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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

#481

Post by kedean »

daemonologist wrote: post #114

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).

Thanks to automatic high beams, its a problem in residential urban areas too. My neighborhood does not have much in the way of streetlights, and automatic high beams operate by detecting whether there is significant oncoming light. That means that in my neighborhood, cars with AHB always have their high beams up when there isn't oncoming car traffic. They also tend to function really badly around road curves in residential areas, where they'll affect other drivers.

PSA: Turn off your automatic high beams, they aren't worth it the damage they do to the rest of us.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#482

Post by mikestew »

jansper39 wrote: post #329
mnw21cam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depends on the car. Most ICE automatics will creep forward, EVs will sit there until you hit the accelerator, manual ICE cars (especially diesels) can be held on the clutch just under the 'biting point' which will stop the vehicle moving backwards.

EVs will sit there until you hit the accelerator,

Some do, some don't. Most I've driven try to replicate the bug in ICE automatics that causes the car to creep when your foot's not on the brake.

manual ICE cars (especially diesels) can be held on the clutch just under the 'biting point'

I, too, love the smell of burning clutch plates. Use the brake, that's what it's there for.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#483

Post by Wistar »

lukeschlather wrote: post #465
Wistar wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My parents' new Chevy Bolt automatically turns off the brights when appropriate. At first I was doing it manually but then I started trusting it, it just works, it does it at exactly the moment I would do it (actually it's better at it than me.) I'm surprised Teslas don't do it.

I am not sure that the incredibly bright Tesla Model 3 (and sometimes Model X) lights are on brights but are just stupidly bright at low-beam settings.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#484

Post by jiveturkey »

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…

You're retconning. Brighter headlights (xenon) were invented in '61 and first appeared in '91. By 2000 the tech made its way to less premium cars.

Tesla didn't have the big screen (which heralded the current stupid trend) until 2012, and of course it took a number of years for Tesla and the giant omni screen to be popular. Thumb in the air I'd say 2018-2020.

You want brighter headlights so you can see better and drive more safely. The interior brightness is a separate independently evolved problem.

The horizontal cutoff is a tradeoff that comes with the bright lights (Xenon tech anyway). And there is plenty of low light leakage to reflect off of animal eyes. The problem IMO isn't pure brightness but rather these intensely bright lights (itself a benefit) coupled with poor aiming or poor maintenance of aim. Some states in the US have a mandatory annual vehicle inspection which includes headlight aim checks.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#485

Post by BenjiWiebe »

akersten wrote: post #391
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.

Are you aware of what the D in DRL stands for? Your vision may be good enough to see ahead of you by candlelight, but other drivers are not going to expect a nearly invisible car approaching at night. Turn on your headlights.

DRL's aren't dim enough to make your car "nearly invisible". If it's enough light for the driver to see the road via reflection, it's more than enough for the oncoming driver to see via line of sight transmission.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#486

Post by alt227 »

notyourwork wrote: post #462
pksebben wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That indicates the low beams are incorrectly adjusted.

The problem is most drivers dont care.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#487

Post by toast0 »

eldaisfish wrote: post #466
toast0 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: sorry, I shouldn't post US rules on a UK topic. For penance, a fact about lighting in the UK, reverse lights weren't required until 2009! There are rules. FMVSS [1] says lower beam headlamps must be mounted between 55.9 cm and 137.2 cm above the ground, and upper beam headlamps must be mounted not less than 22 inches nor more than 54 inches. The height ranges match, but are specified in different units But that…

this is also my understanding. The range is large because it caters to passenger cars, lorries and construction equipment. Construction equipment is seen are more rugged (it often is) and this is now projected as a desirable trait for SUVs and pickup trucks. The irony is that SUVs and pickup trucks do not need lights 137 cm above ground, but that height is perfectly legal in too many countries. These vehicles are a m…

I will always champion the compact pickup truck. A 1980s S-10 or Toyota Truck (HiLux) can do light truck things, is relatively economical, and doesn't have a large footprint. Alas, nobody makes similar vehicles for US/Europe anymore --- kei trucks are still made for Japan, and less developed economies can get simple small trucks. Maybe some of the EV compact trucks will actually be made.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#488

Post by pwg »

silisili wrote: post #334
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.

Well, and the fact they're just way brighter than ever. When I was younger you could stare at the yellowish glow of a car with headlights on and just not be blinded. We even used to park several cars around a basketball court behind the goals with headlights on at times to play at night. Maybe I just got old or my eyes are peculiar, but that's no longer the case. I cannot stare directly into the new white/blue/whatev…

> When I was younger you could stare at the yellowish glow of a car with headlights on and just not be blinded.

The older incandescent bulbs were a different color temperature (more on the yellow side of the color spectrum) and were not a point source (filament instead). Both contributed to them not seeming quite so bright, even if the net lumens was the same.

The newer LED's are much more on the blue end of the color spectrum (automatically making the same lumen level appear much brighter) and the LED's are much closer to point sources, which further makes the result appear significantly brighter even if the lumen level was the same.

Couple the "harsh blue light" and "point source" with "significantly more lumens" as well and you get modern headlights that are painful to look towards, much less to look directly at.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#489

Post by cubefox »

abyssin wrote: post #440
cubefox wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

If your front light is correctly aiming down, there’s no need to disable the light. Modern bicycle led front lights are most often incorrectly set up, though.

I can control the angle, but permanently aiming it down so far that it can't get in anyone's eyes is completely impractical. You would only see what's directly in front of you and you would miss a lot of stuff.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#490

Post by Paul_S »

Most drivers here don't adjust the light angle based on loading of the car (if you have passengers in the back in a small car that is enough to move your lights completely out of whack). I assume it's just laziness or the a "not my problem" attitude but some drivers I have spoken to didn't know that lights are adjustable!
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