Night Moves

Driving After Dark is a night game whose rules are different from daytime motoring's. You can't travel as fast in the dark (and shouldn't) and you can't spot the cops if you do. Night driving is also fatiguing, and there's always the danger of dozing off. Still, there are precautions you can take and products you can buy to help get you through the night safely.

"Lack of visibility is your biggest enemy," says truck owner/operator Dan Campbell, "and overdriving your headlights is the most common mistake. I always assume there could be something in the road just beyond my range of visibility and drive accordingly. The minute you let down your guard and put the gas pedal to the floor is when you're likely to end up in trouble."

There are two ways to deal with the danger of low visibility at night. The first is to reduce your speed to a point at which you can be certain you can stop within the range of your headlights and your reactions. The second is to improve how well and how far you can see. Some people's eyes are (continued on page 168) Night Moves (continued from page 93) simply better than others' at seeing in the dark. Even healthy eyes require several minutes to adjust to the dark. And the eyes' most difficult time is during that transition period at dawn or dusk, midway between light and dark, and that's when you should be the most careful.

One idea is simply to sit in the darkness of your car for a minute or two. Another is to put on sunglasses for a few minutes before starting out to let your eyes adjust to low-light conditions. But it's foolish to drive at night with dark glasses on, because they reduce what little light there is before it reaches your eyes. We know the Blues Brothers did it--but look how many cars they destroyed.

Some professional rally drivers recommend high-quality antiglare glasses with a slight yellow tint. Yellow increases the apparent brilliance of what you're seeing, while enhancing details and filling in shadows without reducing the total light transmitted by more than a few percentage points. Be sure to try a pair on before you buy, since mellow-yellow vision is not to everyone's liking.

It should be obvious that another important factor contributing to savvy night driving is a clean windshield. A dirty one can cut visibility up to 25 percent. Streaked and smeared by bugs and bad wiper blades, it brings on blinding, eye-fatiguing glare. The need for keeping the outside of your windshield clean is obvious, but many people forget to clean the inside. This is especially important for smokers and those whose cars are so new that the various plastics inside them are still curing and giving off chemical vapors.

Next come your headlights. Most new cars are equipped with quartz-halogen lamps. Some are better than others, and all need to be properly aimed. Government standards and cost considerations make original-equipment lights inferior to the better aftermarket units, however; so if you do much night driving, consider upgrading your head lamps with some high-output ones or adding a powerful driving light or two. Check your state laws to see what's permitted.

Be aware, too, that the factory-installed auxiliary lights common on many of today's new cars are not (by law) high-powered driving lights that illuminate way down the road. They are essentially fog lights, which have low, wide beams to reduce reflection back into your eyes in fog, driving rain or snow. Properly aimed, they are also good for illuminating the edges of the road. But they almost never come properly aimed, and they can be very annoying to other drivers.

Once your night vision is maximized, you may need practice in using it properly. Professional instructors report that most of us focus too closely on the road in front of our cars instead of far ahead, especially at night. "With few exceptions," says former racing champion Bertil Roos, who now heads the Bertil Roos School of High Performance Driving, which operates year round at the Pocono International Raceway, Blakeslee, Pennsylvania, and in Woodbine, New Jersey, "your sharp focus must always be far down the road--wa-a-a-a-ay down the road and parallel to it, not angled downward.

"When your focus is gliding along this way, you don't have to look at objects up close, because that part of the road has already been investigated by your sharp focus and was found to be free of hazards." Roos calls this long-focus view his early-warning system (E.W.S.) and emphasizes that it comes very easily and naturally once you learn to trust it. "Eliminate the temptation to look down to see where you are," he adds, "and you will be surprised at how clearly you can see the center line and the edge of the road in your peripheral vision."

The next step, especially on two-lane roads, is learning exactly where your wheels are (relative to your view of your car on the road) and how to use all of your lane when necessary. This is also easier than it sounds. "People should be aware of how wide the road really is," Roos tells us. "Also that there is often an apron along the edge that can be used in an emergency, though it may be a little rough."

Most drivers are rightly afraid of dropping a wheel off the edge of the road, but Roos also teaches the proper--and easy--method of recovery from that. "First," he says, "keep your eyes straight ahead, where you intend to go. Second, don't overreact. Take your time, with small and gentle movements of the steering wheel, and coax the tire back up onto the pavement."

What does all this have to do with night driving? Consider the oncoming car. Its driver may be sleepy or drunk. He forgets to dim his headlights. You flash yours to remind him, but it does no good. The glare gets worse, and you lose sight of the center line. What if he crosses it?

First, never look directly at oncoming lights. Focus your attention on the right edge of the road, as far ahead as you can see, and begin easing toward it. Roos recommends just hugging the edge as the other car passes, using peripheral vision to keep track of both it and your position on the road, then easing back toward the center line. That way, you give the other driver as much room as possible, while keeping your visual concentration away from his headlights.

Then flip your brights back on as soon as he passes to help compensate for your temporarily reduced vision, since your eyes may need as long as eight seconds to recover fully from a bad case of headlight glare. If your eyes are very glare-sensitive, consider clipping an antiglare shade onto your visor and flipping it down just for the few moments that an oncoming car's lights are especially bothersome.

Night driving also increases the need for another Roos technique called brake alert. This involves simply moving your foot from the gas pedal to the brake and squeezing it slightly to remove the slack any time you suspect there may be a hazard ahead--instead of waiting until the last minute, when it's already too late, and slamming on your brakes in panic.

We asked another driving-school president and former top racer, Bob Bondurant of the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, Sonoma, California, for additional advice. "Obviously," he says, "use your brights whenever you can, but be aware that they're on and dim them right away for other drivers, cyclists, even pedestrians. Don't wait for the other guy to dim his first. If he doesn't, flash yours once or twice to remind him. But don't get mad and leave your brights on if he doesn't dim his, because that only blinds you both." In steady traffic, where you can't use your high beams for long, try an occasional flip to brights and back to get a quick look at what's farther up the road.

"If you see one headlight coming," Bondurant adds, "assume it's a car with the other one out. Look for some kind of reflection off the grille. It could be a motorcycle, but don't count on it. I treat it as a car, and I'm ready to move to the right." Another common hazard is a vehicle with no taillights. But by using E.W.S. (and not overdriving your lights), you should be able to see red cat's-eye glints off the vehicle's Government-required rear reflectors.

High beams in a driver's mirrors are also blinding and fatiguing, so always remember to switch to lows when approaching from behind or following another vehicle. Terry Earwood, an active racer and chief instructor of the BMW/Skip Barber Advanced Driving School, has a tip for anyone momentarily caught in front of someone driving with his brights on. "It's easy to get blinded by your side mirrors," he says. "But don't readjust them. Just lean forward for a second. Some cars also have tinted outside mirrors, which help a lot."

"One thing a lot of people don't realize," Earwood offers, "is that once they've loaded their car for a trip, the rear end has sagged from the weight and they've lost their headlight adjustment. They find themselves hunting for possums in the trees--not to mention blinding other drivers. Unless your car has automatic load leveling, I recommend installing air shocks to bring the tail back up. Also, whenever I stop for gas at a self-service station and wash my windshield, I clean my headlights."

When night visibility gets even worse due to fog, mist or driving rain or snow, slow down to compensate and increase your level of concentration within the field of vision remaining. High beams will reflect back at you, so use only your lows--and/or fog lights, if you have them. Use the middle of your lane (or the center lane of a three-lane freeway), so there's room on both sides to dodge around anything that may loom up out of the night. You may want to follow another vehicle's taillights as a guide, but don't blindly follow them off the road if the driver ahead screws up.

Bondurant points out that glancing at the treetops can help you anticipate curves: When they blend together, there's probably a bend coming up. But don't get lulled into following trees, telephone poles or even guardrails in bad conditions: Sometimes they veer off sharply one way or the other.

If you find yourself on newly surfaced blacktop at night, without any center or edge lines to guide you, Bondurant advises, "Read the right edge. Otherwise, if the road suddenly curves to the right, you may not notice in time and end up off the other side."

Then there's black ice, virtually invisible on cold, clear nights on what looks deceptively like dry pavement. Watch for telltale shiny spots, especially on bridges, under overpasses and where snow may have melted and run over the surface in the daytime before refreezing at night. You may feel a patch of it without ever seeing it, but don't panic. Just steer straight, don't touch the brakes or change the throttle setting and you can glide straight across. (See Winter Driving Smarts [Playboy, January] for more tips on how to cope with icy roads.)

You also may wish to check out the many night-driving products now on the market. Among the more interesting items listed in the catalog of Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories (B.H.M.A.--the store, obviously, is located in Beverly Hills, California) are a Sleeper Beeper, which clips behind your ear and sounds a loud alarm if your head tilts forward; a corn-ball but effective Tell-a-Tail high-mounted brake light, with changeable letters for your own message (Dim It!); custom-fit rear-deck reflectors; Euro-style amber fog-lamp lenses; and head-lamp wiper/washer kits for Mercedes-Benzes and other European cars. B.H.M.A., like most major accessory houses, also carries a variety of driving and fog lamps, driving glasses and other useful merchandise.

Then there are portable trouble lights operated by the car's battery (through the cigarette-lighter plug), as well as battery-powered ones offering a choice of wide-angle area light, a superbright pencil beam or emergency flashers.

Those who can't be bothered to flip their own inside mirrors from day to the glare-reducing night position and back can install an electronic Night Sight automatic mirror to do it for them (AMPM, Inc., P.O. Box 1887, Midland, Michigan 48640-1887, sells it for $80, postpaid).

Finally, let's discuss the most obvious night-driving danger--falling asleep. "Sometimes I get out and run around my truck," says long-distance trucker Phil Thompson. "But that's good for only about 15 minutes, and I can't stop and do it that often." The many other stay-awake tips we've heard range from cold water in the face to singing along with the radio to keeping one's eyes moving and playing mind games to stay alert.

Unfortunately, though, nothing--including coffee--works for long when you're tired. If you do catch yourself nodding or dozing for even a split second, the only real answer is rest. And the longer the trip, the more rest you need. Even a half hour of sleep works wonders to refresh the body and brain without delaying a trip very much.

Following a study of late-night drivers on Germany's autobahnen, one German work psychologist came up with these recommendations: a five-minute break after the first hour, another ten minutes after three and a half hours, 20 minutes more after five hours and a full hour's rest after seven hours at the wheel. He also recommended no more than ten hours of driving in any one night.

Truck owner/operator Dan Campbell, like everyone else with whom we talked, strongly recommends never pressing your luck with fatigue. "It's a gamble," he warns. "If you snooze, you lose. And if you lose, you lose everything. It's not worth the risk."

"The driver forgets to dim his headlights. You lose sight of the center line. What if he crosses it?"