[Shortside]

2022 X5, the Intelligent Safety Button on the dash is supposed to have a green ring around a car symbol when all safety systems are functioning. My question is sometimes that "car" symbol in the middle is white and sometimes it is red, in either case the green ring stays unchanged. What causes it to do this? I called BMW Genius and they did not know why. I was told not to worry about it unless I get an error message. TIA

[jad03060]

Some of the lighting in the thing change to red at night. So, is it white during the day, and red at night?

[Shortside]

Night or day, same issue

[Auricom]

Originally Posted by Shortside

Night or day, same issue

It's not an issue, that's how the day/night lighted instrumentation ambient lighting works.

Vehicle is white during the daytime and orange at night. The Intelligent Safety ring is:

- always green if all systems are active
- orange if some are switched off or currently unavailable
- not lit it off.

If you're not familiar with BMW historical instrumentation lighting:

BMW vehicles have an iconic red / orange interior glow at night which dates back to the 1970s. There is no doubt this is hue pleasing to the eye, but why did BMW stick with the color orange after all these years? There is science behind the reasoning for this choice that can be easier explained by learning how the human eyes work in dark environments.

The human eye has two types of photoreceptors located in the retina which receive light, the rods and cones. Rods are responsible for low light vision and the cones are responsible for high light vision. The rods are extremely sensitive to light, more than 1,000 more sensitive to light than the cones.

Longer wavelength colors such as red / orange, have the least amount of impact on our night vision. This capability allows our eyes to focus on red / orange lighting and then back to dark, dim light without loss of focus on objects thus preserving our night vision.

Here's my G05 Active safety button day and night

[GerryC]

Using red for night adaptation has a long history. I was amazed about 15 years ago when I got in a rental (a Nissan?) that had blue backlighting on the instrument panel. It bugged me to no end. I couldn't imagine why they would do that.

BTW, 36 mph on the Beltway! That's movin'.

Gerry