DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour  

I’ve covered this topic before so to my regular readers I apologize for mowing the same lawn. For my multitude of new readers whom I’ve deluded myself into thinking I have the following will provide you with some “thinkin material.”

I honestly don’t know what percentage of us are on the downward slope towards an eternity in real estate but I do know one thing about the aging process; the older one gets the worse the eyesight becomes. And there’s nothing that taxes the ability to see more than red instrumentation on an automobile’s gauge cluster.

I remember all the WWII submarine movies I’ve seen where just before surfacing the boat is awash in red lighting to enable the crew members who are going topside to retain their night vision. This may provide the perfect fix when serving aboard a German Type VII U-Boat, a Japanese I-Boat or even a United States Sturgeon-class fleet submarine. But it doesn’t do much for us old-timers who want to make an emergency run down to the Kroger to buy Depends, Colace or other products of dignity when we can’t see how fast we’re going and eventually get stopped for speeding at a time of urgency in our lives — simply because dashboard lighting was designed for 20-year-olds instead of golden agers.

And anymore it’s not just night vision that becomes blurry. The other day a colleague of mine and I were driving a hot little Italian vehicle and as luck (and European design) would have it, the readout from the digital information was all in red, albeit with an orange hue. The only saving grace is that the speedometer not only had a digital readout but had a redundant analog dial that gave us at least a fighting chance.

But this was negated by the fact that during our automobile driving events most of our instructions are based on mileage and since these are also digitalized in red (with no analog backup) we had to practically put our faces up to the gauges to read them clearly enough to come up with a number — or at least one that looked like it was a number we were looking for.

Didn’t anyone hold a clinic on this or does it usually turn out that red happens to be the boss’s favorite color, and not one of the sycophantic designers and engineers are going to take a chance of being put in charge of developing flatulence-proof seat materials? I’ve just proven my own point. During these customer clinics it does no good to bring in the teenager/young adult demographic members; those people have no trouble with their eyesight because they can actually see things that aren’t there.

But the rest of us should be given a variety of gauge colorings to see which ones work best with our tired (and lying) eyes. I’ve encountered lots of blue lettering on white background (and subsequent white lighting for night driving) that works great for anybody of limited or declining eyesight. For its Mustang, Ford Motor Company has a variety of hues that the customer can select for himself by aesthetic or functional preferences.

Mustang's changeable
dashbaord lights

I’m not advocating that all vehicle manufacturers offer up such lighting functions but at least hear (and learn) from the people what works best for them and others of their ilk.

This seemed to never be a problem in past decades because most of the lighting was a basic black on white. Either this was designed with the customer in mind or else a color display was beyond technology at that point.

I must say that years ago when I knew my way around the cockpits of some very big aircraft, the night instrumentation lighting was almost entirely done in red. But I prove my own point by saying at the time it was never an issue because my eyesight — without glasses — was sharp enough to identify the sex of a fly at a thousand yards. (Now, at my age, I can’t even identify the sex of my own fly.)

Modern aircraft instrumentation is generally comprised of so-called “glass cockpits” that contain colorful Cathode Ray Tubing (CRTs) and other forms of LED and LCD displays that are not only easier on the eyes but much more legible, which can mean a lot when you’re flying an aircraft that’s hurtling towards earth.

Even if auto designers were to perfect panel lighting that was in red but had a white background (white being the most contrasting of the two colors), this would easily eliminate the confusion caused by two orbs that have perused Playboy magazines for the better part of a half-century.

In conclusion, I and my fellow cadre of dinosaur-dodging senior citizens beseech thee, Mr. Designer, to think of us when you’re tasked with developing the lighting for a new instrument panel and perfect it in such a way that even a blind man will be able to clearly read the information streaming forth from the vehicle’s instrument panel.

Because truth-be-told, we’re not that far off from that description. And if you won’t do it for nice folks like us do it for your families because unless we start getting some consideration in our old age your families will never make it to theirs. Do you know what I’m saying, girlfriend?