Driving at night?

Like you Axle I used to like driving at night but for the last year or so am finding it more difficult especially when the road is wet or it is drissling. At times I find the glare from modern car headlights are too bright even on low beam
Must be that getting old syndrome

Patto

Good thread. I used to love driving at night when younger..but these days..not so...and glasses does help.

HID spotlights will help the light is more white.

Was told about 20 years ago when I was prescribed glasses that night vision would be the first thing that suffered. Indeed it is true.

Axle - There's a good, straightforward (American) article below - and it basically says there's not a lot you can do about it.
If you've had eye checks, that's the important bit.

Blinded by the Night

Macular degeneration is a problem you need to identify early, if you have it.

It's interesting to note that arterial health is linked to eyesight problems.
SWMBO takes Ocuvite 50 Plus. She says it works and she notices a definite improvement.
If you buy some, make sure it's got the right number on it. 50 Plus is for over 50's.
The "plus" is actually the "plus" symbol on the bottle, this forum won't accept the "plus" symbol.

Cheers, Ron.

If it helps, when I'm on my motorcycle travelling at night, I change over to yellow safety glasses,stops all the glare and dos'nt interfer with clear vision.

Driving at night means that if any issues arise you have to deal with at night and at the end of the day when you are tired. Secondly if you are driving, then you have not had a happy hour, not something thats likely to happen to this little wood duck. Thirdly, if your eyes are failing you are probably retired, so what do you want to drive at night for anyway?
If you have k's that just must be covered then best to go to bed early and get on the road at sun up when you are much freasher IMHO.

Thanks Axle for highlighting what seems to be a relatively common problem or so it seems! I have been aware that night driving has become less pleasurable for me for a couple of years but have just compensated by doing more daytime driving. Night driving had so much going for it and one of the main benefits was the lack of traffic.

Even though my optometrist says my eyesight is fine for driving I'm finding glasses help my nigh time driving.

Kind regards

Axle,

Just another one of the things that suck with the advancing years, eh!

I retired again about 5 weeks ago, and prior to that was doing 25-30 hours/week at night, with the odd "all nighter" thrown in, to test all systems. Use to get terrible eye strain when the trucks only had a pair of Hella 4000's with halogen globes. Then they started fitting 40" LED light bars, with the halogens, and that was a vast improvement. Bit later, all the 4000's got HID inserts and life got pretty good.

The new trucks this year have a pair of Peak Explorers LEDs, plus the Hellas. Just don't get eyestrain anymore, don't get any stress from not being able to see clearly and have checked clear vision ahead, between Mt Isa & Camooweal, at in excess of a kilometre. Okay, at that distance one probably can't see what's on the road, but you're going to see it a lot earlier than if the vehicle was running normal high beam, or Halogen spotties. The LEDs give a good spread as well, probably over 20 metres each side, from edge of highway.

The worst low beam lights were 'vanners who obviously hadn't upgraded their rear suspension, and should have been camped up anyway, trying to digest that bottle of red. Plenty of drivers "forget" to dip, done it myself, but a quick flash gets everyone on a level playing field.

Driving in the rain, no fog line and trucks with headlights that have one side on low and other on high, can go on the list too. Now keen to try these yellow glasses........

Bob

Hi Axle, I certainly notice that my vision is not as good as it used to be and driving at night seems to require extra caution / concentration particularly in the wet. For me glasses are a big help.

This is an interesting topic for me because apart from the general glare issues of night driving I have been paying some attention to individual vehicles.
In my observation over 90% of vehicles have 'inoffensive' headlights. That is well aimed and not excessively bright.

Amongst the other 10% however I believe there are many with offensively bright globes fitted. (They have noticeably more glare than the surrounding vehicles.)

Also lately I have been noticing a number of cars that appear to have the headlights aimed upward. (These are most apparent when they are following on a flat road and light up your roof lining, I'm not including high vehicles, and no it's not generally because they've got a heavy load in the boot.)

Totally agree Axle.

But, wait until you start developing cataracts. You will get double vision, especially tail lights.

It's a crime to grow old.

Agree the halogen upgrades can be a pita, either not properly shaded, adjusted poorly, or as mentioned vehicle overloaded and then they're too high.

I don't know why people want them anyway, my std Ranger low / high beam have a yellow filament light, and that is far better for most driving, esp in cloudy hills driving as it cuts through better.
Less reflection of signs too, which can be a real pain with HIDs.

The last thing I want to do is half blind the person driving towards me in two tonnes of metal that is doing 100km/hr !!

The lights angle suddenly reminded me of the brothers stunt many many years ago, that always makes me chuckle.

He had a late model HJ61 and fitted it out nicely, with the compulsory twin 150 watt Cibies, as well as the already excellent 4 headlights of the Tojo.

He was a bugger for being quick to "punish" oncoming motorists with badly adjusted headlights, or too slow to dip their lights, with a good blast of the Cibies and headlights on high beam.

In fact, I think he relished it. Then one night, he had a bloke come towards him with bright low beam lights that annoyed him - so he flicked the Cibies and high beam on, to teach this bloke a lesson!

All of sudden, all hell broke loose! You'd think someone had loosed off a low-megaton nuke, for a good dose of canned sunshine. It was worse than daylight, I think the trees along the edge of the road caught fire!

This bloke in the 4WD coming towards him, must have had about 8 Cibies, plus about 4 Hella Rallyes, plus 150 watt globes in his headlights. You couldn't see anything, it was like looking directly at a nuclear blast!
We all laughed as the brother had to pull up, he couldn't see the road directly in front of him!

The bloke roared past, and I'm sure we could hear gloating laughter. It was funny in one respect - but it was also a pretty juvenile stunt, as well as dangerous - as blinding another driver could easily cause a major accident.
One thing's for sure, the brother learnt a lesson that night!

Cheers, Ron.

Hi axle
I do a lot of night runs, and getting close to 60 and was told that at our age we actually need more light to see, now you can go for HIDs, light bars & the like but when those lumens hit on a road sign you'll end up blinded also when you have to dip for on coming traffic say on a corner, You'll go from sunshine to candle in a blink, I run NARVA +120 (% not watts) globe upgrades c/w NARVA 175 100w spread/pencil. Blue vision globe upgrades only last 300hrs +$, and after a while night driving you still feel like you need more light, you're getting tired time to pull over.
cheers

Thanks fellas for all the info,...Will work my way through it and see what suits me best


Amazing how things can catch up with you so quickly.


Cheers Axle.

Can't help with the failing eye sight Axle, the joys of getting on in life I suppose. A couple of interesting issues raised here with night driving in general I though.

Happy to be corrected, but my understanding is that you can't retro fit HID inserts if your lights are not self levelling and don't have washers on them? These lights are great , but poorly adjusted or with a load on board and even on low beam they can be quite blinding. Fog lights? Night time does not automatically equate to reduced visibility, yet you see so many people who just have them on by default and they can be very distracting to oncoming vehicles. There is a reason they are switched separately. Not going to happen, but I would like to see a rule that requires them to be switched such that you have to turn them on each time you drive, if you want them on. We have done the poor old police to death on here recently, but I would like to see people pulled over occasionally and told to turn them off (even without a fine, just a reminder).

One of the downfalls of the HID style lights are that they do reflect badly from road signs. Perhaps there will be a new reflective material developed at some point to account for the proliferation of newer style lights, but one thing that amazes me is the sheer number of signs on the side of the road. Driving in built up areas you expect it and usually on low beam anyhow. Similarly once you get truly remote they are rarer, but in the rural areas around towns/cities, the number and variety are staggering. Most of the time (particularly on a familiar road) you simply don't notice them, but try actually counting them sometime. I know they are there to warn of everything from what weeds I should be spraying to how many wombats I can expect in the next 500 metres but there comes a point when you need to strike a balance between providing necessary information to drivers and actually allowing them to concentrate on the road itself and what is happening around it.

My favourite is, 'Don't tailgate. Kangaroos can randomly jump in front of vehicles'. Anyone who hasn't worked that out in Australia shouldn't have a licence in the first place.

Grumpy and going blind.

Matt.

I have noticed at age 60 that red tail lights and red reflectors seem to distort like I'm looking through a kaleidoscope - ie there are four images of each object. It makes it hard to discern tail lights from red reflectors about a kilometer ahead. What has helped is wearing some weak reading glasses (+0.5 diopters).

The best thing to help my night driving has been to upgrade all my high beams and spots to HID. Instead of my rheumy old eyes peering through the dimly lit gloom cast by the oem halogens, its like driving on a sunny day.

The upshot of both the foregoing is that some people have experienced a retina smoking burst of radiation by glancing at their rear view mirror when I have mistaken their tail lights for road side reflectors.

Bob

never had good eyes and always wear glasses.i have regular eyechecks with new glasses when required.12months ago coming home at night wet and rainy a busy narrow road and i was continually dazzled by head lights and all in all it t was a horror drive.i am 75 and the next day i made an appointment with specsavers for new glasses. i was told that i had bad cattaracts.after having themdone you have no idea how much my eyesight has improved,everything is so vivid and clear.i still avoid night driving when it is wet but normal night time driving is no problem. i had the replacement lens and no tthe laser treatment.so i wonder if some people are not aware of catarract causing there failing eyesight and not so much their age