761–770 of 900 posts
They have always been that way. Im not accusing them of being involved in "headlightgate", but it would be great if somebody did some research.
Beam patterns are always checked when at rest, just like diesel particulate emissions..
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> 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.
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Not in a way meaningful to assessing infectious risk, no. I consider outdoor air to be unshared, except in cases of large dense crowds (such as say outdoor festivals or sporting events). I consider risky shared air to be indoor air with one or more other individuals that are not known to be taking infection-prevention precautions. One can measure CO₂ as a proxy to rebreathed air fraction. For example, a CO₂ reading o…
> One can measure CO₂ as a proxy to rebreathed air fraction. On this topic, I got a CO₂ meter fairly recently and was shocked how quickly it spikes with a couple of people in a car with the windows up and on recirculate. Easily over 2000 after a few minutes. I have to remind myself regularly when it's really hot or cold outside to keep the vent setting on fresh air.
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…
The screens are a good point, but nothing about LED headlights require a single bright point. That's done for style and cost saving - old reflector headlights had to be big, so small looks "modern", and small means less material.
Cramming it all into one tiny spot just means cooking the LEDs, which are much better suited for either larger lens assemblies or multiple smaller lens assemblies to distribute the load, both of which increase the size of the light source and massively decrease the blinding and glare it causes. You could easily cut the glare to, idk, a quarter by just changing the geometry a bit while maintaining the same light output.
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It's solving the wrong problem, and doesn't help the typical situation of being on hills, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. Just turn the damn maximum output down.
I have a car with LED lights. It's easily the best car I've had for vision at night. We very occasionally get someone flashing us at night, wrongly believing our high beams are on. However, from a safety point of view, I'm not convinced the trade off is actually in favour of reducing illumination for everyone.
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…
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#3 Plenty of drivers have difficulty spotting a gray/silver/black car under low or high-contrast lighting. Highly visible colors (yellow, orange, white) have a 7-12% lower chance of getting into an accident during the day and up to 47% lower at dusk.[0] Keeping your headlights on at all times reduces this risk. #7 In many states (e.g. [1]) if two lanes are merging you're expected to merge at the last possible point.…
> #7 In many states (e.g. [1]) if two lanes are merging you're expected to merge at the last possible point. This allows more cars to fit on the road to reduce congestion, and it reduces sudden stops. Maintaining smooth merging is far more important than where the merging happens. The page you linked even says "It is legal to wait to merge until the lane closure devices (cones or barrels) start, but we recommend merg…
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_%28traffic%29#Late_merge
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I used to think it was a lot of people doing it. I drive an older car with what I call "normal" brightness headlights, and the warm color too instead of the annoying blue/white. But then I had to rent a newer car, and it came stock with super bright blue/white headlights. They were so bright to what I was used to I had to double check the high beams weren't on. The standard lights were as bright as my old car's high…
> Lights in newer cars are literally just that bright, and I think it's a result of car safety culture being a matter of "I only care of the car protects me" instead of "the car should also be safe for others on the road as well" This theory can't work on its own terms. It'd be hard to make the car less safe for the driver than by automatically blinding oncoming traffic. Brighter headlights aren't a safety improvemen…
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> 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…
I've always expected that in the future when all cars are fully self-driving, they would have some kind of communication channel to improve efficiency. Why can't we have this for humans too before that.