Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
See website for details.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                                 

Driving glasses for R-G Colorblind people

Like 3D Glasses, but RG instead of RB
  (+24)(+24)(+24)
(+24)
  [vote for,
against]

A Co-worker was telling me this morning about a friend of his that is Red/Green colorblind to an extend where he is not allowed to drive.

I started to think about ways that the Red/Green spectrum could be mapped into something that could be detected by someone colorblind, preferably in a low-tech, non failure-prone way.

The idea that I came up with was a pair of glasses with one lens red tinted and one lens green tinted (like 3D glasses, only Red/Green instead of Red/Blue)

With a little practice, the colorblind person could learn "left eye - go, right eye - stop" as instinctively as the rest of us know "green - go, red - stop"

mwburden, Dec 08 2004

Baked? http://www.dyslexia...our_deficiency.html
"ChromaGen™ is a unique system of coloured lenses of a specific density and hue that are worn as either contact lenses or spectacles." - Hard to tell if this is similar to this idea or not... [scad mientist, Dec 08 2004]

[link]






       +1 <waves>
po, Dec 08 2004
  

       i have no idea if this would work, but + for the thought if nout else.
jonthegeologist, Dec 08 2004
  

       Is it really that hard to learn "bottom light - go, top light - stop"?
gazpachoking, Dec 08 2004
  

       At night, it's often difficult to see the actual housing until you're up close, making it just a light. In this case, it's impossible to tell whether it's bottom/top or left/right.   

       This is not remapping so much as selective obfuscation. I don't know how well this would work (I get headaches when wearing R/B 3-d glasses) but [+] for the concept.
Freefall, Dec 08 2004
  

       You might as well allow blue light in to both eyes, so you'd have one violet lense (red+blue) and one cyan lense (green + blue).   

       Even better might be to have the glasses only slightly attenuate one color in each eye, so each eye can still see everything, but green colors would be dimmed in one eye and red colors dimmed in the other. The lense colors would still be violet and cyan, but not as dark. I imagine that at first when learning to use the glasses, the user would close one eye, then the other to determine what a color is. But the brain is really adaptable. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the user could soon just look at a color and know that it was red or green. Once that happened, they'd probably just wear the glasses all the time. Unfortunately I suspect these would look funny having two different color lenses.   

       Of course this sounds like such a good idea that surely it's baked already. One google search later... Wearing one red contact lense in the non-dominant eye is the cheap solution. There's another that might be very similar to this idea (see llink), but they don't give enough detail to say for sure...   

       So I'll say maybe baked, but not widely known to exist considering that neither of the two color blind people I know have them.
scad mientist, Dec 08 2004
  

       Bifocals with red top green bottom would be snazzier and more symmetrical. I like!
bungston, Dec 09 2004
  

       the red light is supposed to be the one on the side your steering wheel is on [i.e. left if you drive on the right] always for horizontal ones
Random832, Apr 08 2005
  

       9 years later I thought of this again. This time, however, there is just a small colored filter corner to the glasses. On tilting the head and looking thru the color filter, things that turn dark are not that color. Things that are unchanged are that color For red green color blindness one could just have a small red square in each lens.   

       Thinking further, the same principle could be used for intractable optimists but with a rose lens. Things that were not actually as good as they seemed would turn dark but things that really were so great would stay the same.
bungston, May 25 2013
  

       Not a lot of stop lights at 30,000 feet, though.   

       However, would it not be better to make the red lights square, and the green ones round?
MaxwellBuchanan, May 25 2013
  

       It might be if you could make them ... hmm ... okay I've no clue: is colourblindness something missing from the spectrum or something shifted to another colour ? The former then shapes are useless since you can't see it shining anyways.
FlyingToaster, May 25 2013
  

       //is colourblindness something missing from the spectrum or something shifted to another colour ? // There are lots of different types of colour blindness, caused either by one (or two, or all three) colour receptors in the eye being non- functional; or by one of them having a different spectral response from normal.   

       The commonest type of colour blindness, by far, is caused by an alteration in the green photoreceptors, so that they respond less well to green (and better to red) than normal green receptors.   

       In the normal eye, the response of the red and the green receptors is quite broad - ie, the green receptors respond fairly well to red, and vice versa, in two overlapping bell-curves. Colours between red and green are distinguished by the relative strengths of the responses from the two cone types.   

       In someone with the common type of red/green colour blindness, the peak of response from the "green" receptors is shifted toward that of the "red" receptors. Therefore, anything between red and green excites both sets of receptors more or less equally, making it difficult to distinguish colours on the red-green axis. However, both receptors respond well enough to green light (as well as to red) that greens don't appear dark.   

       Thus, a person with r/g colour blindness would be able to see red and green lights fine - they just couldn't tell which was which. So, different shapes could be used on traffic lights.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 25 2013
  

       Forgive me, but I think R/G colour blind drivers know the top light is red and the bottom one is green. They can still see which light is on.
not_morrison_rm, May 26 2013
  

       I wonder if a band filter could be used... filtering out the colours in the overlapping bell curves of red and green....so that the wearer can see bluey green and dull red but nothing in-between. This would give the same filter for left and right eyes.
Ling, May 26 2013
  

       //Forgive me, but// See [Freefall]'s earlier anno - at night, you may not see the whole light, just the illuminated part, making it difficult to tell whether the lit part is at the top or the bottom.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 26 2013
  

       //Intersections are lit up pretty brightly ...// Not all traffic lights are at urban intersections. At least not in the UK.
MaxwellBuchanan, May 26 2013
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle