The fact that both cars were black was likely a factor.

Anyone who’s driven at night on LA freeways would expect exactly this. Between oncoming semi trucks with their brights on, signs, intermittent street lighting, etc, night vision is non existent. Anything not lit is invisible beyond 30 ft ahead.
Also, out driving your headlights is the norm almost everywhere. Low beams illuminate about 150 ft ahead, at 65mph it takes over 500 ft to stop on average (according to google), farther for heavy vehicles, worn brakes, and trucks. A recipe for disaster.

I remember the first time I saw the Ring Nebula through my Dobsonian and thought "man, that thing is really far away". Then I swung my scope to Cassiopeia's "W" and looked at the ghostly smudge of the Andromeda Galaxy. I tried to fathom the distance and came up lacking. My eyes were better then and I could see things in the mid-6s, but even with full night vision and using averted vision, I couldn't make out any detail; it was just a little wisp of light where the middle was a touch brighter than the edges.
That was the day I fully became an atheist. It made no sense that God would put a smudge of light 2.5 million light years away that was actually a trillion purposeless stars. I had no answer for that. Standing on that runway in the Sierra mountains, enveloped in blackness and looking at Andromeda, I felt a direct link between myself, time and the universe. I didn't need heaven anymore and I never felt the existential dread of death ever again. I understood that I was part of infinity and that was enough.

The Cadillac system, offered between 2000 and 2004, used a passive infrared camera for night vision, which was displayed on the windscreen using a heads up display. Actually a whole list of expensive cars have had this option available since Cadillac and Raytheon introduced it.

I don't think it would necessarily work well in heavy fog, which is what this new research is targeting.

OK, when are we going to see the night vision?

Oh.

OH.

OHHH!

He must be popular with the neighbors.

Now he just needs to make a red one. Because red doesn't ruin your night vision, right?

I'd also like to see the perspective of it shining from a mile away. Could you pick it out in a distant cityscape?

Take this as a reminder people, you're being recorded nearly everywhere you go. If you don't want some action you take to be public, don't do it....or do it inside with the lights off. Oh wait....night vision.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/02/02/does-a-chinese-boy-really-have-cat-eyes-that-see-in-the-dark/

http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2115-china-cat-eyed-boy-night-vision.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapetum_lucidum

Needs to have better scientific investigation to be taken seriously, but for those saying that having cats eyes wouldn't benefit his night vision, Google is your friend:

"Cats also have a reflective layer of cells behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum. This layer recycles any light not absorbed by the retina by reflecting it back for a second pass. The tapetum is responsible for the nighttime 'glowing eyes' effect because some of the ingoing light doesn’t get absorbed even after two passes through the retina."
http://www.scienceiq.com/Facts/CatEyesight.cfm

Im sure they have signs and warnings pre-movie about not doing either.

Besides if this is an actual customer, she contradicts herself. She says she was using the phone as a flashlight, but says she was texting and had her phone on silent. I'd be sympathetic if she couldn't see to get to a seat, but I suspect she couldn't see because she had a small glowing screen killing her night vision.

King in interviews and in the book itself said the story was inspired by Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan stating: "Not Lovecraft; it’s a riff on Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” which is one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language. Mine isn’t anywhere near that good, but I loved the chance to put neurotic behavior—obsessive/compulsive disorder—together with the idea of a monster-filled macroverse." So, if anything, "Patterns" ripped off Machen.

In reply to this comment by NaMeCaF:
Wow, I really thought Stephen King was original, but this is a blatant rip off of an episode of Night Visions from 2002 called "Patterns".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660998/

I wish I could downvote.

Wow, I really thought Stephen King was original, but this is a blatant rip off of an episode of Night Visions from 2002 called "Patterns".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660998/

I wish I could downvote.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Wow that's amazing. I never thought something so awesome as flying an A-10 could be so f#$king boring!
Seriously, nothing exploded. At all. He may as well have been flying a 747.


To get to the action I looked up one of the combat videos.

If you're patient and look closely enough at the night vision camera, something does explode towards the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VySAvTZOVUI

>> ^raverman:

Night vision handy cam reminds me of [REC]


The spiral staircase too. That movie came immediately to mind.

As always, for some reason all ghosts only show up at night, in spooky basements and the only way to film them is to use night vision.

Rubbish.

I don't speak Korean, so I can't tell if it is really autonomous or if there is a human controlling it remotely. It would be smart to have a few of these things around the perimeter of a secure area and one person monitoring them to make the important decisions. The motion tracking, night vision, and precision shooting would be a huge improvement over a typical human guard.