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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

> people driving at night may notice a moving object in their peripheral vision more quickly under bluish-white light than under yellowish-white light, [...] Gaining improved peripheral vision under blue-tinged light comes with a trade-off, however: once the moving object comes into focus, it becomes harder to see.

If we were switching away from LED to sodium vapor lamps instead of the other way around, they would have written the exact same article but in reverse, still claiming the change makes us less safe.

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>If we were switching away from LED to sodium vapor lamps instead of the other way around, they would have written the exact same article but in reverse, still claiming the change makes us less safe.

According to letters to the editor in old newspapers, when major US cities switched TO sodium vapor lamps people complained incessantly.

Looking for references to "lights street yellow" in newspaper archives I also found:

* people complaining about the introduction of yellow traffic lights and how confusing and dangerous they were

* companies complaining about new FAA rules standardizing aircraft lighting

* people complaining about the introduction of street lights in general

People really only dislike two things: the way things are, and change.

No, sodium vapor lights offer great performance in terms of contrast and visibility. Especially in bad weather conditions.

Yes but that's the point: sodium vapour offers worse peripheral vision, so it could make some situations riskier.

no way, once something is into your periferal vision while in a moving car it's too late, and fact does not matter....unless it's moving realy realy fast, and then it's still too late so the real equation will involve all sorts of other inputs, like the coulor temp, and amount of direct vs reflected light, background light conditions, weather, and indivual perception of any given driver. *green light is the worst, as our eyes have the greatest sensitivity to it, and out night vision adaptation is to the black and white(muted coulor) light that is natural. current regulations are ancient, but there is no reason that a non opiniated solution cant be figured out and implimented

> once something is into your periferal vision while in a moving car it's too late, and fact does not matter.

When you're looking up in your rear view mirror, your view of the road ahead is from your peripheral vision. It most definitely does matter.

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Higher contrast isn't strictly better. Street lights where I live are deliberately sparse to limit light pollution, but this means that some of them are sometimes too bright— since the whole road isn't suffused evenly with light, very bright lights are somewhat blinding, especially to light sensitive people.

LEDs are much better for this since you can get tailored light thrown by angle to even out the lighting a lot more

Thanks for sharing this! I don't know much about light and didn't realize such a thing would possible. This seems like a great technique for cities like mine that want to limit light pollution.

I feel like nobody here ever drove in San Jose at night prior to 2020-ish. Because high-pressure sodium I like, LPS as in San Jose is like viewing a monochrome monitor.

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