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Rod Speed Rod Speed is offline
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Default Driving at night



"NY" wrote in message
...
"John" Not.responding.@dotcom wrote in message
2.222...
Night driving is made harder by:
People with dirty and poorly aimed headlights.
Houses with exterior floodlights aimed to light up the air.
Buildings with bulkhead type lights that just throw the light everwhere.
Cyclists who deliberately seem to aim their intensive lights at the eyes
of drivers.


Drivers who don't dip their headlights when you can see them coming
towards you. (That goes without saying, which I presume is why you didn't
mention it.)

Drivers who leave their rear (red) foglights on even when it isn't foggy.

Drivers who keep their brake lights on when they are stopped for many
minutes in a queue of traffic, dazzling and "destroying" the night vision
of the drivers behind. (*)

Drivers who don't use full beam when it is safe/considerate to do so (ie
when there's nothing in front of them) which makes it more difficult to
see where the road ahead of them goes when you want to overtake them. I
tend to put my beam on as soon as I'm level with the car, so at least *I*
can see where the road goes beyond the distance that their dipped
headlights lights up.


That’s more evidence that there is something unusual
about your eyes. The driver of the car you are passing
can obviously see where they are going but you need
more light there.

Since you made the original comment I have never
been dazzled by those who keep their foot on the
brake when stopped at lights at night,

(*) I was once stuck in a long queue of traffic that had been diverted
because the main road had been closed due to an accident. The diversion
has a staggered crossroads where all four roads are busy so it needs
traffic lights - but because it is staggered, the lights only let traffic
in one direction (as opposed to two facing directions) go at once, so
queues quickly built up. There were long period where the traffic was
stationary, and then occasions when everyone shuffled forward about 100
yards. The guy in front of me kept his foot on his footbrake all the time
he was stationary, so all I could see was three big red blobs from his
brake lights. I put my sun visor down and closed my eyes. The light was so
bright even through my eyelids that I could see when they went out and
knew that it was safe to move forwards a bit. Even so, it was difficult to
see the road ahead for the first few seconds because my night vision had
been "destroyed" by the bright light and took a while to recover.


That’s more evidence that your eyes take longer than normal to adjust.

I've never had that effect and have never had to
close my eyes when stopped in traffic and almost
no one here doesn’t keep their foot on the brake
when stopped at traffic lights at night.

I'm not sure whether he had an automatic and was too lazy to put it into
neutral and apply the handbrake whenever he was stopped


Or doesn’t see the point in doing that.

- after all, it was easy to work out that each time we stopped it would be
for at least a minute. I suffered in silence because I didn't want to
cause conflict, but eventually the guy behind me (who could see the brake
lights through my windscreen) leapt out and yelled "For F's sake take your
foot off the brake when you've stopped", and I heard a few cheers from
other drivers behind me ;-) The offender decided to play silly buggers so
he then took to doing an emergency stop whenever he got close to the car
in front - luckily I wasn't too close when he first did it, and I was wise
to his little game after that. I resisted the temptation (and it was hard
to resist!) to put my headlights on full beam so *he* would be dazzled
like he was doing to me.