Auto dip headlights are also a menace. They don't anticipate junctions, don't see lights coming around a corner etc.
Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
541–550 of 900 posts
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#542Isn't it more a problem with the aim/beam-diameter than the brightness? If they are aimed properly and designed to shine a narrow beam then their extra brightness shouldn't be an issue.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#543One 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…
I have an older car with the low light gauges, and so my eyes are more adjusted the darkness. Which makes the poorly calibrated bright lights of newer cars the bane of my life at night.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#544[deleted]
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#545The 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…
Housings on indicators that reflect so much sunlight you can’t see that they’re on.
Plus some cars have tiny indicators now, or weird led stripes around the brake lights
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
And, notably, those couple of seconds can be key to seeing far off wildlife that may decide to cross the road.
Also notably, so bright they burn the retinas of said wildlife and any drivers or pedesttrians approaching you.
Well, the new stupid bright lights, yes. The idea of brights in general, though, not quite as bad.
I'm also not clear why someone would leave brights up once they are close to something that has eyes. The idea is you can see them further away. But, as you get close, drop the lights.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#547Earlier 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. 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 might just be getting old, but more and more I see people not using indicators and not understanding the rules of junctions. Tail gating also really annoying. I was in a mates car recently and it scared the hell out of me, he was tail gating for most of a 3 hour journey. Eventually we got to a bit with chevrons and he wasn't obeying the rule staying N chevrons away from the car in front. I told him and he replied "…
Wow this gives me anxiety just reading. My 2012 BMW has a warning everytime I turn it on. "DO NOT RELY ON BEEPS" (I'm paraphrasing of course.)
And yeah, I don't let tooling on my car replace common sense driving habits. I still turn my head when reversing, even if I can see what's behind me on the camera. I think it's crazy that people rely so much on unreliable tech on their cars.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#548One 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 found out recently that you can adjust your Tesla headlights electronically from the computer screen inside and it was quite easy. I was regularly getting high-beam flashed by people because I think the stock Tesla settings have the lights too high.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When you're waiting at a red light, you're meant to have the hand brake on (which does not illuminate the brake lights), not your foot on the brake, unless you know that the light is going to turn green very soon I was definitely not taught this as a US driving student. Is this a UK thing?
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…
> How else would you have any control of the forward motion of the vehicle otherwise, especially when starting on an uphill slope?
That only applies for manual/stick shift vehicles. Most of the US drives automatic transmissions, and you don't have to use the hand brake to start on an uphill slope with an automatic transmission.
Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Thanks, previously the only other car I had was a 1995 volvo which used additional bulbs when the high beams were engaged. Intensity and field of view were increased. The outback's headlights were very confusing to me since I leapt through like 3 generations of cars I wonder if it became normal around the time everyone started complaining headlights were too bright
Most vehicles with dual-filament bulbs will turn off the low beams while the high beams are on, but looking around, I see it's mixed for vehicles with dual bulbs; US standards don't require it one way or the other --- you can meet the high beam requirement with separate bulbs or with both bulbs in concert.
I think complaints about headlights really started when different bulb types came out. HID, projector, and LED bulbs all cast qualitatively different light than the ubiquitous tungsten halogen bulbs that preceded them. A lot of these put out a lot of blue, especially in the fringes that I find very objectionable, and the lumen output seems to have increased quite a bit, as well as the spread.
Halogen bulbs were tightly constrained by power limits and output requirements; but the other types can hit the output requirements at well under the power limits, so they can cast a wider field of view (which is nice), but may need to be brighter in more of the the wider field of view to hit the output requirements in the central portion, and that additional brightness is more likely to cause glare. Of course, all of our eyes have aged as well which makes night vision more difficult, especially with light variance. I remember my parents sometimes complaining about other vehicle's lights when I was young and thought everything was fine, but everyone was using halogen lights back then.