Colored Map Lights

When im driving, and I have to use the touch driver/passenger map lights, it always takes me a little while for my eyes to adjust from the white light back to driving in the dark. Dose anyone have any ideas about changing the color of the lights to a red or blacklight color like the militay has in the aircraft, so the change is not such a shock to the eyes?

 

Red would probably be the easiest on your eyes.

 

i have white lights in mine, and with my young 20/20 vision eyes im fine.

 

For you, prob red or amber like the gauges.

 

Red is easiest on the eyes in low light situations. However, maps and other colored text can appear 'washed out' under red light (even to the point of some things being near invisible on the page).

I'd suggest an orange or amber to be easy on the eyes and still have visual discrimination across the color spectrum.

A soft green is also easy on the eyes in low-light environments, but it's hard for reading.

 

some bmws do amber-red. so they must be on to something.

 

Easy solution is to have one red and the other leave white. Or simply turn the map lights red and leave the overhead white. That way you have the best of both worlds and can choose. Just my .02.

 

You can go the LED option then choose any color of your pleasing.
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=/1157.htm

 

i ordered amber ones from superbrightleds.com. they look awsome with the rest of the interior amber lights. they are alittle more dimmer than the white lights.

cost maybe $7.00

 

I put a red bulb in the driver's side map light and left the pass. side white/clear. I did a lot of night driving in my last job and the red light did make it easier to see things in the cab without blinding me. Probably one of my most useful-and easiest modifications I have done.

 

Go with red... here is the reason why (based on what I understand of night vision):
First, one should understand that every object, when hit by light, absorbs a range of the visible light spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet). Every object also reflects a range of that spectrum, which when received by the eye, is what gives an object color. And lastly, white light is made up of all of the colors in the visible spectrum.

The eye: The retina of the eye contains two types of receptors - cones and rods.

The rods (which are more sensitive to light) outnumber the cones (which are less sensitive to light).

To see, both cones and rods "fire" electrical impulses which must reset to fire again... thus enabling vision (day or night). The cones reset this firing sequence of electrical impulses much faster than rods reset... Light adaption is thought to occur by adjusting this reset time.

Cones are used mostly for daylight vision and the rods for night vision... and the reset times explains why it takes so long for your eyes to adjust to normal night vision after being exposed to light. The golden rule is that it takes 30 minutes for your eyes (the rods) to adjust (reset the firing sequence) to normal night vision.

Something else that is important... If you look at the visible light spectrum - red is on one side and blue is pretty much on the other with indigo and violet. When a rod receives the light reflected off an object, the closer that reflected light is to the red side, the less it responds (or the less of a chance it will need to reset the firing of electrical impulses).

Therefore, if you were to be flashed in the eyes with a flashlight at night... your eyes would need to reset before you could see again at night. That reset would take a certain amount of time, because it heavily impacted the sensitivity of the rods.

Red light does not cause the rods to react as much... therefore the reset time for the electrical impulses is greatly reduced.

Green is another choice for color at night - and there is a debate over which is better. IMO, red is better because green is made up of yellow and blue wavelengths and further from red in the visible spectrum.

Hope that helps you some...

P.S. If you have topographic maps, some will say "red light readable" which means that you can see the map using a red light. (I was a Cartographer/Surveyor/Geospatial analyst for 6 years).

 

I've got all the interior lights on my other car replaced with red LEDs. It's great for not killing night vision, but it can be tricky to read some things under the red light (not sure if there's a low output intensity or if the wedge LEDs just don't line up with the reflectors in the mounting)

With the covers on the taco map lights a red LED should work better though and there shouldn't be any real alignment/reflector issues. I like the idea of swapping the driver's side for red and leaving the passenger and overheads white/stock, or you can pick up a cheap little 5-9 LED flashlight at most auto parts stores that'll fit in any of the little compartments around the dash/overhead console (I got one at Kragen that uses 3 AAA's for $2.99).

Do the taco map lights just use standard 194 bulbs?

 

Well Said! On submarines, in the 70s and 80s, the control room would be rigged for "RED" (filters on light fixtures) between sunset and sunrise.....and then lights off before coming to periscope depth. In the 90s, the same procedure applied, but the filters were changed to blue.

 

That's crazy!! I've been to Iraq, but I don't think I'd ever serve on a submarine.