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groups like Audi/Porsche/BMW have trouble bringing their fancy LED setups to America due to laws pertaining to high / low beams -- meanwhile every Jack and Jill
by serf 6y ago
groups like Audi/Porsche/BMW have trouble bringing their fancy LED setups to America due to laws pertaining to high / low beams -- meanwhile every Jack and Jill on the road has glaringly illegal aftermarket Xenon bulb setups in refractor headlight housings rather than proper projectors, blinding the hell out of everyone on the road, and the police seem to do nothing about it.
I mean, hey -- i'm usually happy about automotive modifications that the police leave me alone about, but this aftermarket headlight trend is many times worse than a nuisance loud exhaust -- it can literally blind you for seconds during night driving.
- decafninja 6y agore: "aftermarket xenon bulb setups" Is this still a big problem? While I would have agreed with you, say, back in the 2000s when the whole "import tuner" craze was in full swing, I don't think this is popular anymore. The car mod scene seems to be close to extinct now, with whats left being a lot less crazy than those in the past.
- tw04 6y agoIMO it’s WORSE. The new craze are the LED light bars. I had one on my old truck for off-road use, but there are idiots that drive with them turned on driving down public roads. They’re so bright it can take 10+ seconds to see normally again.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoLED light bars should immediately result in an attempted murder conviction.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoWe also missed out on the yellow sodium headlight craze in Europe during the 80s or 90s. Headlights in the USA must be whitish in color. Anyone know why?
- bonzini 6y agoAs far as I remember that didn't happen in all countries. I remember seeing them when going on vacation to France (Corsica) in the mid 80s, but never at home.
- jaclaz 6y agoNo, it was only France, where they were mandatory. In other EU countries they were however allowed up to a certain date (in Italy they are accepted only for vehicles built before 1993, and in the same date France made them not mandatory). The yellow is not "a" yellow it is a very specific one, called "Selective Yellow": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow
- laurencerowe 6y agoYellow headlights used to be a legal requirement for driving in France and we had to put yellow film on when driving there until the EU standardized white headlights. Apparently it was to reduce dazzle and glare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_yellow
- chrisco255 6y agoI have no idea but could be related to use of the color yellow for caution / hazard lights, construction vehicles or turning lights.
- throwaway29102 6y agoThe 2000s are just starting to reach the Dakotas and the rest of the Midwest.
- vsareto 6y agoYou will see them far more often on large trucks in the USA these days. Especially true for midwest drives across long stretches at night where the brightness is much more annoying than in the middle of a city. If the truck is lifted, the brightest points of the light can hit you from further away, worsening the problem. It is also bad when someone is behind you with this setup, especially lifted trucks. Some cars have a rear mirror that can dim them to tolerable levels, but not the side mirrors. So you'll get flashes from them as you drive unless you lean forward or angle the mirrors away.
- ChainOfFools 6y agoI've started to see some of those lifted trucks (almost always white, for some reason) with LED strip arrays mounted into the front grill fascia at just the right height to glare directly at the eye level of passenger cars.
- bradknowles 6y agoI’ve given thought to getting one of those strips of LED lights and mounting them on the back of my car. Then we can see whose lights are brighter.
- 29083011397778 6y ago> Some cars have a rear mirror that can dim them to tolerable levels, but not the side mirrors The US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration actually has a suggestion for eliminating the glare and reducing blindspots [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/blindzoneglaremirrormethod.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/blindzonegla...
- ComputerGuru 6y agoThat's OK if you have a reverse camera but will make driving or parking in reverse absolutely impossible if you don't. Clever suggestion, otherwise.
- extrapickles 6y agoIts becoming more of a problem as aftermarket LEDs get more popular. The xenon kits were only installed by people who wanted to be 'cool', but LEDs are getting installed by people who want to save money or effort in replacing their halogen headlamp bulbs. What is worse about the LEDs is that they are sold as "compatible" to various vehicles, when that means they will work mechanically/electrically, but not optically (some actually try to put LEDs in the same spot as the filament). All of the units I've seen cause the car headlamp to put out light at higher angles than a halogen bulb will, causing more glare for opposing traffic.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>Is this still a big problem? No. Retrofitting Xenon bulbs is an expensive pain in the ass compared to dropping in some LED replacement bulbs for a marginal increase in light and little to no increase in glare or change in beam pattern because they're made to be geometrically equivalent to the halogen bulbs they replace (which they kind of need to be in order to work adequately in all possible applications for whatever bulb they replace) At the very high end you can get stupid bright LEDs but pretty much nobody does that because they are expensive. Most of the glare you see is from OEM headlight assemblies (regardless of the type of bulb installed) that were simply not designed with not blinding other people as more than a "check the compliance box so we can get back to optimizing for every other metric" sized priority.
- enahs-sf 6y agohaving had several german cars in the past, it's not that hard to import euro-spec headlights and install them, but your jaw might drop when you see the price.
- lvspiff 6y agoThe worst thing to happen to America was Autozone and Fast and Furious. Cheap aftermarket modifications to your car being sold to people with no knowledge of what they were doing but wanted it too look cool cause they saw it in the movie. Its led to years of teenagers with no training putting things on their cars that turn them into obnoxious spectacles on the road. I know I sound like an old coot but frankly I'm glad my dad showed me how to install/aim headlights and along with explaining the benefits of a working unmodified exhaust system and how it should sound.
- bch 6y ago> I know I sound like an old coot but frankly I'm glad my dad showed me how to install/aim headlights and along with explaining the benefits of a working unmodified exhaust system and how it should sound. Reminds me of the hotrodding chapter of John Muirs[0] venerable How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive [...] for the Compleat Idiot[1] that starts describing the interplay between various systems and how just throwing a hot cam into an engine and calling it a day is a bad idea. Basically - How to hotrod your engine: 1) don’t 2) if you must here’s what you really need to know [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir_(engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir_(engineer) [1] https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1566913101 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1566913101
- jrockway 6y agoI think it's great that it's relatively common to work on a complex piece of machinery that you use daily. You get the joys of understanding how a large system works and being able to tweak it according to your desires. It could easily go the other way, where every subsystem is DRM'd and only licensed professionals were allowed to touch it. Letting anyone do whatever they want can obviously lead to problems, like headlights that blind people or parts that fall off and kill the person behind them. But overall, I think I like the world where people are free to experiment and create.
- encom 6y ago>every subsystem is DRM'd and only licensed professionals were allowed to touch it Kind of like how smartphones are right now.
- bob1029 6y agoI challenge you on the assertion that this trend of illegal lighting is many times worse than obnoxiously loud exhaust. Life safety is certainly a bigger factor with the headlights, but all other aspects are orders of magnitude more disruptive on the acoustic side. Having bright-as-sun headlights driving around town at 3am is not going to cause a lot of trouble for most residents (as they would be indoors sleeping peacefully). On the other hand, someone driving around at 3am in a turbo diesel truck with muffler delete may be able to single-handedly rouse your entire town from its slumber. Which one of these actors has the most adverse net impact on society?
- missedthecue 6y agoMake it 9pm rather than 3am. I'd say the headlights are worse.
- mtVessel 6y agoLet's see, what's worse? Being rudely awakened, or being maimed/killed by a driver who literally cannot see? I suppose in terms of net impact to society, there's no way of deciding without knowing in advance if the hypothetical victim is Mother Theresa or Hitler, so it's kind of a wash. But for me (and feel free to disagree), I'm going to err on the side of preventing a devastating impact to a small number, over a minor annoyance to many.
- corey_moncure 6y agoBeing rudely awakened too many times in a night results in a driver who cannot drive safely the next morning.
- a2tech 6y agoMy parents live near Lake Michigan (although decidedly NOT on the lake) and I made the mistake of visiting them last weekend and driving home on Sunday night when everyone was migrating from their lake house back to the city. I think I spent roughly half the drive back with stars in my eyes from people in Audis and BMWs blowing by me with their ridiculously bright headlights. If I made the mistake of checking my blindspot at the wrong moment of glancing in the side mirror when one of them was blowing by me I'd be left half blind. I don't know whether they were driving with their high beams on accidentally on a crowded expressway or if their lights were just that bright but it was a damned menace. Give me shittier yellow old style bulbs any day over that.
- sandworm101 6y agoLake country + Sunday night = high beams. When people improperly load vehicles, especially when towing things like boats, the headlights tip upwards. You were probably seeing overloaded vehicles, trailers with high tongue weights because they pushed everything to the front rather than center the cargo over the axle. That pushes the back of the truck down and the headlights up.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoAll it takes is aftermarket lighting with the cutoff in a different position and nobody willing to bother reaiming the lights. I see this a lot. The low beams are notionally not too bright but they are pointing forward without any effective cutoff.
- Leherenn 6y agoIsn't it checked? In my country it is part of the standard check during the mandatory technical certification of the vehicle every few years.
- twelve40 6y agoThe only thing i ever have to do in California is a smog check. I drive regular cars and I take care of them, but I never had to test for anything other than smog check here to renew the registration.
- notacoward 6y agoEven the came-with-the-car headlights are often dangerously bright, no need to assume they're aftermarket.
- serf 6y agoI assume they're aftermarket when they're on an early 90s economy cars, they're two different colors, and the refractor is scattering the light up past street signs -- not when they're just bright. brightness isn't the issue, precision is.
- beenBoutIT 6y agoPart of the problem stems from the fact that as cars age the headlight lenses oxidize and the original bulb's light becomes insufficient to light up the road ahead of the car. Some drivers are fixing the problem by swapping in much brighter aftermarket bulbs as opposed to replacing or resurfacing the lenses. It's easy to verify this by looking at the headlights of the offending cars after they've parked.
- pfranz 6y agoThere are a few products that clear that up. I remember my mechanic doing it for me and it does make a noticeable difference. I would think any auto parts store would offer it to anyone buying bulbs as an up-sell.
- metrokoi 6y agoIn my experience at least, the cars I always have issues with are new ones with stock headlights, not modded cars. There are far less modded cars of course, but they always seem to be aimed lower to the road because they are lower cars in general.
- ramenmeal 6y agoI've noticed newer Toyota headlights's are really bright and angled too high up. That or Toyota drivers leave their brights on more.
- kerkeslager 6y agoIn my area, the police cars themselves have blinding LED beams.
- smileysteve 6y agoSomebody read that visibility saves lives but assumed brightness = visibility
- totetsu 6y agoWhen I am cycling at night, I sometimes carry a flashlight to shine at the windscreen of people who can't not blind me.
- ARandomerDude 6y agoAre you sure temporarily blinding someone coming toward you in a vehicle is a wise tantrum to throw?
- BoorishBears 6y agoEh, as someone who rides a road bike pretty often, this is par for the course for the "community" We should be glad the kind of person who would go out of their way to endanger themselves and others with something as useless and petty as... retaliatory light flashing is on a bicycle instead of a 2 ton vehicle. The people who give cyclists a bad name are never self-aware
- totetsu 6y agoI'm not trying to be petty, or throw a tantrum. I'm not talking a 10000s of lumens here. It's just the only sure fire way to educate the driver about the problem fast enough. It usually works out that we both stop shining lights in each others eyes, and and pass safer and wiser.
- usrusr 6y agoYes. A four-wheeler will just go on straight ahead in a stable and predictable manner when I stop giving control input. But a two wheeler will quickly come off course when I lose visual feedback because it's a dynamic balance that requires continuous recalibration. It's a very good idea to signal that you are getting blinded.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoThese are very good points.
- 6y ago
- tmaly 6y agoThe base price of the car in the article is $217k. I would expect it to have superior lights. The xeon light addon for a porsche in 2013 was $2k.
- ReptileMan 6y agoI just put yellow tinted glasses. No problem at all. Also modern cars have a lot of light inside the cabin so it is harder to get blinded.
- rubber_duck 6y agoAren't fancy lights exactly what you want ? The projector LEDs have detection and selectively turn off beams aiming at others.
- paganel 6y ago>groups like Audi/Porsche/BMW have trouble bringing their fancy LED setups Unfortunately those fancy LED setups are a headache for the rest of us drivers sharing the roads with those models, because they're also bright as hell from the factory. Fortunately the tacky way Audi had implemented its rear-lights signalling wasn't adopted by the wider industry, and I think the VW group itself is having second thoughts about it. A rear-light should only inform me about the driving intentions of the car's owner, not visually distract me with its rear-life <marquee>-like implementation.
- namdnay 6y ago> Unfortunately those fancy LED setups are a headache for the rest of us drivers sharing the roads with those models, because they're also bright as hell from the factory. Really? I'd say about 10% of cars here are LEDs and an additional 25% are Xenons, and honestly it isn't particularly bothering. They don't blind you because the beam is pointed downwards. > Fortunately the tacky way Audi had implemented its rear-lights signalling wasn't adopted by the wider industry, and I think the VW group itself is having second thoughts about it. Not sure about that, they're rolling it our across VW models now, and Renault (or was it Peugeot) have started copying it on some models...
- paganel 6y ago> Not sure about that, they're rolling it our across VW models now, My bad then. At least I think they made the newer implementations a little bit less obnoxious, I can only notice them on Audis that are a few years old (like 2013-2015, even newer), on the newer Seats or Skodas they are not such in "your face". > They don't blind you because the beam is pointed downwards. Maybe the drivers around these parts of the continent are doing it wrong, thing is that driving at night has become particularly challenging when there's even slight traffic coming from the other way. And I don't think I'm that old (I'm 39) or with a particular bad eye-sight. It also doesn't help that I drive a small 1.4l hatchback while the majority of newer cars seem to be higher CUVs/SUVs, in which case them "pointing their lights downwards" practically means them pointing the lights straight at me.
- hef19898 6y agoThe funny thing is, German tuners complain the other way. Why are factory cars allowed to have a certain noise level (or something else) and I am not allowed to do the same thing with after market parts. But then we have TÜV and all kinds of laws around that.
- mumblemumble 6y agoAlso fog lights being left on at all times. When I'm being followed by an SUV with a relatively high chassis and a set of fog lights that the owner blithely keeps turned on, it can be very nearly physically painful for me.
- dhimes 6y agoFog lights? Mine are mounted and shine low. I thought they all were so they don't bounce back into the driver's eyes when there is actually fog.
- mumblemumble 6y agoWhat's low relative to the height of the driver in the kinds of vehicles that typically come equipped with fog lights can be quite high relative to the kinds of vehicles that typically don't. Also, a lot of fog lights don't, from what I can tell, seem to be anywhere near as focused as headlights. Granted, I'm no expert on fog lights, so I could be misunderstanding the details of the situation. I've never owned them, so I haven't had occasion to know how they're supposed to work. All I really know about them is that they regularly blind me when I'm driving at night.
- aidenn0 6y agoDon't forget people with raised pickups that now have their headlights above the height of your eyes. I've had to point my rear-view mirror at the ceiling with those behind me.