Live data from Hacker News

Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

bbc.com

561–570 of 900 posts

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#561
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks - I'm ok with that. As also mentioned, I'm NOT when it's a dark car at night with ONLY DRL and no rear lights at all - which I've seen a LOT of lately..

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True - but the problem is at night, from behind, on many models, the ARE invisible because no lights are on.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#563
post #388

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…

Teslas are the worst offenders in my area. I don't own one but I looked up online out of curiosity, and saw many owners complained because they got flashed a lot. Turned out the factory settings for the headlight angle was too high. They went to the menu and adjust the angle down by "2-3 clicks" and they reported never got flashed again.

This 100x. I get blinded by Teslas more often than all other brands combined.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#564
post #536
post #380

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. 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 "…

People just don’t care about driving.

I get it. Maybe you're not interested in it. You’re at A, you want to arrive at B, and driving is just your tool for getting there.

But to misquote Trotsky, you may not be interested in driving, but driving is interested in you. Driving is the most dangerous thing most drivers do on a regular basis. Probably by a significant margin. Even if you hate it, respect it. Put in the effort to do it well.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#565
post #380
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…

Automatic high beams only dip for other cars. They don’t dip for bicycles or pedestrians. Those walking or cycling by the road do not even register. Pure hubris.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#566
post #380

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. 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…

My other pet peeve is the opposite - they've got LED daytime running lights, and use those instead of headlights. They're driving around at 11pm with no taillights and abysmal forward lighting, but there's enough of a glow from the DRLs that they assume their lights are on. Or worse, they're accustomed to "automatic" lights and don't even know where the switch is, so they're driving around at dusk or in fog, rain, or…

12. YES I KNOW THIS IS A GAS STATION AND I COULD JUST WALK OVER AND TELL YOU BUT THIS SIGN THING I MADE IS WAY MORE FUN.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#567
post #536
post #380

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. 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 "…

My favorite is that if you try to follow a safe distance, some jerk will immediately move to fill the space

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#568

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…

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.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#569
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…

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.

> headlight beams have been misaligned and that's extremely distracting/infuriating so I hate using them anyway

One might consider taking the 5 minutes to align your headlights? Even if you're alone and don't have a helping friend with a tape measure it's not difficult to just make them a little more properly adjusted.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How many people are really getting after market headlights installed on their SUVs? There's too many vehicles with blindingly bright lights for that to be the cause.

Most Teslas come mis-aimed from the factory and expect their owners to "calibrate" them - they just never tell them that.. Guess how many owners actually figure it out? A vanishingly small percentage.. (or they're all assholes who want to blind others on purpose)
Post reply on HN