury, used to use that road a lot about 4 years ago when i was on nights where i work now, really odd at first but superb for being able to work out where the road goes

Helped me a lot one night, about 1am i'm going down that road in me tanker, round a bend and blue lights everywhere, copper tells me its a fatal so it'll be shut for hours, obviously i'm the only bloody lorry on the road that time of night, so had to reverse about 1.5 miles along that unlit road til i could find an entrance big enough to turn round, would have been doubly difficult had it not been for those cats eyes.

[scaryoldcortina]

I heard that all our old-fashioned reflective catseyes are going to be replaced with ones with LEDs powered by solar and battery. The reason given is that they'd be more reliable. When snowploughs have scraped them up, will they carry on shining wherever they happen to end up, I wonder?

How can some elecrics in plastic possibly be more reliable than two glass reflectors set in a 10lb lump of metal and rubber?

 

 

It was foggy here today. Looked like close encounters goes to silent hill. Chaos.

[Bobthebeard]

Was going to reply to your post about what happens when electronic failure occurs - or simply a corroded earth, BtB. Where's it gone?!! Will stick a youtube on the PAS ABS ESC thread.

Ahemmm... Just deleted my own post apparently!

😡

[vulgalour]

LED street lights are my bugbear.  As a pedestrian they're great, can't fault them, but as a driver I find them very unsettling because they mess with my depth perception.  All the shadows they cast are wrong and some things like people just disappear as a result.  Old orange sodium lights might be terrible for light pollution but they're far more pleasant to drive under.

 

For headlights in my own car I find the sealed beams in the Princess next to useless these days if there's anyone else on the road but absolutely fantastic when I'm out on my own, they show so much more to my eyes than super bright halogens and all that jazz.  The Princess is also the only car I can drive with full beams on and nobody seems to notice.

 

I have two big gripes with other drivers.  The first is the person that sits just a bit too close behind you so their headlights fill all your mirrors and no matter if you go faster or slower they maintain that distance so you've no idea what's actually in front of you.  The second is usually the preserve of ten year old Peugeots, for some reason, who have one headlight aimed normally and the other aimed directly at your eyes and putting out the light of four thousand suns.

 

There also seems to be an annoying and increasingly common habit for people in low rent cars that pretend to be luxury items bombing around with all their lights on full blast or, worse still, silver cars that apparently have no functioning lights at all rendering them invisible in anything other than perfect weather conditions.

[RichardK]

Lots of the cats eyes appear to be being dug up locally.... Apparantly no longer needed! Probably because the reflection blinds drivers with LED/HID lights.

Automatic Emergency Braking is being advertised on some new car or other now. What about Automatic Self Dimming Windscreens along the lines of welding masks?

 

IIRC, pre-WWII so 1930s, a Dr. Edwin Land sought to encourage the use of polarisers. He invented a technique for growing - and aligning - the crystals on a celluloid film, (POLARising celluLOID ), and demonstrated the effectiveness it had on the then flat, thin windscreens both against conventional lights, and opposing similarly treated lights (which were reduced to a comfortably visible purple disc without affecting the visibility forward for the driver). I forget the reasons it never went further other than cost; ultimately the technology was applied to glasses worn by fighter pilots, and then the same knowledge helped him create instant films (again, aligning crystals on a substrate, then even distribution of processing chemicals).