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  • Driving at high speed

I believe this has been discussed in other threads here, especially those pertaining to heterophoria, but I wanted to open the discussion up as much as possible, because it seems quite remarkable to me how similar these symptoms are to what I experience when looking at a problematic device. I experience strain in muscles around my eyes (usually one eye is much worse than the other), and face pain. It seems worse at night (larger pupils?), and if wearing sunglasses. Speed plays the biggest role. It starts at 70-80 km/h, and increases further with speed beyond that. Quite painful at 100 km/h and up.

How could driving at high speed trigger the same symptoms as looking at a device with PWM or temporal dithering?

  • Gurm replied to this.

    degen is it the driving or the white lines on the road or the oncoming car headlights or...? I personally have no problems driving at speeds upward of 85mph (135kph) on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean you don't have something going on.

    Maybe at a certain speed the white lines showing up repeatedly in your view reach a certain frequency high enough to trigger some flicker symptoms.

    Edit: I've searched and found the stripes repeat every 12 m and are 6 m long. So at 100 km/h you'd drive 100000/60/60 m/s = 27.8 m/s. So no more than 2 Hz "flicker", seems not the problem then.

    Could it be your own car's dashboard? I put yellow film over the shitty blue flickery LED-based dashboard in my Fusion Hybrid, and turn the intensity WAAAAY down, and still occasionally find my eyes very tired and will move my hands to 11:30/12:30 in order to mostly cover the dash for a few minutes, which makes them relax.

      Gurm I have done the same. Yellow tint everywhere and lights almost off. Otherwise i get dizzy.

      I am also trying hard not to be sarcastic about the use of the term "high speed" to describe "average highway driving". I'd say 150kph is "pretty fast" and wouldn't categorize anything under 100kph as other than normal.

        Taillight and interior light eye strain is seperate and is more noticeable at night and at slower city speeds when I'm stopped behind cars at traffic lights.

        • Gurm replied to this.

          degen yeah well I wasn't sarcastic at least! That's an improvement for me! To be honest, I think it's a USA vs. Europe thing anyway, with the exception of Germany... my general highway speed "target" for normal driving is 135kph (85mph) but I know that some people find that to be crazy fast. I've slowed down a lot since I was younger, and it does depend a lot on traffic, etc.

          degen OK so we've ruled out the dash stuff. It's a completely separate trigger for me, too. Hmm. So I wonder what that leaves. Worse at night makes sense. Lots of reflections. Not sure about sunglasses though, that seems counter-intuitive.

          I don't have any problem in the day with car lights or movement around me...but I HATE driving at night due to bright LEDs everywhere in the same way it hurts to look at your phone in the middle of the night in a dark room when you wake up. Brightness overall isn't my main problem either because I prefer a brightly lit room with incandescent/halogen lights. I do wear sunglasses to protect eyes, but even without them on overcast days it doesn't hurt.

          dev