451–460 of 900 posts
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At least in NA, if you only have the DRLs on, it means your rear lights aren't on.
That's not true for my vehicle, I've checked.
The only thing that turning the headlights "on" does differently is enable high beams.
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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…
you weren't in a short car, you were in a normal car. Society really needs legislation around auto obesity. Cars are too big, too high, too heavy, all at despite being less practical than a station wagon from twenty years back.
The economically efficient way to get the fuel economy result would have been to increase gasoline taxes, but that's a non starter politically. Higher gas prices would allow people to choose to keep a cheap gas guzzling truck/car, buy a new more efficient and expensive car, or buy a new slightly more efficient slightly more expensive car. It would have been simpler though and given consumers more choice.
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> 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!
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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. 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 remember, when shopping for a car, the salesman told me about an Alpina model he had with laser headlights so intense they weren't even legal for new builds anymore. It's a selling point in some vehicles. Still, the idea that you should give headlight illumination control to the idiot behind the wheel is insane to me. Is it not a regulated height? Maybe that explains why it's a nightmare to drive at night anymore.
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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.
> 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…
Disagree. The "too bright" headlights are new cars. And sedans as well as trucks SUVs.
Another big problem is that the lights are much closer to "point source" than older headlights which were 4-6" in diameter. A modern headlight is more like a 2" or smaller diameter projector lens, which is even more blinding.
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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. 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…
> 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 a 2021 Tacoma, and its automatic high-beam adjustment is terrible. It does a reasonable job of turning high beams off when a car approaches, but it has a number of problems that make it unusable. After the car passes it waits too long to reactivate the high beams. That's when they're needed most; my eyes have already adjusted to the other car's headlights, now the road is dark again, and I'm still on low beams.
It's way too sensitive. When a car approaches from a long ways away, it sometimes turns high beams off for minutes at a time. It turns them off when there are widely-spaced streetlights on long empty rural highways.
I finally took the time to figure out where the switch is to turn off automatic high-beam adjustment. I do a much better job knowing when to dim and reactive the lights than the vehicle does.
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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. 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
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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.
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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.
On many cars, the beam of the DRLs are more offensive to oncoming drivers when used at night. Properly repairing your car might make it less distracting/infuriating.
Typically the DRL lamps switch off or go to a dimmer setting when the headlights are on.
That omnidirectional nature makes them pure glare at night.