So, just finished reading an article on WaPo about fireflies/lightening bugs and got me thinking further… Car headlights suck. They mess up our night vision when we pass another dickhead running white/blue lights. We mess up the habit(at) of many animals/bugs. So why not red lights? My hiking/camping headlamp has a red light option, which is the only function I use, and I can see fine. Why the FUCK do we still have these ungodly bright white/blue lights?
Because red light are used for tail lights, which you also see when driving. Different light colors allow you to tell if you are looking at the rear or front of the car.
Kind of shocked this logic isn’t obvious. Red lights on cars in low-light conditions already have a very specific, very important meaning.
Yeah but it’d be nice if we went back to lights occupying the yellow area of the spectrum instead of the blue area of the spectrum. Bkinding I tells ya
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Also, we need to be able to read and recognize traffic signs, and those are often color-coded, red having a very important meaning. With red head-lamps, all traffic signs would be red-and-black at night, great !
Red light is great for a headlamp when you want to preserve your night vision, you’re also walking instead of traveling at +60 mph. Red light also doesn’t provide you with any color differentiation which would be an issue with already existing road lines (yellow vs white) and street signs along with the simple notion that humans are used to light in the full spectrum from the sun.
The biggest issue with headlights is people putting LED lights in older, halogen bulb housings that don’t scatter the light the same as LEDs which leads to blinding lights that are quite bright. Additionally, you get those assholes with lifted trucks that don’t re-aim their headlights and they too add to the annoyance and danger of driving at night.
Better enforcement of existing laws would help, but that’s asking a lot of police these days when they seem to have so many other “better” things to be focusing on. /s
I imagine we need close to white to differentiate colours, see this video for more information on that.
However, the LED lights are way too bright, usually when I see an incandescent headlight its fine, but the LED ones are so bright and I have no idea why that is. I have a recollection of reading somewhere that headlight brightness is based on a unit based on a wavelength of light closer to orange, so the more blue a light is, the brighter it needs to be, but I can’t remember for sure.
I hate those blue lights. 🤬 did t they make one of them illegal? (US)
The lights, themselves, aren’t always illegal. Some of them are. The ones that are obviously emitting blue light are definitely illegal, but the ones that are just so bright that they “feel” blue are typically completely legal.
The problem with those lights is that they’re often not installed properly. A lot of inexperienced car owners will install HID lights without the proper housing device, causing the lights to point at an incorrect angle (causing the blindness when one of them tailgates you) and making it so that they don’t disperse the actual spectrum of light properly (causing the blueness).
It’s often further exacerbated by the fact that the people who do these shoddy installations are the same people who drive pointlessly lifted vehicles and like to really ride your ass at night, blasting that laser beam of blue death straight off your rear-view and into your retinas.
Unfortunately, enforcement on these things is basically nonexistent.
When I was growing up, back in the Paleozoic era, I’m pretty sure it was illegal to have a red light on the front, white light on the back(except for backup lights), and blue or green were illegal anywhere on a vehicle. But all that seems to have gone out the window since then.
Of course any vehicle that’s been modified to produce excess smoke violates federal (EPA) and possibly local law, but we see how well that’s enforced.
I am assuming you mean the cool white xenon lights, not blue like police lights. Xenon lights are totally legal. Some places may have laws on the maximum candela of a headlight.
Two points to mention:
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Some people are installing Xenon light bulbs into Reflector type headlamp assemblies. This is highly dangerous, and should be considered illegal if it isnt already. Xenon, HID, and LED lights should never be installed into reflector type headlamp assemblies, only projector type.
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Light adjustment. Most people dont know this is a thing, and its why you get these ding dongs blinding everyone on the road. Headlamps need to be adjusted so they point towards the road, not at incoming drivers eyes.
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WaPo article in case anyone cared : https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/firefly-summer-extinction/
Just read the WaPo article before posting. The article didn’t specify which type of light sources cause the issue. Is the car headlights different today compared to decades prior? If we can switch bulbs to the older ones, what would it take?
Is it the strobe light effect of the LED light source or simply the color white/blue itself? need more information.
In the defense of blue light, it will help keep you awake
It’s because car light colors are actually just the Doppler Effect in action. When a car is coming toward you, its lights look white. When it’s moving away, its lights look red. This is also why when your wife or girlfriend is shrieking and running towards you with a knife, her voice sounds very high.
This is a really good “explain like an idiot” account of Doppler effect. A++++ would upvote again.
