10 ms·
People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.
by vondur 3y ago
People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoReplacing old style headlight bulbs with LEDs in housings not designed for them is an increasing problem too, making driving at night often something that is best done with a pair of sunglasses.
- HPsquared 3y agoAlso headlights are simply higher on average than they used to be (larger vehicles). Very noticeable if you drive a low car. Yet another "arms race" dynamic.
- stjohnswarts 3y ago99% of it is people not adjusting the pitch of their headlights or turning on their brights and leaving them on. I had a truck and it was fine, because I cared enough to watch a 5 minute video on how to adjust the angle after a new install of bulbs
- twothamendment 3y agoWe have a newer Subaru and were getting flashed like it was Mardi Gras. I started looking into adjusting the lights and found several places talking about how the Subarus are to high right from the dealer and their service department. That was enough to convince me to just do it. I don't have a level spot with the recommended distance so we went with some tape on the garage door as a reference. We got them a tad low the first time and raised them up a bit. I can still see and apparently everyone else can too because nobody is flashing their lights at us. Our other vehicle is a 2014 3/4 ton Ram pickup. Nobody ever flashes me in it.
- fingerlocks 3y agoNot sure if it’s still a thing, but the STI in the mid-00s had a physical slider wheel on the driver side console that changed the pitch of headlights. It was probably a geeky race thing, adjust the pitch when you add weight to the rear maybe? Either way, it’s genius. I don’t know why that isn’t offered in more vehicles.
- Toutouxc 3y agoInteresting, every single car I've ever driven over here (Europe) has had that slider/knob, I'm pretty sure it's required by law. Newer cars with xenon headlights above a certain wattage must have self-leveling + headlight washers to be road legal.
- fingerlocks 3y agoI have family in Europe and visit quite often, never noticed that. Most of the time I get stuck with a Renault even when I try to reserve a nicer rental. I don’t know how those cars are legal. It’s like someone put a car engine in a broken shopping cart.
- seszett 3y agoWell I don't know which Renault you have had, but the Austral and Arkana have a button instead that cycles between 5 different levels. I wouldn't call them shopping carts either but if you come from the US you might have different size expectations.
- consp 3y ago> adjust the pitch when you add weight to the rear maybe? That is exactly the purpose and required (or via dashboard electronics) in most vehicles in the EU after a certain date (don't know which exactly and also I do not know the exact rules but every car i've ever owned had those). Automatic is also fine. They are not meant for "Alternative High beam" as what some people use them for. The "clip" on the rear view mirror is also not meant for looking at your kids in the rear. It's meant to flip the mirror up so the reflection is not by the mirror but by the refractive index of the glass any you see a "dimmed" image of the high beams behind you.
- vvillena 3y agoThis is indeed a regulation failure. Vehicle lights should have a height limit, but instead, their placement is dictated by aesthetics. SUVs and pickups should have their front lights placed at the bottom front corners, but instead, it's the top front corners.
- gizajob 3y agoI often think that the need for superbright headlights could be avoided if the owners just realised they could drive with “full beam” on all the time.
- katbyte 3y agoSome new vehicles come way to bright too, the absolute worst for this seem to be teslas and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was poor qa on bulb alignment
- borissk 3y agoHmmm, the worst I've seen are german cars with laser and matrix LED lights. Followed by cars fitted with chinese lights off ebay, whose manufacturers don't care about any local regulations.
- twothamendment 3y agoSubaru has theirs adjusted too high from the factory. They are nice, bright lights, but now that I adjusted them down nobody flashes their brights at me.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoI would pay for some moon glasses just for this, don't need to be as dark as sun glasses but something you can grab in an emergency with the super brights where the owner didn't know (or didn't care) to adjust the angle of the headlights to something sane. I'ver had to literally grab my rearview at times and angle it completely and the shit was still reflecting partially on the window and chrome components in my car annoyingly
- quacksilver 3y agoi wonder if some adapted cheap 'automatic welding goggles' would work...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wimp 3y agoI cannot see the road safely at night anymore, so I avoid driving at night entirely. Complete failure of government to regulate and enforce headlight position and brightness. Since I don’t drive an 8ft tall truck with permanent high beams, I eventually got forced off the road.
- gabeio 3y ago> Complete failure of government to regulate and enforce headlight position and brightness. In my state the only thing they check is the diagnostics to make sure your car isn’t polluting too much otherwise you can drive around just about anything that starts…
- rectang 3y agoI flash my headlights at cars whose lights are too blinding, under the assumption that the driver accidentally left their brights on. If I’m wrong and their lights are always like that, my assumption is that they would appreciate someone letting them know anyway. If it happens a lot, maybe they’ll figure it out and correct their embarrassing problem. And if they’ve jerks who know they’re blinding others but just don’t care (or savor it) oh well they should still hear about it.
- dsego 3y agoThe way I do it is not flashing, which can be misinterpreted as police ahead or something else. I just turn on my high beams until they lower theirs and it works most of the time.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoIn my experience this leads to the realization they don't have meaningful low beams at all. Just high beams and higher beams.
- broguinn 3y agoSomeone flashed their lights at me this very morning at around 5:00 am. At first I thought it was because my lights were off, then realized they thought my brights were on. They weren't, it's just that my new car has LEDs that are - apparently - quite bright.
- mrtesthah 3y agoYou’re endangering yourself by temporarily blinding oncoming drivers and you should get your car serviced.
- deepGem 3y agoI cannot upvote this comment enough. I can't stand these blue/white LED headlights. What an abomination in the night. To top this, in India highways are littered with white LED street lights. I really miss cruising at 65-70 mph on a dark highway, with just the reflectors to guide my path, lit by the the pleasant yellow headlights.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoThis has also become a problem as a cyclist. I live in a bicycles-first city, commute that way almost every day, and over the past decade when LED lights became the norm, almost every day during this time of the year there's at least one person that just mindlessly snapped their headlight onto the handlebar. It might just fully shine into your face. Back in the days of those dim incandescent bulbs powered by whimsy generators, it basically didn't matter which direction the light pointed, but with super efficient battery-powered lights, this is annoying. And if both of you are traveling at even just moderate speeds, you don't even have time to communicate the issue in a proper way, except for maybe shouting "it's blinding" and hoping the other person can put two and two together.
- rightbyte 3y agoThank you. I thought my eyes were the problem. But I noticed meeting olders cars is not as bad.
- paganel 3y agoOften times I think it's just me and my eyesight getting older, which is certainly the case, but it kind of reassures me to see that there are other people noticing this insane phenomenon, too. And I say it is insane because in many, many cases I just have to slow down when encountering those lights coming from the opposite direction, for the sole reason that I get blinded by them and I can't see the road for one, two, God knows how many seconds. It's insane, from a safety perspective, that we're allowing blinding devices out there on the road.
- wimp 3y agoIt also gets worse year over year, as more and more of these vehicles accumulate. Which is the same pattern as your eyesight gradually degrading. But no, the lights really are blinding everyone. It’s utterly stupid.
- verisimi 3y agoI totally agree. What exactly are government safety agencies for exactly, if they can't even sort this obvious problem out?
- uoaei 3y agoI've been driving a drinking-age Jeep Cherokee and the acceleration and top speed make me remember how it felt to drive 20 years ago. The street and road design makes a lot more sense at those speeds. We've gotten used to faster and peppier cars over the years but meanwhile the roads haven't changed to accommodate that.
- MalcolmDwyer 3y agoWell please let's not just rebuild all our roads to accommodate the fastest and stupidest drivers. (See above about pedestrian and cyclist safety). I guess that's just always happening anyway. Except in a few cities doing proper bike lanes, roads are always getting widened, intersections expanded.
- xmcqdpt2 3y agoI drive what is basically the slowest new car you can currently buy in North America (0-100 kph in 11 seconds, vroooom). I just have to floor it on highway ramps. Most cars accelerate much quicker, so people get used to never depressing the pedal more than like 1/3 and end up doing 0-100 kph in more than 10 seconds anyway. IMO the faster acceleration and heavier weight of electric cars will just lead to much more disastrous accident when people (for example) press on the wrong pedal. Long term the extra deaths are probably balanced out if the more dangerous cars displace enough fuel cars and lower carbon emissions and air pollution... but I wish we regulated acceleration (maybe with a different license category, like we do with trucks?) It shouldn't be possible to kill someone 10 m in front of your car when leaving from a stop because the manufacturer wants to impress professional car reviewers.
- pockybum522 3y agoStarted during the pandemic? My friend, I think you just might not remember how terribly people drove pre-pandemic as well.
- ch4s3 3y agoFWIW there's some insurance claims data to suggest that driving got worse in 2020 on average in the US.
- mint2 3y agoNo, it’s true. People started driving like they were fleeing zombies during the pandemic, and the behaviors stuck. With the roads deserted people went faster and more carelessly. When things recovered and roads got crowded they didn’t tone their driving back down. I do insurance things. It’s well known in the field.
- paiute 3y agoI suspect vision zero policy and phones are also major contributors. Traffic Engineers across the country are setting traffic lights to reduce the flow of traffic to 20mph without changing the actual speed limit. It’s making people crazy.
- smcameron 3y agoRunning lights... that's what daytime running lights are for, no? Switch those babies on and blast through. /s
- palemoonale 3y agoEver driven in the Philippines?
- stjohnswarts 3y agopeople always drove horribly.
- koliber 3y agoI noticed that too, but I am questioning myself. I’m wondering how much other people’s driving has gotten worse, vs me getting older, more defensive and risk averse, and noticing such driving. If I look back to my 20s, I was not an exemplary driver.
- jimbob45 3y agoCell phones were a huge mistake. I was walking my dog and saw someone eyes fully down doing 20 in the street. It was late and empty but if anyone had been in the street, they’d have been dead. That distraction didn’t exist 25 years ago on the scale it does today. I wish cell phone use penalties would be promoted closer to those of alcohol use while driving.
- euroderf 3y agoTurning the passenger compartment into a Faraday cage might be a start, altho people would hack around it.
- close04 3y ago> Cell phones were a huge mistake This kind of exaggeration undermines any point. An invention as useful as the cell phone was a mistake because people (ab)use it while driving? Any invention is used and abused but the benefits of this invention far outweigh the drawbacks. I'm sure more lives were saved by the mobile phone, and even more were made better, than were taken.
- throwaway914 3y agoMy counterpoint to this is there have always been a ton of bad drivers. The most important skill to have is to be a predictable driver. Bad drivers will always exist. You cannot change them, and the great number of them is not likely to drop to 0 overnight. The best thing you can do is drive in a way that even bad drivers expect. Be a speed-limited, blinker-indicating, cautious log in the river. They will parkour around you and you will be fine. Greatly limit your reactions to things. If you freak out, others around you will freak out. Bad drivers cause okay drivers to perform worse. Herd mentality. (Obvious disclaimer: The best defensive driving in the world won't prevent all accidents)
- genocidicbunny 3y agoBoth you and the parent post are correct. There have always been bad drivers, a lot of them, and defensive driving is the best thing for that. But at the same time, I have anecdotally been observing a serious breakdown in people following the rules. All the things the parent mentioned have become more frequent in my experience -- the number of times I see blatant bad and malicious driving behaviours has increased significantly in the last few years, except I drive maybe a 3rd of the miles per year that I used to 5 years ago. The density of terrible/self-absorbed drivers has significantly increased. It's gotten to the point where even defensive driving doesn't do much. How do you defensively drive against someone just blasting through a red light 15 seconds after it turned red and cross traffic is moving steadily? Or the guy in a lifted truck who decides to force you into the shoulder because he thinks it's funny?
- hutzlibu 3y ago"How do you defensively drive against someone just blasting through a red light 15 seconds after it turned red and cross traffic is moving steadily? Or the guy in a lifted truck who decides to force you into the shoulder because he thinks it's funny?" Probably upgrading to a tank at some point. Or bringing a gun. Or bribe politicians, that they urge the police to focus on maintaining sanity on the roads and take away the licence(and at some point the cars) from those drivers eagerly. Honestly, if I can, I drive a bicycle, even now in wintertime. But I often indeed wished for a gun, to bring awareness to my fragile self. To express, that I also have rights on the road, despite being lighter. But I am aware, this might not be the best solution overall.
- nicbou 3y agoI am not American but I read this again and again. The most correlated reason, I have read, is that the police explicitly stopped enforcing laws in many places, in reaction to some larger political event. I forgot which.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoOh yes. I live in one of those places. It was when a new sheriff was elected who wasn't driven by ever-fattening budgets. The first thing he did - stop allowing fine revenue to influence enforcement. Ticketing dropped. Also the quality of policing in general (and officers specifically) improved dramatically. We had way better cops than under the previous sheriff.
- CalRobert 3y agoOne thing I learned after getting a motorcycle license is that a huge percentage of drivers are staring at their phone.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago"drunk or phone" is a game that I play.
- verisimi 3y agoPerhaps they have been damaged by medical treatments? Could be due to lower mental and physical capabilities.
- sampo 3y ago> People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. No longer bothering to turn off long beam headlights, when there is oncoming traffic. And with the new bright led lights, the long beams are really bright. Sometimes even the low beam lights feel too bright, especially if the oncoming car is big, and thus has its headlights sitting higher up.
- lsaferite 3y agoMost of the US, AFAIK, doesn't have a mandatory yearly vehicle inspection like Germany (and other countries). Mix that with massive trucks with massive lift kits and you get these fun road behemoths that blind you, even with low beams. It's infuriating. I walked past a lifted truck yesterday in a parking lot and it's hood was level with the top of my head. I'm 6ft tall. It was comically large. How can you drive something like that around? You could hide an entire family in the front blind spot!
- GartzenDeHaes 3y agoThe GTA5 kids grew up and are living their dreams.
- ChoGGi 3y agoGOURANGA
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tomwheeler 3y agoI think you forgot "looking at their phone instead of the road."
- jxramos 3y agowhat's the reference to running lights?