Open letter about wakefulness

I run under red light at night, it is the easiest way to protect the night vision of same if I have to come out of the cab. As a young one it's not a issue, but when older you can need up to 20 minutes to adjust.

I have advocating using yellow lenses with other filters with glasses or shades to filter out blue lighting that is actually a problem against your body clock. I use f.lux as part of a overall monitor program to eliminate blue lighting mainly at night for sleeping. And certain video games have the blue lighting cut down. (World of warships come to mind, going on over three years with it now)

Ive become somewhat picky about light sources in a vehicle at night and certain big rigs will be a problem. Others will not.

The letter as sent to his Boss does not contain much of anything actionable. It is at best a string being pushed on one end across a table. It's only going to snarl, ball and then snag on something and really be a problem until cut loose.

 

This reminds me that I need to start a thread that should be stickied, "The Psychology of Sleep". But I need to "TCB" (Take Care of Business) and get some sleep.

Spoiler Alert: don't be afraid of the Sleep Boogeyman!!!

 

Dear Steve,

Brett here. You’re fired.

 

Thanks! That was a good laugh after a long day...

 

I like all red gauge lights like that, makes most of the headlights coming at you not blind you so bad, except the ones that look like a 747 landing.

 

As someone that worked nights, by choice, for almost 20 years the key to being alert is rigorously maintaining a consistent schedule. Most drivers attempt to have a family-friendly day schedule on their days off and a work-required night schedule during the work week. That's a recipe for falling asleep behind the wheel.

 

OK hate to break the news to you and others, any and ALL back lite LCD screens have a blue light that can not be filtered out. Apple's change of the coloring of the screen does not make a difference, the lighting of the screen itself is the problem. If you want to have a real discussion about this, I can provide proof, but you can just google it. By the way, I know a bit about back lighting of an LCD screen and know a lot about the blue light effects on the mind.

Well here is the problem, if you want to control the lighting temps, then you have to go to a LED bulb or HID which both require a projection lamp to be not just legal but to also work right.

However the real problem is that the 5000k temp has the same blue as the LCD back lighting your phone has, which doesn't really help. The 6500k is actually 'colder' or 'daylight' type of lighting where as you need to actually go to a 2700k or a 3000k 'warm' light to eliminate as much blue lighting as you can. If you use the LED bulb, it isn't filtered and the blue light is still there no matter what temp it is.

The people who just replace the bulbs with those cheap crap chinese lights that claim that they are a specific temp, are really a huge problem for everyone outside the cab.

Now that said, the rub for many is they have too much lighting in the cab itself, even with red lights on, there is too much and your eyes are the problem when it sees other lights, it doesn't adjust to them so you have to have brighter outside 'headlights' to compensate for the washing from the interior lights.

I think the best solution is to live with it, because any thing outside proper HID lighting in a projection lamp unit will only blind people.

Oh and about driving lights, I see trucks using them all the time and I sometimes get in front of these trucks and want to jam them up the drivers butt because they blind everyone, you don't need light that lights up both sides of the freeway and can be seen from the international space station.

 

I just chew a little on that toothpick and hammer down all night!

 

If your having that much trouble driving nights, then you probably shouldn't be driving nights. Nights shouldn't be THAT difficult.

 

Nights are a lot of trouble is it isn't your natural sleeping cycle.

Used to be, I could do it.
I could work my job until 2100 and then drive 3 hours to Reno for a little gambling.
An hour there and head back, getting home at 0400. Sleep 5 hours and be back to work at 1000.
I could do that 3 or times a week, making a few hundred dollars each week if I was lucky.

Not any more.
I can not drive the night time hours now. I need to sleep during certain times if I am to remain safe on the road.