GLARING HEADLIGHTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1938, Page 11

GLARING HEADLIGHTS

EFFECT ON EYES. NIGHT DRIVING RISKS. The results of scientific tests made recently to determine the added risks to motorists when driving at night have (says the “Sydney Morning Herald”) been embodied in' lectures prepared by Sergeant Davis, who is in charge of the police traffic courtesy squad of Sydney. It has been found, according to Sergeant Davis, that no person can be as good a driver at night as he is in daylight. Sergeant Davis also contends that tests have proved as incorrect the Statement often made by drivers involved in accidents that they did not see a person until their car was about to strike them. The headlights of a car, according to Sergeant Davis, will illumine any person oi’ large object at least 25yds. distant, but if a car is travelling at 50 miles an hour it would cover those 25yds. in a second, the time the average driver would require to bring his brakes into operation. “Night after night,” said Sergeant Davis in an address to the police courtesy squad, “pedestrians are being knocked down because drivers are travelling at a speed faster than their eyes will permit. The pupil of the eye expands to its maximum size at night so as to gather as much light as possible. A brilliant beam of light, say from the headlights of an approaching car, will cause the pupil to contract, and scientific experiments have shown that the pupil expands 60 times slower than it contracts. If, therefore, it requires one-sixteenth of a second for the pupil of an eye to contract, under the impact of brilliant headlights it would require three and three-quarter seconds to expand sufficiently to permit the driver to see after the offending car passes.

“Should the car be travelling at 40 miles an hour it would move 220 ft. during the period of the temporary blindness of the driver, and a tragedy can occur in those 220 ft. Drivers should be instructed that a wise precaution to take when glaring headlights are approaching is to reduce speed and pull over as far as practicable to the left side or stop if necessary until the car has passed. “Tests have proved that as speed increases the point of concentration moves farther away as the eye keeps jumping ahead. This is why good drivers often get into trouble before they realise it. Tests have shown that the average driver focuses his eyes’l,27oft. ahead at 45 miles an hour, 1,450 ft. ahead at 50 miles, I,Booft. at 60 miles, and 2,000 ft. at 65 miles an hour.” The members of the police courtesy squad have been asked to emphasise to motorists that in places where they must depend on headlights for road illumination they should reduce speed.