Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests An odd idea to improve night driving vision?

  There's this idea that occurred to me a few days ago, that I've been wondering about ever since.

  I'll start by talking about sunglasses.  In their simplest form, sunglasses are merely darkened lenses that reduce the amount of light entering the wearer's eyes.  If there's too much light, such sunglasses can increase the wearer's comfort.

  A slightly more advanced approach involves coloring the lenses, on the theory that undesirable light (glare) may be predominently in some color bands, while desirable light may be in others, in order to increase the ratio of desirable light to undeisrable light, and thus improve not only the wearer's comfort, but his ability to see what he needs to, among the glare.

  The pinnacle of sunglass technology, of course, is polarization.  It turns out that most surface glare is horizontally-polarized, so wearing sunglasses that are polarized to block horizontally-polarized light, while freely admitting vertically polarized light, offers the greatest ability for the wearer to see what he needs/wants to see, while blocking the most glare.
 
 
  I was recently thinking about night driving.  At night, the primary source of light by which you see is your own car's headlights.  The primary source of undesirable glare is direct light from other cars' headlights.

  I was wondering; what if car headlights had polarizing filters over them that admitted only horizontally-polarized light, while drivers wore standard vertically-polarized sunglasses?  Direct light from oncoming cars' headlights would be blocked from entering one's eyes, but reflected light from your own headlights would be scattered and depolarized, as it bounces off of the things that you need to see, so your own ability to see what you need to see would not be nearly so impaired.  (i've just performed an experiment invoving a polarizing filter over a flashlight, while wearing polarized sunglasses. As I expected, polarized light from the flashlight was, in fact, mostly depolarized as it was reflected off of various objects.)

  The obvious down side of this is that wearing sunglasses at night would reduce the amount even of desirable light entering your eyes.  It seems to me that making the polarized headlights brighter could compensate for this, and that in any event, that the advantage of not being blinded by oncoming headlights might be greater than the disadvantage of having even desired light reduced.

  What does everyone think of this idea?  Good idea?  Bad idea?

  I guess putting it into effect would be the difficult part.  Assuming it doesn't run afoul of any vehicle regulations, anyone could put polarizing filters over their headlights, and wear polarized sunglasses while driving at night, but this wouldn't really help unless everyone was doing it.  Obviously, headlights would need brighter bulbs to begin with, so that the light remaining after the polarizing filter would be in the same amount as normal unpolarized lights.  You'd probably want them even brighter still, to compensate for the losses in drivers' polarized glasses, but you wouldn't want to make that adjustment until it could safely be assumed that most drivers were wearing such glasses.

"I wear my sunglasses at night!" (80's song)

hehehe
good idea but i think you have too much time on your hands

2nd that...about having too much time..

Sorry to burst your bubble, but sunglasses will block all
forms of light, and polarized sunglasses will do even worse.
Sunglasses will also darken other things around you, not just the light, but things that you would normally see as darkened, you wouldn't be able to see at all. However, most optometrists make regular glasses with coatings to help block some of the glare that you are talking about. I have really bad trouble with headlight glare, and my optometrist offered the option of the anti-glare coatings. They don't completely get rid of the glare, but they help somewhat. Try increasing your intake of Beta-kerotine, such as foods like carrots, you can also buy beta-kerotine vitamin supplements, as well as a supplement called bilberry. British fighter pilots in WWII reported increased nightvision after eating bilberry jam.
Hope this helps!

My vision is about 20/400 or 500 so I have to wear glasses. For the last few years I have worn the anti reflective glasses. The reflection coming off of the lens is green. I have been told that that is the rainbow effect or a spectrum of light. I have a hard time seeing to drive at night because of the glare off of the windows and mirrors but without my anti reflective glasses lenses night driving would be very difficult. My glasses correct my vision to normal but everything looks really small through the lenses so I have to look closely and I think that is why the glare bothers me. Those new bright white headlights are even worse.
I hardly ever drive at night but I can really tell the difference. Signs that I can read from almost a mile away during the day are harder to read at night.
Here are some articles about anti-reflective lenses:
http://www.framesdirect.com/eyeglasses/info-antireflective.htm
http://www.allaboutvision.com/lenses/coatings.htm
http://www.foresightoptical.com/coatings4.htm

Some of the expensive cars and aircraft use a reflection of the gauges for a heads up display on the windshield.

it is possible to have polarized lenses that are not dark tinted.

Solution : HID's + 35% tinted windshield = eliminated glare and increased visibility (it may be "illegal" in some states but it really does help. No problem seeing at night either)

dont you kinda want to see the light from other cars... isnt that a safty thing????

The light and seeing the other car are good. The glare from the lights that makes it hard to see anything but glare is bad.