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Our eyes are the least sensitive to it so it requires more light (which means more overall brightness, which actually makes your night vision worse and limits v
by KennyBlanken 3y ago
Our eyes are the least sensitive to it so it requires more light (which means more overall brightness, which actually makes your night vision worse and limits visibility of everything not lit, because your iris closes more) and it provides poor visibility/contrast and no color vision.
The only advantage red light offers is not disrupting your circadian rhythm.
Airplane instrument panels are lit with white. Saab, Volvo, and plenty of others use white or nearly white light for their dashboards.
Blue is used in theater only because it is less noticeable to the audience when it spills or reflects somewhere it shouldn't.
The real question is: especially with even 10 year old car headlights being so much better than the utter trash car headlights were 30 or more years ago, why are we still wasting so much energy, and impacting wildlife, and hurting millions of people's circadian rhythms, blasting streets with light all night?
There isn't even any argument in terms of public safety; there's never been any proof that lighting reduces crime. Lack of lighting forces people up to no good doing things where they shouldn't be, to use lights themselves - which stands out much, much more than someone doing something they shouldn't be under outdoor floodlights.
- derefr 3y ago> why are we still wasting so much energy, and impacting wildlife, and hurting millions of people's circadian rhythms, blasting streets with light all night? For pedestrians? (I agree with your reasoning as it applies to highways, but most of the world's light pollution from overhead street lighting comes from lighting done either 1. within dense cities, or 2. within industrial complexes — in both cases to aid people walking around outside at night.)
- smolder 3y agoBright night time lighting is often installed here as "security lighting". Meaning the bright light is primarily there to make people uncomfortable and not commit crimes. The pink-orange glow of sodium bulbs was so nice and inviting compared to all these daylight blue parking lot projectors. I wish I lived somewhere where outdoor lighting needed a permit and the issuing authority rejected everything above X lumens or Y color temperature.
- elric 3y agoAs a pedestrian, I'd be much happier with a LOT LESS light at night. Though I have to admit that the overhead street lights aren't my biggest concerns (except for the newer awful white/blue LEDs). Car headlights are what really piss me off. Heck, even tail lights can blind me at night.
- mgaunard 3y agoI actually find that my visibility on highways is worse for the parts that are illuminated by streetlights than for the parts that are only illuminated by my car. I've found for example that it's extremely dangerous to go beyond 180kmh (110 mph) at night whenever there are street lights, while it's sort of ok if you just have side mirrors on the highway reflecting your own lights (not that I recommend to anyone to drive at such high speeds, especially in low visibility conditions).
- rocqua 3y ago> Our eyes are the least sensitive to it so it requires more light (which means more overall brightness, which actually makes your night vision worse and limits visibility of everything not lit, because your iris closes more) and it provides poor visibility/contrast and no color vision. This does not match very common naval practices, nor my experiences. I believe the underlying mechanism is that the iris responds much more strongly to blue light because that is more prevalent in daylight. Specifically this is about using red light to shine on things to see them. I could imagine that has very different requirements from the color of text on a HUD.