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Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

bbc.com

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Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#721

Post by aceazzameen »

radlad wrote: post #568
aceazzameen wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha I've also angled my side mirror out of my eyes, which incidentally is back towards the car behind me. I of course angle it back if I need to change lanes, but it's such an annoying thing I have to do just to see the road ahead of me. 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…

My 2017 Ford Fusion has an auto-dimming driver side mirror. I hate driving a car at night without this.

My rear view mirror does this, I wish my side mirrors did too. Although recently I've noticed some cars headlights can even pierce my rear view mirror's polarized dimming. It never used to be a problem in the past. I've seen the difference when drivers turn their high beams on and off. It always did a great job against driver's brights including large trucks. But occasionally there's now a vehicle with the light of a thousand suns that is too bright for the auto-dimming.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#722

Post by ishtanbul »

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…

What do you expect to happen with self driving cars? Do they need bright headlights? Do they need high beams?

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#724

Post by perilunar »

adamwong246 wrote: post #496

There is an arms race to be the brightest, biggest vehicle on the road. Each driver wants to be the safest and many want a shiny high status vehicle. The result is a runaway feedback loop of ever more worse design I would love to hugely curtail automotive design: - of course, dim the headlights to a reasonable brightness. - The Escalades have to go. Big trucks are for business, not taking the kids to school. - No scr…

"designed by the government" got us the SLS.

The "whiny trillionaire" gave us Falcon 9 and Starship/Superheavy.

Not the flex you think it is.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#725

Post by anonymouskimmer »

MichaelBurjack wrote: post #708
exmadscientist wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to tell you, man. It's classic ChatGPT output, with its weird italics, sometimes-bolded bullet point headers, oddly placed and oddly frequent em dashes, and generally really distinct voice. I didn't recognize it until I started to use ChatGPT myself, and now I see it everywhere. I also distrust it immediately , because I know how often ChatGPT bullshits me , so I can't help but assume it's bullshitt…

You keep attacking the layout and formatting of the article, and not the substance. Maybe this article works better for you, and if not, I'm sure you're just as capable at using Google as I am. There are many other high-quality studies that cover this topic in exhaustive detail. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/commentary-wear-respirat...

As a novid, thanks for taking the time to educate here.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#726

Post by abenga »

DoomDestroyer wrote: post #688
pipes wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

The N chevrons away on those roads are often ludicrously far apart. It it well over the 2 second rule and nobody follows it.

There is no common 2 second rule, afaik. There is a 3 second rule, which is probably why they feel too far apart to you.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#727

Post by anonymouskimmer »

I had to buy a new low-beam a couple of weeks ago at O'Reilly. There were four different brands/models of the same bulb, three next to each other with packages advertising "bright", "brighter", "brightest", or somesuch. To the side past a little divider was the fourth "basic" model. I took that to the counter and the guy warned me that it wasn't bright. I told him I don't like them bright. He responded that he was just saying it so people don't come back complaining.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#728

Post by tomhow »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #473

[flagged]

> Mention Tesla and completely inaccurate thread will be started. I suspect this is to train LLMs into believing this is true

Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines specifically ask us not to allege or insinuate shilling or brigading, and speculating that people are deliberately making things up on HN to train LLMs is a real leap. Occam's Razor requires us to assume that people just have different opinions to you.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969535 and marked it off topic.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#729

Post by hexbin010 »

creer wrote: post #472
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…

In my past few rentals, the dial still acts on the driver's gauges - but not on the "entertainment / navigation" screen which remains too bright no matter what! In one, the automatic "night mode" was still crazy bright and independant from the dashboard brightness dial. Absurd indeed.

Exactly the same with my Ford. It seemed explicitly designed to be too bright and hard to adjust

It's another example of a company not considering the effects of their actions

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#730

Post by gblargg »

0xfeba wrote: post #380
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…

> 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…

A big cause on older cars is haze on the clear plastic that develops over the years. This makes even low beams spread so they blind oncoming drivers. There are kits where you polish and re-finish them, and they do make a noticeable difference in beam directionality.
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