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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

#421

Post by snerbles »

xxpor wrote: post #348
LoganDark wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually drive with only the DRLs even at night. My vision is good enough that there's no reason to blind other drivers. I only use the beams at all when there's bad weather that fucks with visibility, or when the road has no retroreflectors. Also ever since a collision repair the headlight beams have been misaligned and that's extremely distracting/infuriating so I hate using them anyway.

At least in NA, if you only have the DRLs on, it means your rear lights aren't on.

Anecdata around SV: I've seen an uptick in urban night drivers with only their DRLs and no tail lights.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#422

Post by TheChaplain »

WickyNilliams wrote: post #256
TheChaplain wrote: post #202

ITT people saying you don't need strong headlights on the country side, you just need to drive slower.. One thing doesn't need to exclude the other, especially as you begin to go above 50 and your eye sight isn't as good as it was when you were twenty-five. Strong headlight that makes night go day saves lives, just remember to shut when meeting another vehicle or pedestrian.

Or don't go above 50mph down country roads at night? If your eyes aren't as good as they used to be, all the more reason to drive slower

I am pretty sure that is what I wrote

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#424

Post by kayodelycaon »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #339
JohnFen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my state, there is a law that restricts the location of headlights to between 22 and 54 inches from the ground. 54 inches is quite tall, though, I think that a lot of cars have roofs that are shorter than 4.5 feet. I'd love to see a much lower upper limit. I don't think there's a limit to how bright they can be. The law limits the lights to "70 watts", which I believe is intended to limit brightness but m…

LEDs are around 10x more efficient than incandescent bulbs. A 100W incandescent equivalent LED bulb typically consumes 10-12W. A 70W LED would put out as much light as 700W of incandescent.

Given idea just how much more light this is:

The designed lighting for a room in my house is 2 x 60-watt incandescent bulbs.

The equivalent wattage in 3 x 40-watt led bulbs is equal to 2 or 3 fluorescent light fixtures in an office building.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#425

Post by toast0 »

kubanczyk wrote: post #210
Aurornis wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, there's a decent sized market for cheap, unapproved HID/LED kits for older cars. They're often not aimed correctly. This is the biggest problem. Even talk SUV headlights from the factory must meet standards for masking off light and the angles at which they can illuminate. But when people buy LED retrofit kits and jam them into reflectors not designed for those bulbs, the reflectors don’t mask properly. Lig…

Aren't there any checks for that? In EU most DMV equivalents check headlights yearly to catch illegal illumination envelopes (along with other safety-related aspects, brakes and whatnot).

Most US states don't have an inspection regime. Of those that do, it's often just for emissions (and with 2001+ cars, it's increasingly just confirm the check engine light shows up in the light test and turns off when the engine is started, plus check that the emissions computer says ready for test). The driving public does not want to pay for safety inspections.

But yes, if there was a safety inspection, it should include verifying that lights function and that headlights are aimed appropriately. A brightness test might be too complex, but safety inspection would be the place to do it.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#426

Post by SJC_Hacker »

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…

> I am not sure what the solution is but the situation is getting worse and quickly.

Maybe Corey Hart had the right idea … sunglasses at night

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#427

Post by gmueckl »

Zak wrote: post #410
Wistar wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adaptive headlights that actively shield oncoming drivers were finally made legal in the US in 2022 but complicated bureaucratic hoops make them hard to implement. BMW seems to have them working as I find their higher-end lighting (ex: ICON Adaptive w/ Laser Light) to be among the best to oncoming drivers—at least to my eyes. CNN writes about why headlight brightness is worse in the US than in other countries: https:…

The USA seems to suffer from a not-invented-here problem when it comes to automotive regulations. Most of the world adopted the European standard for adaptive headlights, but the USA had to spend years coming up with its own incompatible standard.

It's not a bug, it's a feature? US manufacturers are not widely known for technological innovations. Deviating standards are a way to keep them competitive in their domestic market.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#428

Post by fodkodrasz »

cjs_ac wrote: post #414
fodkodrasz wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the plastic headlight “lenses” on many cars tend to get cloudy and develop micro-scratches over time. This reduces the efficiency of the low beams, and instead of fixing the problem, many drivers of older cars simply drive with their high beams on, which creates even more glare for everyone else. Nothing is really repairable, of course, so replacing these parts is out of the question — it’s prohibitively expens…

In the UK, a car with cloudy headlight lenses will fail its annual roadworthiness check, and the owner will have to pay for the lenses to be polished.

Much alike in Hungary... theoretically. Here, unfortunately, practice is different.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#429

Post by sokoloff »

eszed wrote: post #353
yesb wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a handful of US states have any type of safety inspection

The only one I've experienced (Massachusetts) wouldn't catch any of what we're discussing in this thread. They put it on the emission testing machine, walked once around the car, maybe checked the brakes, and that was it. It was in no way comparable to the UK's MOT test, which is a proper inspection.

Headlight function (including aim) is on the MA vehicle inspection: https://www.mavehiclecheck.com/motorists-basicinfo

Whether it’s done carefully or not, I doubt, though I did fail one year for headlight lenses too cloudy, requiring a fix and reinspection.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#430

Post by toast0 »

fusslo wrote: post #174
alistairSH wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My 2024 outback has no 'high beams'. My low beams are the same brightness as high beams. The only difference is the field of view. I switch on the high beams on and height of the beam increases, but intensity stays the same. I feel awful about essentially high-beaming everyone unless the road is flat.

> The only difference is the field of view.

That's normal. Low beams are aimed low and often have a illumination pattern reducing light over the median, high beams are aimed high and uniform illumination. Very often, they're the same intensity.

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