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A better way to see hidden stop lights

Some of you may drive your cars with the top up from time to time and found that when you are first in line at a stop light, the light is hidden from view due to the low windshield and top obscuring your view.  So then you lean waaay forward, crane your neck around and look up to see the stoplight, holding that position until the light turns green to pull out.   That pretty much sucks (plus, you look like someone from "Monty Python").

So maybe you followed my lead back a few years and shelled out 20 bucks for a so-called "Stop Light Prism" like this:

BD4FB2DB-3640-46C5-8380-70B189406EC0

And then you tried to figure out how to mount it - pointed Up like this?  Upside down?  Turned around backwards?  And you found out that nothing you could do to aim it and neither direction/position seems to work very well at all and you STILL can't see the damn stop light!  

Soon, you also found that the suction cup followed the lead of wood from the Jurassic period, petrified itself and became useless, too, just like the prism.

Now, in all fairness, some Hot Rodders have older stop light prisms that actually work ("Guide" brand being the most popular, with others re-branded from Pontiac, Packard and other car dealers), but they are hard-mounted up off of the dashboard, not on the windshield, they are roughly the size of a tennis ball, they are made of polished glass, not acrylic plastic, and the good ones are quite rare and expensive - over 50 bucks for a good, antique one that actually works.

I kept thinking, "There HAS to be a better, more cost-effective solution.  Why can't someone do an upward-looking Fresnel Lens, like the top half of the lens my folks had on the back window of their motorhome?  Just stick it on the top of the windshield and it looks up to see the stoplight.   No aiming, no adjustments, it would just work."

Well, someone must have heard my plea and created one, just for sports cars:

https://lightinsight.com/product/lightinsight/

This looks like an ideal alternative and I'll be getting one for the Spring dust-off rides.  It doesn't appear to take up too much space on the windshield, but it can be trimmed if it needs to be taller/shorter and more out of the way.  I would think, after playing with the non-working alternative above, that this will have to be played with a little before you get it just right, but it looks a LOT more promising than that cheap plastic useless thing up above.

Of course, if you never put your top up, you have no need of one of these.  But, for those of us who drive deep into late Fall/Early Winter before the salt creeps out of the town barns, this might just make your life easier.

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Last edited by Gordon Nichols
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