NIGHT VISION TESTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20804, 6 June 1942, Page 5

NIGHT VISION TESTS

REDUCING ACCIDENTS The ability of motor drivers to see well in dimly-lighted conditions such as a blackout is a matter of importance at the present time. Considerable interest is, therefore, being taken in a scientific test of such ability which is being made by Mr. B. H. Ferguson, lecturer in psychology at Otago University. The department of philosophy and psychology at the university, Mr. Ferguson said, was at present engaged in research into varied perceptual problems relating to night vision. This work had been going on since 1938 and it was hoped through it to find a means of reducing the present high number of road accidents. The British Ministry of Transport was now making use of one important finding of the workers at Otago University and that was the fact that pedestrians showed a tendency to over-estimate the range at which they could be seen by an approaching motorist. Pedestrians were not nearly so readily seen as they were apt to believe. One aspect of the work now being done, he continued, consisted of the administration in a slightly modified form of a night vision test devised by Mr. S. W. D. Wright, of London. The application of such a test to motorists was highly desirable, since a person might have good day but poor night vision. Each eye was a highly _ complex organ, containing in its retina many minute structures. Certain of these were called cones' and others rods. The rods, according to a commonly held ..theory, were responsible for night vision.