Polarised sun glasses?

Tipper said:

I have to say that it baffles me how a car design can get this wrong.

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Me too...
I had the same experience in a BMW several years ago.

AndyInOz said:

IIRC Land's original concept was that car headlights should have horizontally polarised filters in place so that they just appear as dim yellow lights to any driver coming the other way (hence stopping drivers from being dazzled at night).

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If all drivers wore vertically polarised glasses at night, wouldn't they be less able to see the (horizontally polarised) light from their own car?

ChrisMiller said:

If all drivers wore vertically polarised glasses at night, ...

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Why would they do that?

anko said:

Why would they do that?

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Because if they didn't, Land's idea would be ineffective. Either I can see both 'your' and 'my' headlights equally, or I can see neither. The best we could achieve would be a random choice of vertical or horizontal polarisation, then each driver could buy a 'matching' pair and be dazzled by only half the vehicles coming the other way. (Which, just to be clear, would be silly!)

Emphasis on "at night", not on "vertical". Why would all drivers wear sunglasses at night?

Polarised glasses don't have to be tinted (though they will still reduce incoming light). I said I thought it was a silly idea

ChrisMiller said:

Polarised glasses don't have to be tinted

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They don't? I actually thought about that possibility and Googled it before posting. After quickly finding 15 hits regarding tinted glasses and 0 hits about non tinted glasses, I decided to go for it. My bad :mrgreen:

Of course, almost all polarised glasses are tinted. And even if you could find a pair that aren't, they'd still cut out something like 30% of the light, making night driving that bit more difficult.

As they cut out light throughout the spectrum, that is the very definition of tinted.

The light wouldn't remain polarised after it bounces off something.

You don't need to see the light from your headlights, you only need to see what it is illuminating.

Anyway, it didn't happen, so not much to worry about.

I often cycle with yellow tinted lenses at night.

It's counter intuitive. They make headlights and street lights less glary, and cause the entire landscape (everything else) to appear brighter.

Similarly, yellow tinted lenses during the day, make red and green lights much more visible.

(Just did a quick check on line, and people are selling yellow tinted lenses for night driving too.)