Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 900 posts

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#261

Post by mnw21cam »

delichon wrote: post #251
mnw21cam wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood why everyone seems to immediately forget everything in their driving lessons as soon as they pass their test. When you're waiting at a red light, you're meant to have the hand brake on (which does not illuminate the brake lights), not your foot on the brake, unless you know that the light is going to turn green very soon, or you're trying to catch the attention of someone coming up behind who…

> When you're waiting at a red light, you're meant to have the hand brake on (which does not illuminate the brake lights), not your foot on the brake, unless you know that the light is going to turn green very soon I was definitely not taught this as a US driving student. Is this a UK thing?

I can't see how it would be country-specific. How else would you have any control of the forward motion of the vehicle otherwise, especially when starting on an uphill slope? You're meant to raise the clutch to the biting point and apply some accelerator and release the handbrake when you are confident that the engine will prevent the car from moving backwards. Taking the foot off the brake and hoping you can move it over to the accelerator quickly enough doesn't give you that control. Drifting backwards into the car behind you when setting off is rather an embarrassing thing to do.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#262

Post by reinier »

i have a possible addition to the problem. people are spending lots of time indoors, so my theory is;

people are missing a lot of the natural sun radiation, causing the fluid in your eye to be less translucencent generally and possibly building up floaters more easily.

this could disperse light more inside your eye. enlarging the effect of blinding lights at night.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#263

Post by scythe »

alistairSH wrote: post #42
Taek wrote: post #2

I feel the same way in America, I think there should be stricter regulations on how bright a car's headlights are allowed to be for it to be street legal. Wouldn't mind having a cap on blue-light levels in addition.

There are a two things contributing to "headlights too bright" in the US... First, SUVs are really tall... If you're in a sedan (or worse, a Miata) and get close enough to an oncoming SUV, even well-aimed, legal lights are going to feel bright because they're pointed down at you. Second, there's a decent sized market for cheap, unapproved HID/LED kits for older cars. They're often not aimed correctly.

Aiming and beam restriction is not enough and cannot ever be enough to prevent bright headlights from blinding people. It only works when the road is flat. You introduce a hill or even a speed bump and suddenly the headlight angle is zero. Brightness has to be managed directly.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#264

Post by rootusrootus »

Doesn't this come down to glare in most cases? IIRC, the real onslaught of headlight glare wasn't the advent of HID, it was when cars started using projectors. Even with halogens, projectors pointed at you make for a very intense point of light. Lots of glare. Less than HID or LED, sure, but still very real.

I would like to see a headlight solution where you get the same amount of light thrown on the road, but from a strip that goes all the way across the front of the car, so that no individual spot is especially bright for oncoming drivers.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#265

Post by masklinn »

bunderbunder wrote: post #180
vladvasiliu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright light…

Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road. But I find that bright white headlights actually make that second problem worse. The bright white light means your eyes don't adjust as well to the dark, so you can really only see straight ahead. So it's much harder to spot deer standing in the relative gloom along the side of the road than it is with older halogen headlight…

> Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road.

You very much have to worry about that in europe as well in the conditions GP talks about (source: hit a deer in the dark not two weeks back).

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#266

Post by helterskelter »

_fat_santa wrote: post #235
vegancap wrote: post #226

I was at a junction the other day, there was some new Audi EV at the other side of the junction and I couldn't see a damn thing. I've got perfect 20/20 vision, never had any form of eye problem ever in my life, and I was completely blinded. I'm convinced if they'd turned the full beams on, I'd have disintegrated.

Part of the problem I've identified are SUV's and Trucks. Back home I drive a 4runner so I never noticed this but on vacation one week and we rented a Corolla. While the lights from other cars never bothered me in the 4runner, it was so apparent in the smaller Corolla. I would see light behind me and go "why do they have high beams on" but then looking ahead it didn't look like they had their high beams on, I was jus…

Honestly the worst offenders for shooting the lights right in your eyes are the Jeep Wranglers. I drive a work truck on occasion and the Jeeps are about the only vehicle that still get me looking for the fog line. High intensity lights are still really annoying though, and my eyes are probably 7-8ft off the ground.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#267

Post by whitehexagon »

The curse of modern super bright LEDs. Add to that list; super bright red brake lights, and a new trend for animated turning lights / indicators. Looks like something we'd have installed as teenagers after watching Knight Rider. Really distracting.

Some of the towns here also started scattering flashing LEDs over every road sign they can find. Some areas feel like driving through Blackpool Illuminations. The worst offender locally is a roundabout light that flashes blue, which of course you assume to be an emergency vehicle approaching.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#268

Post by dboreham »

Leif24 wrote: post #203
graemep wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. > People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over.…

>> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? >Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. Not something I've commonly seen when driving, but certainly as a kid out in the country I ran around in the dark near the road. >> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. >Of…

I've lived in Montana for 25 years, a place where there are deer (and moose and bears) rampaging all over the place. People hit them all the time. But the only place I ever hit a deer with my car was North Yorkshire.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#269

Post by vladvasiliu »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #195
vladvasiliu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright light…

But for the truly dark areas, you can turn on your high beams - which you aren't allowed to have on when there's oncoming traffic. Smart / adaptive lighting is another option, lower / yellower light in well lit spaces.

> Smart / adaptive lighting is another option

These may actually be part of the problem. My dad's 2022 Toyota has "smart" high-beams. That means that when it detects a car in front, it'll switch off the high-beams (as opposed to adapt their pattern).

This is supposed to work with cars going both ways. In my experience, it will detect cars going the same way about half the time, and incoming cars about 3/4 of the time.

Now, since it's not completely broken, I suspect many people who only pay the minimum attention to their driving, and the rest to their phone, will simply leave the high-beams on and figure the car will deal with traffic. So, when the car fails to detect the oncoming car, its pretty bright lights will completely blind the driver.

Post reply on HN