61–70 of 290 posts
If you haven't yet seen the more advanced version of this where the cameras detect rain/snow and don't illuminate it's some god damn magic that makes "barely able to see in a snowstorm" to "there's a snowstorm?"
I'd be happy if local and state police just started issuing citations in earnest for misaligned headlights on pickup trucks. 99% of the pickups I come across at night have their low beams pointing straight instead of down at the road. It's so common that it can't be a coincidence that nearly every pickup truck has an illegal headlight configuration. And it isn't due to higher ground clearance, that's just their lame…
American police don't like to really to do pull overs with minor road behavior in general unless they are pulling over for a more serious non-driving thing and they're looking for an excuse to do so. Like in california, nobody is ever, ever ticketed or pulled over for not using turn signals.
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US auto regulations are extremely conservative on the lights/signals front, have been for a long time. Some European car designs in the late 20th century were compromised when brought to the US because the headlights had to be made worse (in an aesthetic sense) even though there was no safety reason to do so — Citroen DS was one of these. And maybe they should be conservative, but I don’t see how anyone can argue tha…
> US auto regulations are extremely conservative on the lights/signals front, have been for a long time. Unless it involves red turning signals.
Same as side mirrors, apparently the technology of using curved mirrors to reduce blind spot has yet to make it across the pond.
I'd be happy if local and state police just started issuing citations in earnest for misaligned headlights on pickup trucks. 99% of the pickups I come across at night have their low beams pointing straight instead of down at the road. It's so common that it can't be a coincidence that nearly every pickup truck has an illegal headlight configuration. And it isn't due to higher ground clearance, that's just their lame…
Not that you're not right!
Another problem is aftermarket HID and LED lights which might not have any sort of legal pattern at all.
I liked reading (for years) this site regarding automotive headlamps, and there are problems:
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/conversio...
this site has been around for a while, see what they said about the NHTSA and glare in 2000:
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Yes drunk driving is a terrible problem but beta testing software on the open road is not the only option available. It's nothing but irresponsible. Here's one of many: use sensors and AI in the car to detect a drunk person behind the wheel. This is HN so I'm sure readers could spend 10 seconds and think of numerous ways this could be accomplished and many otherideas about what could be done when a drunk driver is de…
You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…
Yeah, another idiocy. They aren't reliable and need constant calibration, good luck driving a car full of drunks as designated driver...
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American drivers are simply too stupid to be able to comprehend curved mirrors, so the US government bans them on US-spec cars, and instead you get flat mirrors with a warning message.
How does that make sense? Flat mirrors don't make things look further away than they are.
There's an ancient history here which is both amusing and worth noting. For most of a century, starting way back, the US patent office would receive constant applications describing simple automatic dimmers from inventors who had never considered what would happen if two cars equipped with such dimmers approached each other at night. A whole lotta flickering is what would have happened. This literally became the para…
and they started issuing patents for dumb shit regardless of that
Earlier quoted context omitted.
US auto regulations are extremely conservative on the lights/signals front, have been for a long time. Some European car designs in the late 20th century were compromised when brought to the US because the headlights had to be made worse (in an aesthetic sense) even though there was no safety reason to do so — Citroen DS was one of these. And maybe they should be conservative, but I don’t see how anyone can argue tha…
Ford had to petition the government to switch from sealed beam headlights to composite lights by claiming they couldn't meet fuel economy standards without them. The truth was they just wanted to use them on the then new Taurus. It was another 5 years before you could use a shape other than rectangular or round, even for composite lights. I believe the Dodge Viper was the first US car to get them.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Mercedes...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/1988_560...
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You're not wrong, the NHTSA should be more proactive on this stuff. But to be fair, drunk drivers kill 28 people a day in this country, or about 10k people per year. 3k people die at signalled intersections every year, or around 8ish per day. While Tesla shouldn't be beta testing their self driving cars on public roads, it's clear that human behavior and existing road design is still vastly worse.
Yes drunk driving is a terrible problem but beta testing software on the open road is not the only option available. It's nothing but irresponsible. Here's one of many: use sensors and AI in the car to detect a drunk person behind the wheel. This is HN so I'm sure readers could spend 10 seconds and think of numerous ways this could be accomplished and many otherideas about what could be done when a drunk driver is de…
That said, touchscreen controls (with tiny targets) instead of dedicated controls and the new square steering wheel with touch controls instead of stalks... gah!
