3 ms·

I hope it doesn't engage at night, as we don't have turquoise LEDs so the blue ones will ruin night vision.

Already__Taken 3y ago
you don't have night vision with headlights and full beams on... they look just like daytime running lights, not terribly bright.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
You can get LEDs in many wavelengths. Around 500nm is "cyan", 505nm is described as "Verde" or "mint green", 510nm is called "blue green" by LED manufacturers. And those are just single-wavelength examples. You could add a yellow led, say, to move the colour off the locus of pure-wavelength colours. I'd be pretty surprised if those lights aren't already LEDs.
dist-epoch 3y ago
White headlights and street lights will ruin your night vision before these lights.
KMnO4 3y ago
The idea of preserving night vision is based on rod cells being insensitive to light with a wavelength >640nm (ie red). Halogen bulbs found in headlights produce a lot of light under that wavelength, and are going to be at a much higher intensity than turquoise indicator lights.
- oarsinsync 3y ago
  > Halogen bulbs found in headlights produce a lot of light under that wavelength, and are going to be at a much higher intensity than turquoise indicator lights. Tangential, but holy shit, this is great to know, and explains why I generally feel blinded every time someone with those horrible headlights drives by. I wonder if there’s anything that can be done (to my windshield? to some glasses?) that can reduce the impact of this at night?
  - saltcured 3y ago
    You're going to be disappointed. You'd need to blind yourself. That red wavelength is at the bottom of the visible spectrum. Any light that looks not-read is above this threshold. That includes old kerosene and acetylene lamps from before cars were common as well as all other "white", "yellow", or "amber" lamps. Also, halogen is an old lamp type that has been in use since the 1960s. Then towards the 1990s, there were changes in optics with "projector" housings for halogens, and then the shift to high-intensity discharge (HID aka xenon) lamps. The latest ones now are LED, of course.
  - lambdasquirrel 3y ago
    In Germany they’ve been developing headlight arrays that can very specifically track the road. But it wouldn’t fly in the U.S. because people aren’t required to keep their cars to the same level of maintenance as over there.

you don't have night vision with headlights and full beams on... they look just like daytime running lights, not terribly bright.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

You can get LEDs in many wavelengths. Around 500nm is "cyan", 505nm is described as "Verde" or "mint green", 510nm is called "blue green" by LED manufacturers. And those are just single-wavelength examples. You could add a yellow led, say, to move the colour off the locus of pure-wavelength colours. I'd be pretty surprised if those lights aren't already LEDs.

dist-epoch 3y ago

White headlights and street lights will ruin your night vision before these lights.

KMnO4 3y ago

The idea of preserving night vision is based on rod cells being insensitive to light with a wavelength >640nm (ie red). Halogen bulbs found in headlights produce a lot of light under that wavelength, and are going to be at a much higher intensity than turquoise indicator lights.

oarsinsync 3y ago
> Halogen bulbs found in headlights produce a lot of light under that wavelength, and are going to be at a much higher intensity than turquoise indicator lights. Tangential, but holy shit, this is great to know, and explains why I generally feel blinded every time someone with those horrible headlights drives by. I wonder if there’s anything that can be done (to my windshield? to some glasses?) that can reduce the impact of this at night?
- saltcured 3y ago
  You're going to be disappointed. You'd need to blind yourself. That red wavelength is at the bottom of the visible spectrum. Any light that looks not-read is above this threshold. That includes old kerosene and acetylene lamps from before cars were common as well as all other "white", "yellow", or "amber" lamps. Also, halogen is an old lamp type that has been in use since the 1960s. Then towards the 1990s, there were changes in optics with "projector" housings for halogens, and then the shift to high-intensity discharge (HID aka xenon) lamps. The latest ones now are LED, of course.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  In Germany they’ve been developing headlight arrays that can very specifically track the road. But it wouldn’t fly in the U.S. because people aren’t required to keep their cars to the same level of maintenance as over there.