America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
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Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#2I tried complaining to my (Australian) state road authority about this 10 or so years ago. Got no response.
Glare is a massive hazard, as is loss of night vision and bright spots in your field of view. It's significantly worse for some people e.g. radial scars from eye surgery.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#3Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#4Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.
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Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#5Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.
auto-dimming exists
(and really, could've been implemented with 1950s technology? as far as I can tell, my lights basically react to oncoming traffic, overhead illumination, and taillights. Using dlp-like active repatterning, now that's the fancy part, but just turning on and off and switching between high and low beams doesn't require a high BoM)
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#6Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.
The worst offenders are jacked up vehicles like SUVs and utes/trucks/pickups of whatever people call them. When you are lower than the oncoming car, it’s completely impossible to see ahead.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#7Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.
The worst offenders are jacked up vehicles like SUVs and utes/trucks/pickups of whatever people call them. When you are lower than the oncoming car, it’s completely impossible to see ahead.
The most common offenders are cars that had the angle of their beams set wrong by someone who didn't care, I think, based on observations walking next to them. It's too common for one to point high enough to hit my face, nowhere near the correct angle, like 1/10.
Of course, driving, the tall SUVs and trucks that half the time do have their brights on that insist on being behind you. But I think a lot is that the person that angled the SUV's headlights either didn't care, didn't know, or knew and was actively malicious.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#8I tried complaining to my (Australian) state road authority about this 10 or so years ago. Got no response. Glare is a massive hazard, as is loss of night vision and bright spots in your field of view. It's significantly worse for some people e.g. radial scars from eye surgery.
In other related bad Australian driving condition news .. road signs in the past decade or so have gotten waaaay too reflective.
Driving at night in the country is something myself and others have done for decades, it's a common complaint that "regular old non LED headlights" are now reflected back at cars at night so well that they ruin night vision for several seconds and blind the driver to any dangers (kangaroos, potholes, objects on road, etc) in the near distance past the reflecting sign.
I've not met anyone that had any complaint about the night time visibility of speed | direction | curve signs before main roads upped the mirror factor.
Today the balance seems wrong, the signs are unmissable at the cost of loss of night vision in the vicinity.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#9Matrix headlights that automatically notch out oncoming cars have existed for years - but are banned in the USA.
Re: America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright
#10In addition to cars, I'm a cyclist and have noticed that LED cycle lights, both front and back, can also be far too bright sometimes. Blinding in fact. A few years ago, I was behind a bike which had such a high powered rear (red) LED light that I had to drop back to get away from it. It reminded me of the sort of powerful red light an airport might have. For bikes, it sometimes felt like an "arms race" in brightness.