7 ms·

Also, cars have gotten a lot brighter over the past 20 years or so. Since ultra-bright halogen style headlights became standard, it's become much more difficult

Also, cars have gotten a lot brighter over the past 20 years or so. Since ultra-bright halogen style headlights became standard, it's become much more difficult for my eyes to adjust back to darkness after passing oncoming traffic. I always considered them hazardous to other drivers. My car's from the 80s and after passing some of these monstrous lit up things it's hard to tell if my own headlights are on. It seems like there's been some kind of race to have the brightest headlights on the road.

bennyg 5y ago
As someone with incredibly bad eyes, going from my 2015 Honda Accord's stock headlights to a Tesla Model 3's brighter LEDs have been a big boon on my driving confidence at night. Just offering a different perspective that I actually like the brightness race since it's improved my ability to drive.
- Frenchgeek 5y ago
  As someone who see fairly well in the dark: I too often find myself nearly unable to see what's in front of me because of the car behind. It also makes judging the distance and speed of a passing vehicle a literal pain.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Yeah, cars behind you is another thing. Especially if it's a pickup truck with the beams high up at level with a sedan's mirrors.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  > I actually like the brightness race since it's improved my ability to drive. Unfortunately you are not taking into account how that brightness impairs other drivers ability to see. I do agree with the parent, I do feel more distracted by bright flashes of blueish-white light from modern head lamps. Roads aren't flat. Cars bounce, dip, and hop over hills, bumps and pot holes. Never mind the jerks who regularly drive with high beams on or forget to turn them off when passing. Those sudden flashes of light cause floaters in your field of vision leaving you temporarily blinded. This is a problem that no one seems to care about and I feel like we are ignoring these issues on purpose.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    More and more I'm starting to be convinced that driving at night is just absolutely insane for various reasons.
    - MisterTea 5y ago
      The roads are more insane ALL the time post covid. Tempers are flaring over restrictions, people divided over dumb shit, etc, ad nauseum. I have to either move or quit my job because the commute is now soul sucking. People drive really selfishly, some even retaliating on road with vehicular violence. This morning on my way in I was merging onto the highway, then accelerated and move into the middle lane to cruise for a while. Apparently I misjudged a dude who must have been doing 80+ in the middle lane, in a 50 zone as he was up my ass in seconds when he was a few hundred feet back in my mirror when moving over. So he goes around me and violently cuts me off almost hitting me, on purpose (he had a passenger too). You believe that shit. Fucking guy was mad I got in his way when he was getting off in a few hundred feet anyway and should have just went into the right lane and grannied the remaining few hundred but no. I wanted to drink the blood from his still beating heart after that fucking shit and I almost saw red and lost it reaching for my bat. but I have to eat that, drive defensively, and go on about my day because engaging in road violence puts everyone else at risk and is pure dumb. Fuck em. It's a shame they can get away with this crap.
      - noduerme 5y ago
        I drive fast, always drove fast, and if I'm doing 100 and come up on a bimbo box in the fastlane I'll be flashing my lights. That being said, I'll brake at a safe distance and wait them out like a dying hospital patient if they don't get the message. What I'm describing here is an old LA to Vegas 2.5 hr, radar watching mentality where you're highly aware and entirely sober and the point is low visibility and getting there in the dark, fast. Whatever has happened after covid is different. I don't think it's the frustration of lockdowns or whatever. I think people have lost a solid 10 IQ points and have had a few mm's shaved off their frontal lobes. No self control or self awareness. No sense of self preservation, (as I wrote that, outside a bar on a side street in Portland, a car just rocketed by at 70 in a 25 zone). So the knock-on effect of a lot of borderline people becoming total sociopathic assholes is that relatively responsible people like you and I start to lose our minds being surrounded by them acting like hyperactive zombies. This might be how our civilization falls - after all, it wasn't Justinian's plague that finally killed Rome, it just knocked out the last of the cultural niceties that allowed an empire to function. Whatever, this is a drunk post but feel free to deconstruct it.
- celtain 5y ago
  I'm not trying to criticize you, car dependence isn't your fault, but it would be nice if somebody with "incredibly bad eyes" wasn't forced to operate a piece of heavy machinery just to get around in the first place.
- munificent 5y ago
  As someone also with bad eyes, everyone else going to LEDs has been a huge hindrance to my driving confidence at night. The light your own car produces will always be only a tiny fraction of the illumination you see when driving because you only see the subset of it that gets reflected back by the road and other objects. But the headlights of other cars shine directly in your eyes. When I drive at night now, I see mostly harsh headlight glare surrounded by inky blackness.
  - EricE 5y ago
    LED headlight arrays are far more effective at eliminating spill over than HID or halogen lights. My parents have a 2019 Acura RDX and the lighting on it is very precise and much lower than the previous cars they or I have owned. Being able to see farther at night significantly reduces the amount of accidents. If oncoming headlights bother you then the move to LED should be embraced. Nothing like getting swatted with a HID projector lamp. LED arrays are also a lot more compact, so features like self leveling will hopefully be more likely to spread to more models instead of being purely a luxury feature, further reducing the amount of overspill in oncoming headlights.
    - laurencerowe 5y ago
      Do LED headlights help when drivers leave headlights on full beam when there is oncoming traffic? (The norm in California.)
  - whatever1 5y ago
    That should be a straightforward problem to solve with an lcd layer for the windshield and a camera tracking the eyes of the driver. Windshield could black out specific spots that are too bright for the driver. This could apply either for headlights of other cars or the Sun
    - addaon 5y ago
      Interesting idea, but the failure modes here are spectacular.
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  On the other side of things, I have decent eyesight at night until I see one of these headlights, which is frequent enough that I'm half tempted to just wear sunglasses at night.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
I think what you are noticing is that the frequency of light emitted from halogen is very wide and generally warmer in color (almost orange), but at the other end of the scale, LED lights are a very narrow range of (blue white) light frequencies whilst being energy efficient makes it harder to see at night because the eyes are not used to this narrow band of light frequencies. What I dont like about LED's is I can see them flickering in some situations, you dont get that with the warmer halogen bulbs, but even with halogen bulbs, you can see how a car is wired by seeing which brake light comes on first as the electricity moves down the circuit to the next brake light. In other words you can work out what side the wiring loom runs down to the back of the car!
- addaon 5y ago
  > you can see how a car is wired by seeing which brake light comes on first as the electricity moves down the circuit to the next brake light Suppose the loom doesn't run from brake to brake, but instead runs all the way back to the front of the car and back, for a 10 meter total run. With electricity traveling in wires at roughly two thirds the speed of light, this is just about 50 nanoseconds. While sensitivity to slight timing differences can be acute (is there a term for the temporal equivalent of Vernier acuity?), detecting a 50 ns difference is implausible.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    Some manufacturers are worse than others, Vauxhalls and Fords I could often see the delay between the two rear lights coming on. When ever I've had passengers in the car, I've asked them if they can tell which brake light is coming on first most dont notice it until I point it out. Anyway just because you dont believe me doesnt mean I'm wrong!

bennyg 5y ago

As someone with incredibly bad eyes, going from my 2015 Honda Accord's stock headlights to a Tesla Model 3's brighter LEDs have been a big boon on my driving confidence at night. Just offering a different perspective that I actually like the brightness race since it's improved my ability to drive.

Frenchgeek 5y ago
As someone who see fairly well in the dark: I too often find myself nearly unable to see what's in front of me because of the car behind. It also makes judging the distance and speed of a passing vehicle a literal pain.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Yeah, cars behind you is another thing. Especially if it's a pickup truck with the beams high up at level with a sedan's mirrors.
MisterTea 5y ago
> I actually like the brightness race since it's improved my ability to drive. Unfortunately you are not taking into account how that brightness impairs other drivers ability to see. I do agree with the parent, I do feel more distracted by bright flashes of blueish-white light from modern head lamps. Roads aren't flat. Cars bounce, dip, and hop over hills, bumps and pot holes. Never mind the jerks who regularly drive with high beams on or forget to turn them off when passing. Those sudden flashes of light cause floaters in your field of vision leaving you temporarily blinded. This is a problem that no one seems to care about and I feel like we are ignoring these issues on purpose.
- bombcar 5y ago
  More and more I'm starting to be convinced that driving at night is just absolutely insane for various reasons.
  - MisterTea 5y ago
    The roads are more insane ALL the time post covid. Tempers are flaring over restrictions, people divided over dumb shit, etc, ad nauseum. I have to either move or quit my job because the commute is now soul sucking. People drive really selfishly, some even retaliating on road with vehicular violence. This morning on my way in I was merging onto the highway, then accelerated and move into the middle lane to cruise for a while. Apparently I misjudged a dude who must have been doing 80+ in the middle lane, in a 50 zone as he was up my ass in seconds when he was a few hundred feet back in my mirror when moving over. So he goes around me and violently cuts me off almost hitting me, on purpose (he had a passenger too). You believe that shit. Fucking guy was mad I got in his way when he was getting off in a few hundred feet anyway and should have just went into the right lane and grannied the remaining few hundred but no. I wanted to drink the blood from his still beating heart after that fucking shit and I almost saw red and lost it reaching for my bat. but I have to eat that, drive defensively, and go on about my day because engaging in road violence puts everyone else at risk and is pure dumb. Fuck em. It's a shame they can get away with this crap.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      I drive fast, always drove fast, and if I'm doing 100 and come up on a bimbo box in the fastlane I'll be flashing my lights. That being said, I'll brake at a safe distance and wait them out like a dying hospital patient if they don't get the message. What I'm describing here is an old LA to Vegas 2.5 hr, radar watching mentality where you're highly aware and entirely sober and the point is low visibility and getting there in the dark, fast. Whatever has happened after covid is different. I don't think it's the frustration of lockdowns or whatever. I think people have lost a solid 10 IQ points and have had a few mm's shaved off their frontal lobes. No self control or self awareness. No sense of self preservation, (as I wrote that, outside a bar on a side street in Portland, a car just rocketed by at 70 in a 25 zone). So the knock-on effect of a lot of borderline people becoming total sociopathic assholes is that relatively responsible people like you and I start to lose our minds being surrounded by them acting like hyperactive zombies. This might be how our civilization falls - after all, it wasn't Justinian's plague that finally killed Rome, it just knocked out the last of the cultural niceties that allowed an empire to function. Whatever, this is a drunk post but feel free to deconstruct it.
celtain 5y ago
I'm not trying to criticize you, car dependence isn't your fault, but it would be nice if somebody with "incredibly bad eyes" wasn't forced to operate a piece of heavy machinery just to get around in the first place.
munificent 5y ago
As someone also with bad eyes, everyone else going to LEDs has been a huge hindrance to my driving confidence at night. The light your own car produces will always be only a tiny fraction of the illumination you see when driving because you only see the subset of it that gets reflected back by the road and other objects. But the headlights of other cars shine directly in your eyes. When I drive at night now, I see mostly harsh headlight glare surrounded by inky blackness.
- EricE 5y ago
  LED headlight arrays are far more effective at eliminating spill over than HID or halogen lights. My parents have a 2019 Acura RDX and the lighting on it is very precise and much lower than the previous cars they or I have owned. Being able to see farther at night significantly reduces the amount of accidents. If oncoming headlights bother you then the move to LED should be embraced. Nothing like getting swatted with a HID projector lamp. LED arrays are also a lot more compact, so features like self leveling will hopefully be more likely to spread to more models instead of being purely a luxury feature, further reducing the amount of overspill in oncoming headlights.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    Do LED headlights help when drivers leave headlights on full beam when there is oncoming traffic? (The norm in California.)
- whatever1 5y ago
  That should be a straightforward problem to solve with an lcd layer for the windshield and a camera tracking the eyes of the driver. Windshield could black out specific spots that are too bright for the driver. This could apply either for headlights of other cars or the Sun
  - addaon 5y ago
    Interesting idea, but the failure modes here are spectacular.
formerkrogemp 5y ago
On the other side of things, I have decent eyesight at night until I see one of these headlights, which is frequent enough that I'm half tempted to just wear sunglasses at night.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

I think what you are noticing is that the frequency of light emitted from halogen is very wide and generally warmer in color (almost orange), but at the other end of the scale, LED lights are a very narrow range of (blue white) light frequencies whilst being energy efficient makes it harder to see at night because the eyes are not used to this narrow band of light frequencies. What I dont like about LED's is I can see them flickering in some situations, you dont get that with the warmer halogen bulbs, but even with halogen bulbs, you can see how a car is wired by seeing which brake light comes on first as the electricity moves down the circuit to the next brake light. In other words you can work out what side the wiring loom runs down to the back of the car!

addaon 5y ago
> you can see how a car is wired by seeing which brake light comes on first as the electricity moves down the circuit to the next brake light Suppose the loom doesn't run from brake to brake, but instead runs all the way back to the front of the car and back, for a 10 meter total run. With electricity traveling in wires at roughly two thirds the speed of light, this is just about 50 nanoseconds. While sensitivity to slight timing differences can be acute (is there a term for the temporal equivalent of Vernier acuity?), detecting a 50 ns difference is implausible.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  Some manufacturers are worse than others, Vauxhalls and Fords I could often see the delay between the two rear lights coming on. When ever I've had passengers in the car, I've asked them if they can tell which brake light is coming on first most dont notice it until I point it out. Anyway just because you dont believe me doesnt mean I'm wrong!