Vehicles would actually be an excellent way of making travelling on roads more difficult, if that's what Whales wants to do. Most of them can have damaged engines and/or tires to make them less useful and more of an obstacle.
Of course, materials for cars and such would have to be balanced. At the moment you can make a monster vehicle just from three or four vehicles you find, no matter the size. Perhaps higher skill levels would be needed for larger vehicles, or placing complicated parts, such as tires (Not just replacing), engines and the like could be more difficult. Encourage modification over cannibalization, essentially. I like being able to make my own behemoth of car doom, but it seems like it should be something reserved to more skilled mechanics.
I'm not sure text would should up all that well. There still isn't much light available for seeing details.
It depends on how the character's night vision works. You can't read with night vision goggles, for instance, but those drown out color and detail. Natural night vision, though? Details might be difficult, sure, but your own eyes are going to work a lot better than an artificial increase in light perception.
For the record, you
can read with high night vision at night currently, it just depends on the phase of the moon.