Night driving glasses?

[Wolfie1]

I think the average age of the Mercedes owner might affect the percentage of people affected by the allegedly too bright lights. All these lights have to pass certain strict standards before they are cleared for production. I'm still sure that illegally modified lights or out of alignment ones are the cause of most dazzling....not just new style factory LED or HID lights....most of which have afar sharper cut off line with much less light bleeding over it than old style halogens.

Halogen.
View attachment 154505
LED in correct housing.
View attachment 154506

These are on a left hand drive car

 

[Wolfie1]

I dont know if i have said this before, dazzling headlights are always because of poorly aligned headlights and they are just more noticeable as the lights are brighter, pretty much every car i mot being first mot or 10th mot headlamps are aimed too high, even cars that have been set the year before on their mot when they come in the next year they are too high again

 

[slade1]

I've looked at those yellow glasses they sell in petrol stations , but have yet to try any .

I agree some newer cars have terrible lights , but any I've been in don't light the road up as well as the H4 lights in my W123/124/126/210 cars - I think lighting has gone backwards .

H7 and later lights are rubbish in comparison /

I had a nearly new Ponton 190 in 1961 and the lights were dreadful in period, almost as bad as 6 volt VWs and some American cars.
The lights on my next car after 190 was a BMW NK 2000 saloon, it had 4 eyes and the lights were good.

 

[Pontoneer]

Don't think I ever had any driving lessons in the dark.......

My birthday being in January , pretty much all my lessons were in the dark , passed my test in march

 

[Pontoneer]

i actually have a laugh at people driving with sunglasses in very cloudy conditions. Stay off the booze and drugs people

I actually drive most of the time with my Zeiss Umbraumatic glasses , which adjust to the lighting conditions and have an orange/brownish tint ; had them almost 50 years and still think they're great , way better than my Ray-Ban Aviators with the green lenses .

 

[Pontoneer]

I generally don't have an issue with modern LED headlights....if they are aimed the right way it should not matter how bright they are and every car over three years gets its headlight aim checked at least once a year as part of the MOT...too high and its a fail. I suspect that most folks on here claiming to be blinded by modern LED or HID headlights are in fact being blinded by morons who believe that fitting aftermarket HID and LED bulbs in headlights designed for halogen bulbs is OK.....its not, and the reflectors or projectors cant correctly focus them into a sharp dip beam cutoff and its the light that bleeds over this line that causes the glare. They are all MOT fails now.....but its easy enough to pop the old bulbs back in for the test.......or have a "friendly" tester that turns a blind eye......


A good pattern from the correct bulb in the correct housing with next to no light above the line.... this one has a kickup on both headlights, some its only on the left one and some modern headlights have a straight pattern with no kick up to the left at all..

View attachment 152906

LEDs in Halogen housing......note how much light is bleeding over the cutoff line..(the swirls and blobs of light above the cutoff)......that's what dazzles you.

View attachment 152903

I generally don't have an issue with modern LED headlights....if they are aimed the right way it should not matter how bright they are and every car over three years gets its headlight aim checked at least once a year as part of the MOT...too high and its a fail. I suspect that most folks on here claiming to be blinded by modern LED or HID headlights are in fact being blinded by morons who believe that fitting aftermarket HID and LED bulbs in headlights designed for halogen bulbs is OK.....its not, and the reflectors or projectors cant correctly focus them into a sharp dip beam cutoff and its the light that bleeds over this line that causes the glare. They are all MOT fails now.....but its easy enough to pop the old bulbs back in for the test.......or have a "friendly" tester that turns a blind eye......


A good pattern from the correct bulb in the correct housing with next to no light above the line.... this one has a kickup on both headlights, some its only on the left one and some modern headlights have a straight pattern with no kick up to the left at all..

View attachment 152906

LEDs in Halogen housing......note how much light is bleeding over the cutoff line..(the swirls and blobs of light above the cutoff)......that's what dazzles you.

View attachment 152903

"every car over three years gets its headlight aim checked at least once a year as part of the MOT."

except those that are exempt by virtue of being 40 or more years old .

 

[Pontoneer]

There's nothing proven I'm aware of as the issue tends to be internal, so your eyes, not the environment. As has been said lens opacities are the main issue along with uncorrected refractive error. Also a multitude of other ophthalmological issues which an individual may or may not be aware; corneal scars, dystrophies, vitreous floaters, epiretinal membranes etc etc.


Best option is a correct, well dispensed prescription with a good anti reflection coating. By good I mean one that isn't as bright as the sun when you look at them. The whole point is that they are an "anti" reflection coatings so as there will be some reflection from these coatings (but only about 0.8% of incident light not 10% without) you want this to be as little as possible so the coloured reflection on the lens should be as dim as possible. All reputable lens manufacturers make a decent coating; HVLL from Hoya, Crizal Sapphire from Essilor, Seemax Next from Nikon for instance. Some do driving AR coatings, Essilor Drive, Nikon seacoat drive for instance which reflect at a slightly different wavelength. They are fine but I can't say I've had spectacular feedback over and above a more general purpose MAR coating.


Obviously keep them clean and even more obviously actually wear them. Also a clean, unscratched windscreen.


Yellow lenses reduce the incident light to your eye by about 10-20% . They predominantly affect the shortwave length light but this is only apparent where there is a level of background illumination so built up areas at night. When there dark, unlit roads you are driving with said 10-20% loss of illumination which just might be the difference between seeing someone dressed in dark clothing step out in front of you and not.


Both motoring associations (AA) and optical research depts (Schepens in Boston)have done work and none have shown any significant reduction in glare using them and there are clearly disadvantages.


That abstract is interesting, I haven't seen it before. But it doesn't really address what we are talking about and I note it's conclusion is to look at the headlights not the spectacle wearer. The statement "novel polarized glare reducing eyeglasses" is both intriguing and concerning. Glare reducing - glare from where? This is the crux of all of this. Full text

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320133371_The_effectiveness_of_glare-reducing_glasses_on_simulated_nighttime_driving_performance_in_younger_and_older_adults

Polarized - for night driving? By it's very definition a fully polarising lens can only be a 50% transmission lens. The legal tint limit for driving at night is 25% so straight away anything novel it has used is illegal anyway. I'll investigate the whole text but it seems they put a polarised filter on the headlights too, but they did use an 89 Merc 300TE for their experiments!


Sadly, currently at least, there is no easy fix or the big companies would be there like a shot. Current offerings from them are limited in their use and effectivity.


I believe there is some work being done to stop the ever increasing brightness of the headlamps but that's not my field.

Mandating polarising lenses on the headlamp glasses , and matching polarising eyeglasses might be a solution . But that might also adversely affect drivers being able to see light from their own headlamps !

 

[Pontoneer]

Also, I would like to say that, regarding normal sunglasses, using them in direct sunlight, they practically don't do anything! When Polaroid created the first polarized glasses (And then, everyone else copied them of course), the intention was to absorb the energy of one of the two coefficients of the light wave. That is the horizontal one. The horizontal coefficient is the one that has the most energy when you get sun light after it's reflected on surfaces. So, your polarized glasses are designed to work against reflected light; not direct light!
Having said that, you might find it easier to look directly at the sun because the same sunglasses are tinted at a level of darkness of your choice, regardless of the polarization.
I hope people find this physics fact useful

My main recollection of Polaroid sunglasses , when they were popular back in the 1950s and 1960s , was that they highlighted the stress patterns in car windscreens , which was distracting .

The best sunglasses I ever bought , and still have , were my Zeiss Umbramatic ones ; not cheap , but they are the best .

 

[Pontoneer]

Have you tried properly cleaning the inside of your windscreen ? It's amazing the difference it makes .

I do that regularly .

 

[Pontoneer]

I would never buy anything like this from Amazon they have no quality control in process at all.

Proper safety specs have to have a higher ocular specification than your prescription specs.

Buy from a specific safety company ideally... like mine

Tech Look Spectacles

www.discount-safety.co.uk

I rarely buy anything from Amazon , unless I can't source it elsewhere . I've read too many stories about how poorly they treat their staff , and also aware of how they undercut competitors and put them out of business . They just aren't a company I would choose to support and I'm always happy to pay a little extra to buy elsewhere ,

 

[Pontoneer]

I acquired eye wear from an outlet store in Portsmouth ( Oakley ) and the manager made it very clear to me that the eyewear was not for night driving.The plastic lens had a very slight yellow tint / similar to the type of eye protection that professional cricketers use / used.

I would suspect that with the rise of SUVs has not helped dazzling oncoming drivers due to increased headlights height.

I found that vans , trucks and these awful vehicles with higher set headlamps were a huge annoyance when one was behind me when I had the SL , I soon adopted the tactic of raising the roll-over bar manually to such a height that it blocked them ; they still lit up my interior like it was daylight ; sometimes I'd just slow down gradually to encourage them to overtake me .

 

[Pontoneer]

I would imagine that there were far fewer words and articles published in the Gazette in 1977 than there are words and posts/threads on MBClub in 2024, and so would cover the common/popular topics only.

it was a bi-monthly A5 booklet , and the vast majority of it was filled with contributions from members , on all manner of topics . The monthly , colour A4 magazine didn't come until much later , but we did get the quarterly "In Aller Welt " magazine as well . All of this was before the days of computers and the internet .

 

[DrNick]

If the light does not shine directly at you over a legally specified line then it should not dazzle you no matter how bright it is. I've got one of those silly bright LED torches that you can light a camp fire with......You can shine that as close to my head as you want.....and long as it does not shine directly in my face I wont be dazzled....shine it in my eye however and I wont be able to see for a couple of minutes.

Is this your only evidence? Some arbitrarily specified line probably influenced by motor industry lobbyists? The real world has all kinds of reflections and diffractions which will instantly negate the lab measurements. Increasing the brightness/colour temperature only makes these deviations from the lab measurements worse.

 

[Dippo]

I went to the optician last week, and mentioned that I was being affected more by glare when driving at night. She looked deep into my eyes, said 'cataracts', and referred me to the opthalmology department at the hospital.

 

[slade1]

I went to the optician last week, and mentioned that I was being affected more by glare when driving at night. She looked deep into my eyes, said 'cataracts', and referred me to the opthalmology department at the hospital.

Have had cataract operation, very quick and the result amazing, the only operation that turns the clock back visually.
Don't bother with night driving glasses, they do not work, have tried them.