colour blind

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stuffedpike20
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colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Are there any colour blind drivers on the forum.
I am colour blind and would like to know the experiences of other colour blind drivers.
Thanks, John.
myoldjalopy
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Re: colour blind

Post by myoldjalopy »

Being diagnosed red/green colour-blind put a stop to my career on the railway when I was young, but it is not enough to cause me any problems driving - I can 'read' traffic lights OK and have no problems distinguishing the oil and ignition lights in the car! Nor am I phased by brake/indicator light colours. I'll wager it depends on the degree of colour-blindness, and I suppose mine must be quite mild......
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geoberni
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Re: colour blind

Post by geoberni »

I'm sure there must be several, since it is supposed to affect 1 in 12 Males and 1 in 200 Females globally. So there's about 3,000,000 in the UK, mostly male.
But there are different degrees of colour blindness, so it will be interesting to see what responses you get. Might explain some of the discussions about Moggie Paint colours. :wink:
I don't have it myself, but I've known quite a few guys over the years.
I suppose it's not something that normally comes up for discussion in 'Civvie St' but it was extremely important in my RAF career. Certain trades are excluded for people with any degree colour blindness.
You can't have an Airfield Driving Permit if you're unable to tell the difference between Red & Green, because that's the only 2 colours used on airfield control lights and also the colours of the flares that might be fired by the active runway control caravan in an emergency.
As an electrical/electronic trade, I had to be able to identify all the various shades of wiring colours that exist.

I've seen it estimated that up to 40% of colour blind kids actually leave school without knowing they're affected.

There's 2 main types, Red/Green and Blue/Yellow, which both have levels of seriousness.

Sounds as though myoldjalopy has one of the milder Red/Green variants. :wink:
Much rarer is having actual monochrome vision.
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stuffedpike20
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Mine is quite bad red green with a bit more besides. I find all kinds of numbers and letters in the Ishihara test.

I think my main problem is that red does not stand out at all, especially against masonry or foliage. Since red road signs are usually warnings, this is a problem.
For this reason I like driving at night because everything that you need to see is usually lit up.

When I was about 18 my mum had a light green Morris Marina. She put a small dent in the wing which I filled and rubbed down.
I went to the Unipart shop to get an aerosol can of paint to complete the repair. I held the chosen can up and compared the cap to the car, which was parked outside. It was a perfect match as far as I was concerned. After spraying the repair, the wing looked perfect to me. I called my mum out to inspect my handiwork. She seemed a bit shocked. The car was light green and I had sprayed it 'Autumn Gold'.
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Re: colour blind

Post by Murrayminor »

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a painter and decorator, he is colour blind but manages to get by without issue.
Colour blindness contact lenses and glasses were mentioned I wonder do those work?
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stuffedpike20
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

I have heard that they do not work.

Modern light metallic coloured cars are all guesswork to me.
I had no idea what colour my own modern car was. The v5 states that it is blue, but as far as I am concerned it could also be silver, or grey.
From an early age (I was 'diagnosed' at primary school), as soon as you tell someone you are colour blind, people start pointing at things and asking 'what colour is that?'. Most of the time it is all guesswork. I have no idea where green ends and brown begins; or where pink ends and red begins etc etc.
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Re: colour blind

Post by SteveClem »

Colour blindness can certainly change people’s lives in a big way.
Back in the ‘60’s there was an apprentice colliery electrician called Kevan, who kept wiring stuff up incorrectly. It turned out that he was colour blind. The NCB put an end to his career as an electrician, but transferred him to a clerical role in the personnel department.
He became the Personnel Director for the entire coal industry!
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Great story Steve.


Unlike myoldjalopy, I can't see much difference between side lights and brake lights. Side lights are on all of the time, and brake lights come on when the driver in front is braking.
I have sometimes wondered if I should be driving at all. I have searched the web for information about any studies that may have been done anywhere in the world, but found nothing. The DVLA only seem to be interested in you being able to read a numberplate correctly before taking your test.
I have been driving for 40 years, but have never been very comfortable with it. I am co-ordinated enough to handle a car, and I know how a car works; but I am hopeless at finding anywhere new, and reading road signs.
I don't know what a colour sighted person can see; and a colour sighted person does not know what I can (or can't ) see.
It might be shocking.
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geoberni
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Re: colour blind

Post by geoberni »

stuffedpike20 wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:34 am
Unlike myoldjalopy, I can't see much difference between side lights and brake lights. Side lights are on all of the time, and brake lights come on when the driver in front is braking.
I have sometimes wondered if I should be driving at all.
If you think about it, all modern road signs are generally colour coded but also shape coded.
So for example, Speed Limits are a Red Ring, but also a round shape.
STOP is entirely it's own shape, while No Entry would work on monochromatic vision as it's a circle of a dark colour with a white stripe in the centre.
Car side lights and brake lights differ by the intensity 5W versus 21W.
One of the reasons I had several attempts at getting LED lamps to be suitable for the Moggie.

So long as you have clarity of vision, then the colour doesn't really matter for driving.
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DCMVan70
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Re: colour blind

Post by DCMVan70 »

Hi

Another colour blind one here! In my experience UK traffic lights are not a problem, it helps that the red is at the top, the green at the bottom and the amber in the middle.
Now in the US they have sideways traffic lights across some junctions. In the dark, I have to concentrate really hard not to get that wrong!

Let's not talk about how they chose the colours for Morris Minor wiring - they all look the same to me - a multimeter is the only way.

Cheers
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Re: colour blind

Post by les »

Possibly like watching snooker on the box before colour TV.

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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Thanks David.
Snooker on a COLOUR tv is interesting Les. Guessing which is the brown ball amongst the reds.

There are probably some advantages to being colour blind. I seem to see the arc very well when I am welding; but then again, as already stated, I have no idea what other people can see, and other people have no idea what I can see.
I vaguely remember a programme on tv many years ago which showed colour sighted people what the London Underground map looks like to red green colour blind people. I remember my mum being quite surprised by it.
I use the map with dotted lines on it.
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Chief
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Re: colour blind

Post by Chief »

stuffedpike20 wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 6:53 pm The car was light green and I had sprayed it 'Autumn Gold'.
There was a TV program a few years ago now about Harrods. One of the two men who worked in the Gentlemans' outfitters department was colour blind. Usually it was okay, but occasionally his colleague (and friend) had to step in to stop him sending off the customer with some unique and interesting colour combinations :D
SteveClem wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:20 am Back in the ‘60’s there was an apprentice colliery electrician called Kevan, who kept wiring stuff up incorrectly.
I think it was when I did the Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) course that we were told this is why the earth wire is now striped. It allows people who are colour blind to still be able to work as electricians etc. and wire things up correctly.
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geoberni
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Re: colour blind

Post by geoberni »

Chief wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 10:43 am

I think it was when I did the Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) course that we were told this is why the earth wire is now striped. It allows people who are colour blind to still be able to work as electricians etc. and wire things up correctly.
That would only work for a limited number of roles in 'domestic' and possibly light industrial/commercial, such as wiring sockets/plugs.
It wouldn't help in aviation, rail, automotive etc, which use multiple colour shades, nor in the heavier side of distribution, where coloured sleeves are often used to identify the ends of identical coloured cables.
It'd be bad news wiring up Fire Alarm panels for example.

There's no actual legislation about being colour blind and being an electrician, and there are of course legal requirements to make 'reasonable adjustments' for disabilities, but it really depends on what work is being done.

There are actually glasses that can correct some colour blindness, but they're not cheap ant around £200 - £400 a pair.
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stuffedpike20
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Nothing to do with being colour blind, but the strangest job title I have seen was back in the 90s........Bricklayer Welder.
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Re: colour blind

Post by Stoneporch »

My dad had been in the navy, but my dreams of being a Royal Navy Artificer (electrical)were scuppered when I was told in my teens that I was red/green colour blind. Other than getting a good friend very cross when trying to say complimentary things about the ongoing respray of his Rover P6, only to find out that he was, in fact, changing the colour panel by panel (from green to brown.......what chance did I have?) and getting a lot of unwelcome attention in 1960's London from other men because of the interesting colours of my clothes (bought a pink suit thinking it was brown), it has been more a talking point than a problem. Although I was almost fired from a fashion retailer ,as a student, when ,on taking delivery of a consignment of dark-coloured cords, I was asked to sort them by colour and, effectively, shuffled them!
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

I feel your pain Stoneporch.

People often think that being red-green colourblind just means you cannot tell the difference between red and green.
It is MUCH more complicated than that.
For me, there is no knowing where one colour ends, and another begins. If I see a well defined rainbow I can usually 'see' maybe three colours. But the names of the colours are arbitrary; they mean nothing. Everything is guesswork.

Colourblindness is caused by a genetic fault randomly passed down by mothers. It is a cul-de-sac fault and will therefore not die out.
One of my brothers is also colour blind, (not as bad as me), the other is not.
It makes life interesting, but can also be very frustrating.
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Re: colour blind

Post by stuffedpike20 »

Of course, being colourblind is no where as serious as becoming totally blind, or being born without sight.
I was told from an early age that grass is green, and the sky is blue, and although I had no idea about the concept of colours, at least I knew what grass was, and what the sky was.
I can't imagine how difficult it is for a blind person to understand what grass, or the sky is; or how difficult it is for the person trying to explain it to them.
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Re: colour blind

Post by Mick Lynch »

DCMVan70 wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 4:51 pm in the US they have sideways traffic lights across some junctions
Thats probably why for the past 5 years here in eastern Canada the local authority has been swapping them out for newer LED ones with two square stop lights, one extreme right, one extreme left, a round green ‘go’ light and a triangular amber ‘warning’ light sandwiched between the stops.

Prior to picking up this thread I had wondered in a lazy sort of way why they were doing it...
6C39F8F7-BB7A-4DF5-88B1-CE4013C3B512.jpeg
6C39F8F7-BB7A-4DF5-88B1-CE4013C3B512.jpeg (51.12 KiB) Viewed 3312 times
*edit
And because we live in the age of the Internet I found a video of traffic light changing!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8NsWZBULTho
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Re: colour blind

Post by KayBur »

stuffedpike20 wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:07 pm Are there any colour blind drivers on the forum.
I am colour blind and would like to know the experiences of other colour blind drivers.
Thanks, John.
I guess the choice of driver depends on the type of color blindness and the degree of development of the disease. I have not encountered such a problem, but people with this diagnosis cannot be considered completely incapacitated. Traffic light signals can be studied for comfortable driving. Even if a person with color blindness does not distinguish between red and green, red, as far as I remember, is always the topmost or leftmost (if the traffic light is horizontal). After all, the fact that the lantern at the traffic light is burning noticeably, the spot is brighter at the same time.
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