My Wife test drove a Subaru yesterday. In talking to the salesperson, she asked why the dashboard was darker than the rest of the interior. Think dark chocolate compared to the beige of the seats.
The salesman said that this was dictated by the Gov (NTSB I suppose) and that it was a safety issue. Saying that it had something to do with glare and night driving and that all new cars are going to be this way.
Huh? Sounds like pure BS to me. I’m not able to find anything on the NTSB site, nor am I in an easy position to check out other dealers at the moment.
National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the relevant regulatory body. Their website is http://www.nhtsa.gov/ . A quick search didn’t reveal any relevant hits although it might be real hard to locate.
no, it’s not a “safety” issue. NHTSA does have regulations for how much contrast indicator lights have to have with respect to the background, but those are usually inside the gauge cluster or on the center stack.
what’s probably the case is that the dash color was either a deliberate choice by the interior designers, and/or they use the same color dash for more than one seat option which reduces build combinations (and is therefore cheaper.) I know on my Mustang, regardless of what seat color you order the dash is always black.
People often try to preserve their dashboard by applying solutions to it to protect it. These solutions tend to enhance the reflectivity of the dashboard causing it to reflect light making driving a little more dangerous at times.
If you want to protect your dashboard AND not get the reflection, try a product called 303. It’s available at boating supply stores and via the internet as well as some auto supply outlets.
No, I have no financial interest in the product but I’ve used it on my cars for years now.
Thanks everyone. Seems to be a wash, and I suspect that it is Subaru’s call and makes it cheaper as there are less build options. And perhaps, someone, at some meeting, feels it’s safer.
modern car interiors are made of materials which are incredibly stable compared to a couple of decades ago. padded dashboards used to be covered in a layer of foam-rubber backed textured vinyl. Heat and UV would cause the vinyl to dry out (plasticizers outgassed away) and crack, and time would cause the foam rubber to harden and crumble.
modern dashboards/door panels are made either from a UV-stabilized polypropylene blend if not padded, and if it’s to be a soft touch surface it’s usually made from UV stable foamed thermoplastic olefin. it’s a one-shot operation; you load the dash frame into a mold, then inject foamed TPO into the cavity. it “self skins” so where it meets the surface of the injection mold die it forms a solid surface, but below the surface it’s still foamed and provides that “soft touch” feel.
TL;DR you don’t really need “protectants” anymore. and Armor-All is evil.
It could be something like DRL’s. With those, they’re not required in the US but they are in a few countries (including Canada) and so Subaru have decided it’s easier to just build all their cars with them. Maybe there is some country out there that requires low glare dash colors and Subaru decided it’d be easier to just make them all like that instead of localizing.
Ever since I was a child (e.g., 1950’s/1960’s) my parents complained of “glare” and I, as a child riding in the back seat, could see it too.
Sunlight comes in the window, lights up the top of the dashboard. The inside of the windshield reflects this. The angles are just right so the reflected brightly-lit dashboard shines right into the passengers’ eyes. This also tends to obscure one’s view through the windshield to see what is out front. Photo from this discussion on an automotive message board. (Scroll down a ways to find the picture there.)
Note the hazy view in the circled area in the pic. (ETA: Actually, pretty much the entire inside of the windshield, in fact.) That is light from the dashboard reflecting in the inside of the windshield. Note that you can clearly see the air vents in the dashboard in this reflection.
More ETA: Google dashboard glare to find more pics and more discussion.
Some dashboards in the products my company builds have inserts in the especially reflective parts of the dash console. In general, high quality, nicely coloured, matching dash, with a different, non-reflective material right in the reflection zone.
I haven’t been able to find an actual law, but I did find this article from 1996, which indicates that they were at least thinking about the problem.
It calls the issue “veiling glare,” though a search with those terms didn’t turn up much more. There is this publication, which says: Another approach to addressing glare from following vehicles’ high-mounted headlamps is to reduce the amount of light reflected off the interior surfaces of the car, particularly the instrument panel and the inside surface of the windshield.
Again, nothing concrete, but indicates they were thinking about the issue.
Finally, there’s this news item. Dashboards get hot and melt. Melty surface reflects more, causes glare, and several accidents. Class action results.
So, maybe not an actual law, but it certainly seems like the threat of a lawsuit would be enough to convince automakers to reduce veiling glare.
It seems from various threads here and discussions elsewhere, that when discussing why something not function-critical (and some times things that are) in the car is a certain way, “it’s a [new] government regs requirement” is often another way of saying “Gee, I dunno, it just is that way”.
With dashboards and interior plastics, there does tend to be as mentioned a more limited set of color alternatives vs. the upholstery itself, especially in the lower trim tiers of each model.
Armor-All used to have oil-based dimethyl silicone in their formulation years ago and it broke down plastics, rubber, vinyl in a car. They’ve switched to water-based silicones for years now but old perceptions and reputations die hard.
The 303 that Morgenstern mentions is excellent and contains a higher concentration of UV inhibitors than Armor-All, but the price is noticeably higher because of that.
it makes any surface it touches (even minor overspray) slippery as hell. my Ranger has vinyl floor covering instead of carpet, and when I went to look at it at the dealership they had armor-alled the floor. Getting into and out of that thing was dangerous.
If you look at those pics above, even though the dashboards are not darkly colored they still all have a dull, matte finish which makes even light colors not overly reflective.
What’s wrong with it is it’s a means to an end. In other words, using Armor-All on anything does not make it look clean, it does not make it look new, it does not make it look original. It just makes it look like it’s covered in Armor-All !
I don’t use Armor-All to make my car interior look clean, new, or original though. I use it for UV protection. There’s a couple of areas that I can’t get too very well and thus don’t get the twice a year armor-all treatment that I apply to the rest of the dash and upholstery - they are noticeably lighter, rougher, and drier, so it does seem to have the intended effect.
