431–440 of 900 posts
- headlight covers fogging up/getting cloudy or even yellowing from sun exposure; these will scatter the light so more of what should go onto the street will be visible by oncoming vehicles
- 3rd party aftermarket LED replacement bulbs; usually illegal and completely mismatching what the mirrors in the headlights were made for, but that doesn’t keep people from buying and using them
Desperately we need to reign in car "style" choices like this. Beyond headlights being too bright, lift kits should be banned and tint regulations should be enforced. Same with sound regulations. Public roads are not race tracks; they are for people.
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>This is a change in behavior. >I am not sure what the solution is but the situation is getting worse and quickly. The solution is legislation and enforcement. Driving at night now makes me afraid for my safety because I'm literally blinded by oncoming traffic, and I'm sure that many other people share the same sentiment. I would happily argue that driving with lights bright enough to impair other drivers counts as w…
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:…
Just turn the damn maximum output down.
I always wondered if it would be feasible to make the headlights produce polarized light (e.g. vertical), and have windscreens filter out that polarization... I guess it would only work if the scattering of light off of whatever is being illuminated sufficiently depolarizes the light. Anyhow, I thought it was a neat idea when I was a teenager. There might be some issues with retro fitting the world's existing road ve…
I understand that currently this is sort of a collective action problem, but I'm a bit baffled why people ever thought they needed brighter headlights in the first place. In the city, it's so bright that you don't even need headlights to see whatsoever. When cars started automatically dimming the dash via a light sensor, there was actually a period of time where I totally forgot to turn on my headlights because thing…
> 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…
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> 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. This is one of my pet peeves. I've categorized it into what I believe are the main causes: 1. People just don't know as well today that the blue indicator means you're blinding people 2. People with newer cars which will automatically tur…
I have become an aggressive counter-flasher. This has yielded in some cases new knowledge - that the low beams of a lot of cars these days look like high beams (indicated when they flash back, and it's the brightness of a thousand suns). For those behind me, I've discovered that my side mirror has an angle where it reliably bounces the beams back. I've gotten more than a couple of drivers to turn their beams down wit…
At this point I put full blame on car manufacturers and lack of government regulation and enforcement. Lights will keep getting brighter because lights are getting brighter. It's a death spiral.
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> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. I guess you don't actually drive at night in the countryside then. You need lights to see where the road is, not where pedestrians might be - on none existent footpaths
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…
Hey, there were several models.
For a long time you had the two filament bulbs vs single filament. And then around the late 70s, you could have circle or rectangle, so there were 4 bulbs to choose from! Tremendous variety.
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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…
I wish it was usable, but I think it’s not.
I find this problem to be most severe as a pedestrian - when my eyes have adjusted to the darkness (even if I'm carrying a flashlight, it pales in comparison) and a modern car is oncoming, I cannot see _anything_. Out here in the sticks where there are no sidewalks I can either take it on blind faith that the driver has seen and will avoid me, or I can step way off into the ditch (but not everyone has that option).
Yeah. When I ride my bike in the sticks and pass walkers in the dark, I try to disable my headlight a few seconds before I pass them. Otherwise all they see is a bright light approaching. Disabling the lights for a moment seems better than one party not seeing anything. (Or both parties, e.g. two bikes, or runners with forehead LED light.) After all, even in the countryside the darkness usually is far from complete.…