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Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

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Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#361

Post by adolph »

robertlagrant wrote: post #322
_fat_santa wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but then looking ahead it didn't look like they had their high beams on, I was just in a short car. You were in a normal car, and the SUV manufacturer has mounted the lights higher just for aesthetic reasons.

Seems like it would make sense to mandate a specific height for headlamps. I wonder why this hasn’t been done.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#362

Post by potato3732842 »

greedo wrote: post #276
mingus88 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All cars in the U.S. used the same headlights up until the early 80s. You could literally walk into the auto parts store and buy a headlight to replace yours, regardless of make and model Somehow we all did ok back then with standard high/low beams from lights which are very dim and warm compared to the harsh white LED lights of today It seems to me that this is just another example of the arms race of modern cars. Y…

"Somehow we all did ok..." This is an anecdotal fallacy. We also did fine without seatbelts, with parents who smoked, with open containers in cars, with DDT sprayed in our neighborhoods. Until we realized that was crazy. Not all improvements are without side effects. Increased headlight quality is one of those.

These same exact 1980s headlights were used just fine on 2000s Fords

https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2021/04/17/22/52/...

Just because everyone smoked in restaurants doesn't mean they didn't have other things figured out.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#363

Post by hughes »

Wistar wrote: post #324
njarboe wrote: post #147

One of the main reasons people want/need brighter headlights is that there is much more light inside the car from screens. These don't let your eyes adjust to the dark properly. Older cars had dim green lighting for the gauges and even had a knob to adjust the brightness up and down. You could create a very dim interior instead of the huge amount of white light you get with modern cars and the multiple screens. I'm h…

Lately, I see a lot of drivers who turn on their brights and just leave them on and this includes cars with the older halogen and even incandescents. This is a change in behavior. As for LEDs, to me, the Tesla Model 3 headlights are the worst offender, but not all of them, just the majority. I can look down a column of oncoming cars and pick out the Model 3s from a few blocks distance. I suspect that the Model 3 head…

Can confirm, my Model 3 had its lights angled too high from the factory. Only realized after a few people flashed their high beams at me during my first week driving.

Thankfully it was easy to adjust.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#364

Post by mikkupikku »

whitehexagon wrote: post #267

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 of…

Those radar speed limit signs that blink at what seems like 50 times a second if you go 36 in a 35 zone are very annoying. To be fair the blink threshold must be configurable, but whoever installed them around here didn't have any common sense and set them all to the speed limit exactly.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#365

Post by potato3732842 »

boldlybold wrote: post #326
bob1029 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Older cars had dim green lighting for the gauges and even had a knob to adjust the brightness up and down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgh2zbifn7E

I knew before clicking this was going to be a Saab, I miss mine!

Many if not most cars had green gauges in the 80s and 90s. They all had some sort of knob, wheel or other adjustment.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#366

Post by pete1302 »

30minAdayHN wrote: post #318

I wish someone does something similar in India. Night time driving is a nightmare. Everyone runs on high-beam. The new class of motor-cycles are with super bright LEDs and riders put them on high beam. Night-time driving is a guessing game - you need to guess where the edge of the road is, if there is a bicyclist in between, etc. At least in late 90s, there used to be a law to black out half the headlamp. Either that…

Driving in a divider-less road in India feels like getting abducted by Aliens!!!!, Constant High-Beam is fine, But Constant LED/Projector High-Beam is a Crime.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#367

Post by jlarocco »

As a cyclist and pedestrian, these new headlights and the cars with the "auto brights" are just terrible.

When you're in another car their car's sensors might detect your headlights and dim a little bit. But as a pedestrian? You basically just get blinded - from low light right to 10000 lumens straight in your eyes. It's overpowering.

Can't make them illegal fast enough, IMO.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#368

Post by donatj »

Aachen wrote: post #102
donatj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I got my Honda van with stock LED headlights about a year ago, people started flashing me that my brights were on. After the first couple times I started flashing my actual brights back. They make the stock headlights too dang bright.

Maybe get them replaced if you're blinding the other drivers? I also assume that few people complain to the manufacturer so they're probably not even aware that people find it a nuisance. While one complaint won't do anything, it could be doing anyway just in case you're not the only one who does

They're not replaceable. That's the problem. It's not just a bulb you can replace. I have to replace the entire lighting fixture, and replacing the fixture with the OEM part is going to have the same exact issue. Replacing it with a non-OEM part is probably going to make it worse.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#369

Post by potato3732842 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #364
whitehexagon wrote: post #267

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 of…

Those radar speed limit signs that blink at what seems like 50 times a second if you go 36 in a 35 zone are very annoying. To be fair the blink threshold must be configurable, but whoever installed them around here didn't have any common sense and set them all to the speed limit exactly.

There's one near me that's set to 45 in a 55. Every time I drive past it it gets a little closer to going missing. It's a minimum effort install on a wood post and it's right near the road to enter a new bougie subdivision in an otherwise rural area so it's almost certainly a cheap attempt to make a complainer go away.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#370

Post by crooked-v »

In the US, part of the problem is that car manufacturers are literally making headlights that are too bright for the tests, with dim spots in the exact places the tests measure maximum brightness in order to technically pass. https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1hefn86...
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