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Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

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Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#871

Post by rconti »

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…

The blue indicator is almost impossible to see on modern screens, vs the old one that blinded you from in between a couple of dim gauges.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#872

Post by DannyBee »

1718627440 wrote: post #214
DannyBee wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but you should be able to safely drive the speed limit under normal (Ie not pouring rain, snow, etc) conditions. Night is a normal condition.

No. The speed limit is the maximum for a dry road, in the summer during the day.

Its literally not in the US

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#873

Post by DannyBee »

master-lincoln wrote: post #804
DannyBee wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but you should be able to safely drive the speed limit under normal (Ie not pouring rain, snow, etc) conditions. Night is a normal condition.

I have seen people with the same expectation drive off roads in hilly areas in europe because some turns were impossible to do at speed limit. Not sure if what you say is a legal requirement

In the US it mostly is. Depends on whether it is federal or state road but it's true in the vast majority of cases

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#874

Post by duskdozer »

impure-aqua wrote: post #275
mossTechnician wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with headlight brightness has mostly stemmed from cars having brighter headlights. I love technology, but if I had to choose between reducing light output, vs switching to harder-to repair, more expensive, less reliable computer-powered headlights, I'd prefer the former.

When I drive cars with old headlights, they are clearly inferior to the point of feeling nearly dangerous in some situations. I would also not call modern lights less reliable, although I am sure it is more expensive to repair modern lighting technology. In a North American city where there is overhead lighting and the streets are a mile wide, sure, I could probably turn the lights off even and be totally fine. In th…

Having excessively bright and blue headlights shined in your eyes harms your night vision and vision of anything not illuminated, which would exacerbate the seeming inferiority of other lights. In a narrow road during a rainstorm, driving speed should be significantly decreased to a level of safety - speed limits are not speed minimums.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#875

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

jlarocco wrote: post #367

As a cyclist and pedestrian, these new headlights and the cars with the "auto brights" are just terrible. When you're in another car their car's sensors might detect your headlights and dim a little bit. But as a pedestrian? You basically just get blinded - from low light right to 10000 lumens straight in your eyes. It's overpowering. Can't make them illegal fast enough, IMO.

The issue where I live is that there are both kids and adults on e-bikes all over town in unprotected bike lanes on busy streets or unlit village streets wearing nothing but black sweatshirts and no lights, no reflectors. They’re practically invisible without high index car lights. Even then, they’re barely noticeable to an experienced driver.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#876

Post by duskdozer »

alphager wrote: post #775
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have legitimately been wondering for quite some time if we are not in a leaded gas kind of situation where something is adversely affecting the global population as a whole and we are left in the dark. Plenty of contenders between industrially processed food, social media, mobile phones. It might just be me getting paranoid however.

Covid does long-term brain damage.

I do think there's oddly disproportionate silence on covid infection as a potential factor in the overall life-enshittification lately.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#877

Post by exmadscientist »

crazygringo wrote: post #836
exmadscientist wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flashing on-off and always on aren't the only options. I wish more designers went with flashing bright-dim, because it solves a lot of problems. I once worked on a device where we were required to blink the Important Safety Light™ on-off. I often glanced at this light out of the corner of my eye, and saw that it was off, so we were Safe™. We were not Safe™: it was just in the off phase of its blink. I am very glad I…

Having a third brightness state feels confusing. If a safety indicator needs to be visible at a glance, why did it blink at all? Blinking only works for things that are in your vision and need to be the primary focus. It seems like blinking to begin with is terrible design for something like this, or else having it be in the corner of your eye is the terrible design decision.

> If a safety indicator needs to be visible at a glance, why did it blink at all?

Beats me! But they've apparently flashed for ages and ages on these things, and somewhere along the line it got standardized.

> It seems like blinking to begin with is terrible design for something like this, or else having it be in the corner of your eye is the terrible design decision.

This is benchtop equipment, not cars, so "corner of your eye" has a little bit different context here. But, yes, I kind of agree.

It is also really important to get this one right since for this particular type of device, conditions are lethal (yes, genuinely lethal, no exaggeration) if you get cavalier with it.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#878

Post by Dylan16807 »

fouc wrote: post #768
Dylan16807 wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #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…

By definition, zipper merge means late merge [0]. The problem is that if some cars merge too early, other cars will keep driving down the road and then merging in front of the early mergers, it ends up being disruptive in heavy traffic conditions. If everyone consistently merges at the same point in heavy traffic conditions it's more predictable, leading to better through flow. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge…

> By definition, zipper merge means late merge

Tell that to the site linked above, because even though they say "like a zipper" they want it to happen early.

> The problem is that if some cars merge too early, other cars will keep driving down the road and then merging in front of the early mergers, it ends up being disruptive in heavy traffic conditions. If everyone consistently merges at the same point in heavy traffic conditions it's more predictable, leading to better through flow.

I don't blame the early mergers there. If someone zooms down the empty lane then they are not attempting to zipper merge, they are bad actors.

A proper zipper, at the last moment, is slightly better than early merging. But again smoothness is the important factor. Smoothness is 90% of the solution. Do not give up smoothness for the sake of being more zipper-y. If people think you're cutting in line, you probably are cutting in line.

-

Also, anywhere we want to make sure there's a zipper merge, how about we stop having a favored lane? Cut off half of each lane at the merge point.

Re: Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

#880

Post by robertlagrant »

adolph wrote: post #834
toast0 wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can bet that no regulation of any kind will ever be enacted to curb the disaster that CAFE rules caused to "car" size. I'm not a big EV person, but afaik EVs don't have efficiency standards and so they don't have to conform to CAFE footprints, so we can get compact vehicles again, hopefully. Up to manufacturers to put them for sale, and people to actually buy them, of course.

> but afaik EVs don't have efficiency standards This is a huge hole in the regulatory regime. It doesn't make sense to be as wasteful with electrons as we are with hydrocarbons. Sure the electron can be generated cleanly or with higher efficiency, but that doesn't negate the pursuit of encouraging increased utility.

Isn't this currently covered with range?
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