Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 133 posts

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#71

Post by Y-bar »

teeray wrote: post #23

EU folks: are ADBs the panacea that all these articles always make them out to be? I’ve seen mixed reports.

They work okay on straight roads with no median. But often fail in these cases:

- cresting a hill. Normal people can see the cone of light from the approaching car and often turn classic high beams down before it blinds fellow drivers. These do it only when it detects the actual light source, giving a 0.2-0.5 (about) flash of bright light.

- Wet and snowy ground. Even when they re-align themselves somewhat properly they can be blinding due to reflections which are not part of the angle-calculation algorithm.

- Failure to detect pedestrians and cyclists. Self-evident, but when I am not in a car I am impressed by how blinding it is.

Personally I consider them to decrease safety for everyone except the car with those headlights. I also feel like it is yet another badly designed automation which adds to the ability to slightly doze off and pay a little less attention to traffic.

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#72

Post by logancbrown »

jasonlotito wrote: post #60
logancbrown wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are so knowledgeable, then what argument am I making?

It doesn't help your case when you state inflammatory comments like "If you are so knowledgeable, then what argument am I making?". This isn't reddit.

[flagged]

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#73

Post by Melatonic »

operatingthetan wrote: post #34
tyjen wrote: post #13

The worst offenders are people buying aftermarket extra bright headlights, then incorrectly installing them at an angle that blinds oncoming traffic.

For a long time it was aftermarket HID kits. Installing those was a bit of a pain because of the separate ballasts and associated wiring. They were blinding because the projectors required a cut off and most were installed in halogen housings. Now most people are installing aftermarket LED kits. For the most part those are less blinding. I upgraded our old Impreza with some but chose the lowest lumen numbers I could…

Not sure at all. Most LED retrofit kits have bulbs that create light in a totally different pattern than the original and don't correctly use the cutoff of the headlight

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#74

Post by Melatonic »

eigenhombre wrote: post #4

This is a pet peeve of mine, so when a headlight went out a few weeks ago I asked my mechanic about bulb options. He said he had no other choices for me, so now I am part of the problem too. Seems like a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation / use case for regulation....

There are a lot of options if you search online

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#76

Post by randusername »

tyjen wrote: post #13

The worst offenders are people buying aftermarket extra bright headlights, then incorrectly installing them at an angle that blinds oncoming traffic.

There are even worse offenders. Some super cheap aftermarket kits seem to have the same horrific flashing as minimum viable Christmas lights.

Barely perceptible flashing yet somehow gratingly and distractingly so.

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#77

Post by bluGill »

hackeraccount wrote: post #36
calmbonsai wrote: post #18

This is largely poor regulation. The assumption that "more bright = more safe" and the lack of enough real-world testing. The only other product analogy that comes to mind is "thicker = better" for hiking socks. When they got too thick, they applied too much pressure to the heal and also provided additional moment distance making it far easier to roll an ankle.

Yeah but more bright is more safe ... for me driving around with the light of a thousand suns coming out of the front of my care at night it seems pretty safe, "good luck everybody else".

Often less bright is safer. Unless there are heavy clouds the moon (even a partial mood) is often bright enough that once my eyes adjust (which takes time!) I can see better without any lights at all. When my headlights are on I see really good in the space where the lights are, but beyond that I see nothing, when my headlights are often I can't see as well in that area, but I see much farther. I want everything that can to have lights so they are easier to see, but I can see a candle from miles away so this is minimal. With no lights at all I have better chances of seeing things that don't have lights in time to take action.

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#78

Post by bluGill »

Melatonic wrote: post #70
yabones wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this on long drives, but always have to put it back to normal when it's time to park. It would be neat if cars would implement some sort of automatic switch between this configuration and the straight-back mode when reversing.

Why do you need to see the sides of your own vehicle to park ?

I don't, but I need to see things an inch away. I need to see the lines which are often close to my car as well.

Meanwhile when parking I don't need to see things more than a couple feet from my car.

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#79

Post by incanus77 »

This scourge is so bad.

I drive a 40 year old vehicle and a friend created an aftermarket adjustable headlight frame allowing it to move from all-in-one rectangular headlight/high beam sealed units to modern LED bulbs and then an accessory of choice on the inner spaces left over. I chose a classic-looking LED that does regular, high beam, DRL, and amber turn signal all in one and then put off-road fog lights on the inner spaces. But I would not leave the house after night with the vehicle until I adjusted them to DOT spec. Because they are so much brighter and sharped-edged than factory, I can see that they don’t go above oncoming windshields and are aligned properly horizontally.

The excellent guide that I used to align my lights:

https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html

Re: Car headlights don't have to be this blinding

#80

Post by analog31 »

calmbonsai wrote: post #18

This is largely poor regulation. The assumption that "more bright = more safe" and the lack of enough real-world testing. The only other product analogy that comes to mind is "thicker = better" for hiking socks. When they got too thick, they applied too much pressure to the heal and also provided additional moment distance making it far easier to roll an ankle.

Car headlights are regulated. My hunch is that the regulations are based on technical background that is not up to date with modern light sources including LEDs and HIDs.

Styling works against us too. The ability to control the geometry of the light beam improves with the size of the optics relative to the emitter, but people want a car with sexy little lights.

I designed optics for lighting in a past life, though never for an automotive application. This issue is actually on my radar because of the blinding brightness of bike lights on the local bike paths.

Post reply on HN