The light wars have been raging for some time now and it's heading to the ridiculous.

Lights peaked in my humble with standard halogen bulbs reflecting through well designed lenses that allowed for a small amount of light scatter beyond the dipped beam limit.

The newer designs are fantastic up uintil the dge of the sharp beam cut off, counter productive because it puts whatever is beyond the beam into absolute impenetrable darkness.

Lights at the back were fairly normal, few had side lights with anything more than a 5w filament bulb and brake lights @ 21w each, now our eyes are seared by ever brighter tail and especially brake lights as each new design seeks to get the edge over the previous incarnation, mine's bigger than yours syndrome, don't get me started on the use of rear fog lights in light rain or mist with 1 mile visibility.

Together with the latest must have ever more ludicrous and ever more camp DRL's this light madness has all but destroyed night vision, even up in the tallest trucks you can't get away from it, if anything its worse because as you follow a line of cars you can see over the roofs on all lanes so are treated to a sea of stupidly bright tail lamps and when anyone even rest their foot on the brake light hundreds of watts of bright lights blind you...people think its makes them safe which couldn't be any further from the truth, because so bright are those light splus being LED's you get the flicker effect which reduces your calculation of rate of deceleration of the vehicle in front...you can't see past that vehicle because the red lights are blinding....don't forget when its raining all those lights get reflected off the polished smooth third world road surfaces too.

Another interesting thing is the number of car drivers who insist of putting their lights up to full beam on dual carriagways when its a truck coming the other way, don't understand the mentality but can understand why some of my colleagues fire up a row of spotlights in answer.

Next we have LED bulbs in traffic lights, so bright are the greens especially that you can't see past them either.

We've reached stupid now, and yes Barney i hate night driving now, so my 4 am starts mean 3 hours of hell which will be nearly 4 hours by the 21st Dec.

Edited by gordonbennet on 27/11/2022 at 13:10

I have used the same air of Nighthawk yellow tinted glasses for more than 20 years, they take the glare out. They are also useful when the light isn't good in daylight, cloudy dark conditions, put them on and it's like the sun just came out.

I've hated driving at night for a while - on speaking to my Specsaver optician it seems to be from when I started wearing varifocals. As I was mid term with expensive varifocals I decided on a cheapish set of single vision glasses with a special "coating" which transformed my night driving. Basically the varifocals are a compromise where you get good vision looking straight ahead but slightly fuzzy left/right of centre The single vision lenses are the same at the extremities - they also didn't have reactolite as this can have a residual slight darkening. BUT one side effect for me with the single vision lenses was the dash/satnav was slightly blurry!

Fast forward to a recent eye test and after speaking to the optician he suggested trying the "Superdrive lens" which is a different varifocal designed for driving with a wide field of vision for infinity/mid range focus and a narrower reading focus and a coating that reduces blue/glare etc(LED lights!). The verdict - for driving wow wow wow - perfik. I kept them in the car just for driving. I got another set of normal reactolite varifocals for day to day vision (two for one deal). I had a slight issue one day with my non driving glasses as a screw fell out (Specsaver fixed for free) so I wore my Superdrive all the time theoretically until they were fixed - the problem is I've stuck to the Superdrive - my peripheral vision is way better helping with other things, even watching the TV. Theoretically the reading should be worse but it isn't. The only slight issue I had with them was initially the kitchen worktop seemed to curve up to me when preparing food etc but my brain seems to have got used to them now as that is no longer the case.

Sorry for the long monolog but night driving on my commute with horrible roads had been a big issue for me now substantially mitigated with the Superdrive glasses. I think many different opticians have an equivalent type of lens. Oh and commute further mitigated with my retirement!

Edited by Big John on 27/11/2022 at 20:36