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Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

caranddriver.com

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Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#291

Post by ironmagma »

Taek wrote: post #260
beenBoutIT wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fast and Furious franchise is, not unlike the late 2pac, a reflection of the community. A percentage of America has always been modding their cars and an even larger percentage enjoys dreaming about modding cars - the films draw from that, not the other way around.

It's a mutual thing. The Fast and Furious franchise draws from the car culture in America, but the car culture in America also draws from the Fast and Furious franchise. If the director had chosen to highlight slightly different aspects or de-emphasize certain aspects, car culture in America would be different (though stray too far, and F&F is potentially no longer the same mega-hit).

In other words, it’s the age-old question: does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? The answer, of course, is “yes.”

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#292

Post by tardyp »

mullingitover wrote: post #172
jachee wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the folks in the 40's taking those old trucks and turning them into hot-rods. The car modification scene is only slightly younger than the car.

My uncle told me stories about living in rural Michigan, and how the first thing that people did when a road got paved in the area was set up a quarter mile marker.

For non mid west born ppl,

A dragstrip is a facility for conducting automobile and motorcycle acceleration events such as drag racing.

Although a quarter mile (1320 feet, 402 m) is the best known measure for a drag track, many tracks are eighth mile (201 m) tracks, and the premiere classes will run 1,000 foot (304.8m) races

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#293

Post by usrusr »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #232
totetsu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I am cycling at night, I sometimes carry a flashlight to shine at the windscreen of people who can't not blind me.

Are you sure temporarily blinding someone coming toward you in a vehicle is a wise tantrum to throw?

Yes. A four-wheeler will just go on straight ahead in a stable and predictable manner when I stop giving control input. But a two wheeler will quickly come off course when I lose visual feedback because it's a dynamic balance that requires continuous recalibration. It's a very good idea to signal that you are getting blinded.

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#296

Post by mschuster91 »

lvspiff wrote: post #53
serf wrote: post #14

groups like Audi/Porsche/BMW have trouble bringing their fancy LED setups to America due to laws pertaining to high / low beams -- meanwhile every Jack and Jill on the road has glaringly illegal aftermarket Xenon bulb setups in refractor headlight housings rather than proper projectors, blinding the hell out of everyone on the road, and the police seem to do nothing about it. I mean, hey -- i'm usually happy about au…

The worst thing to happen to America was Autozone and Fast and Furious. Cheap aftermarket modifications to your car being sold to people with no knowledge of what they were doing but wanted it too look cool cause they saw it in the movie. Its led to years of teenagers with no training putting things on their cars that turn them into obnoxious spectacles on the road. I know I sound like an old coot but frankly I'm gla…

> but frankly I'm glad my dad showed me how to install/aim headlights and along with explaining the benefits of a working unmodified exhaust system and how it should sound

In Germany, headlight aim is checked at the 2-yea mandatory inspection, dito for exhaust stuff. Is that not a part of US checks?

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#297

Post by TomMarius »

usrusr wrote: post #285
TomMarius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just "new cars" - a 2001 car that I drove had xeons with the leveling already mandatory. And it's checked at the bi-yearly technical inspection, and the police can forbid you to drive the car further if it's not working and they catch you (not sure if all around EU, definitely in Czechia and Germany).

And with all that fancy auto-leveling and auto-dipping they have snuck in a massive increase in practical brightness levels which is extremely blinding to those for whom the systems don't auto-dip.

The worst are trucks (like mass cargo, not Ford F), they have the headlights placed way too high and usually drive with high beam always on.

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#298

Post by mdoing »

bsimpson wrote: post #253
gautamcgoel wrote: post #238

So, basically the same reason we have bad everything . Our institutions and regulations are outdated relative to the rest of the world, so we get stuck with shitty stuff.

For instance: payments. Europe and Asia got chip cards and tap-to-pay decades before we did, even though Mastercard and Visa took part in their invention. America had credit card infrastructure first, so our payment networks were stuck with it, while other countries could start off with better stuff. Without the consumer demand that Google/Apple Pay (and later coronavirus) created, we still probably wouldn't have wid…

Banks in the US are very risk aversive when it comes to new technology about 6-7 years ago I was working with a team in the US and the next project that they were doing was implementing chip and pin for a single type of card for a bank. One person was trying to move to another team to avoid it. We had chip and pin in my country for years at this stage. I used just think that they were worried about the new technology but now that I am older I think that the business wanted to implement something new without investing in existing systems. I left the company shortly afterwards so no idea what happened.

According to our sales guys who say that US banks are the worst when it comes to new technology, Australian banks are the best apparently. Apparently there were some government initiatives to force the banks to use new technology, some really leaned into it and even changed entire management layers.

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#299

Post by encom »

jrockway wrote: post #90
lvspiff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst thing to happen to America was Autozone and Fast and Furious. Cheap aftermarket modifications to your car being sold to people with no knowledge of what they were doing but wanted it too look cool cause they saw it in the movie. Its led to years of teenagers with no training putting things on their cars that turn them into obnoxious spectacles on the road. I know I sound like an old coot but frankly I'm gla…

I think it's great that it's relatively common to work on a complex piece of machinery that you use daily. You get the joys of understanding how a large system works and being able to tweak it according to your desires. It could easily go the other way, where every subsystem is DRM'd and only licensed professionals were allowed to touch it. Letting anyone do whatever they want can obviously lead to problems, like hea…

>every subsystem is DRM'd and only licensed professionals were allowed to touch it

Kind of like how smartphones are right now.

Re: Why is America stuck with bad headlights?

#300

Post by mschuster91 »

Slartie wrote: post #288
kolinko wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also instant free wire transfers. Paypal would probably never happened if US had a banking system like the one in some European countries.

For fairness one must say that our free run-of-the-mill wire transfers being instant is a relatively recent development. They used to take multiple days in pre-SEPA-days, and international payments were a hassle (and also usually not free). And even today not all transfers are instant, as both banks must support this feature. But the processing time for the non-instant ones is down to one day across the board at leas…

It was never a technical reason to begin with that transfers took so long (i.e. multiple days), rather that banks made some side money by treating the transferred money as free loan.

Similar to stuff like the common free international roaming, SEPA is something that the EU massively fought for the consumers against the entrenched players.

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