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This sentence stood out to me: > Due to a software data set error, the affected vehicles were programmed from the factory after the Economic Commission for Eur

This sentence stood out to me: > Due to a software data set error, the affected vehicles were programmed from the factory after the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) specs, whereas U.S.-spec vehicles need to conform to the requirements of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS). Presumably, if there were a way for the headlights to comply with both US and EU regulations, they'd just have them be that way everywhere, rather than having to deal with multiple configurations at all. So are the US and EU both saying that each other's way is wrong and too dangerous?

echoangle 2y ago
Since the brightness seems to be the issue, the only way I his makes sense to me is: The US limits the brightness to X, the EU limits the brightness to Y, and Y > X. Porsche could just make every car globally use X, but they’re a luxury brand so they probably try to use Y where they can, even if it is a bit of work to differentiate between markets.
- tomatotomato37 2y ago
  Porsche is also based in the EU so starting with a design that meets EU specs and then adjusting export models as needed is probably their procedure anyway
- Symbiote 2y ago
  It's a significant difference. I doubt any manufacturer would want to limit their European vehicles to the American maximum: > European lighting standards (UNECE) allow over two times the light output from high beam headlight systems as compared to the U.S. (Broertjes, 2018). U.S. compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 150,000 candela while European compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 430,000 candela (Official Journal of the European Union, 2018). This provides for gains in sight distance, but also increases the potential for glare to affect oncoming and preceding traffic when high beams are not dimmed. And > 3. European specification systems consistently provided more roadway lighting when an oncoming vehicle was approaching, or a preceding vehicle was close. > a. Based on static target illumination data, the increase in roadway lighting could be as much as 86 percent (comparison of average European specification high beam to U.S. specification low beam). https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/ResearchReportEuroSpecvsUSHeadlamps.pdf https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/ResearchReportEuroS... (scroll to at least page 19-20 for illuminating illustrations).
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    The low beams on newer US cars are already blinding. Do people in the EU consistently behave politely and turn them off when appropriate?
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      The study is comparing "premium" headlights, which in the USA auto-lower for oncoming traffic, and in Europe auto-shade just that vehicle but leave the rest of the road fully illuminated. I don't have enough driving experience between the two countries to compare driver behaviour.
    - pmontra 2y ago
      People don't turn off low beams at night, why should they? They turn off high beams even if everybody forgets them on sometimes but that's inevitable. Low beams are getting too bright. I never turned my rear mirror into the anti glare position so often as in the last couple of years.
      - maxerickson 2y ago
        I'm not sure why you'd bother trying to converse with me if you thought I was asking about people turning off low beams at night. Plenty of people turn on their high beams and don't bother to manage them. I guess automatic dimming systems should help with that. Looking a bit, they don't necessarily default to on in US vehicles, which is likely to minimize the benefit.
        SoftTalker 2y ago
        The auto-dim systems don't always work, either. My mother-in-law's Toyota has this feature, and it seems to work when it wants to.
        trinix912 2y ago
        Same with a 2020 Honda Civic. Those auto-dim headlights shut themselves off in a timely manner about 50% of the time.
- Kon-Peki 2y ago
  This recall is for the high-beams. And yes, the EU allows brighter high-beams than the US. This seems to be the extent of the recall. But there are other differences between the EU and US. For example, on what the headlights are illuminating. US headlights shine more light off to the right of the vehicle than EU and I think it is due to the assumption that roadside signs are more often lit via headlights/refection in the US vs sign-mounted lighting in the EU. I think most people agree that EU regulations allow for significantly better headlights than US regulations allow. But those better headlights must be paired with an expensive adaptive system or they become terribly dangerous. If you compare "cheap car" headlights in the US vs EU they are probably very similar in performance.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- thephyber 2y ago
  Brightness of two headlights is not a single floating point number. There are regulations governing the spread/angle, the minimum brightness, the maximum brightness, how much an object at X distance is illuminated, whether the angle of the beams is too bright in the vision of oncoming drivers, etc.
  - mistercheph 2y ago
    and most manufacturers are guilty of dieselgate style skirting of regulations while upping the ante in the war to create the brightest most blinding headlight
potato3732842 2y ago
>So are the US and EU both saying that each other's way is wrong and too dangerous? Real life disagreements on minor technicalities between competing bureaucracies are not zero sum or conducted in breathless hand wringing internet rhetoric. It's more like a disagreement on a FOSS mailing list.
- groos 2y ago
  I believe EU allows directionally controllable projector headlights (my description, I don't know the official name). These can be brighter because they can be directed away from oncoming traffic. The US, in contrast, is lagging in approving this technology and puts an absolute limit on the brightness.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  I'm not surprised there's a disagreement. I'm surprised the disagreement is both sides saying "our way is safer", rather than it being one side saying "this safety benefit isn't worth it" and the other saying "yes it is".
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    The problem isn't the disagreement in specifications. It's the poor German quality control that doesn't prevent these mistakes from happening. This wasn't a significant problem when the parts were physically different for different markets and the assembly line would ensure the wrong parts weren't present.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > I'm surprised the disagreement is both sides saying "our way is safer" That's somewhat common for US/EU safety disagreements. Here's the canonical example, from back when the TTIP was still seriously being considered: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-american-eggs-would-be-illegal-in-a-british-supermarket-and-vice-versa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-am...
thephyber 2y ago
There are some notable value judgements that are different between US and EU regulations. I remember reading that the US car safety rules generally assume that the people in the car do not follow the rules, whereas EU regulations assume they follow the law and use seatbelts. US crash safety tests don’t care about the damage the car does to pedestrians, but EU regulations do factor that in. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449090584/why-arent-auto-safety-standards-universal https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449090584/why-arent-auto-safe...
- KK7NIL 2y ago
  > US car safety rules generally assume that the people in the car do not follow the rules > US crash safety tests don’t care about the damage the car does to pedestrians As a EU citizen living in the US, this makes perfect sense. The quality of driving here is far lower, I often see vehicles without plates or temp tags and it's not unusual to hear about uninsured drivers hitting people. It's ironic that such a car centric country naturally ends up with terrible drivers because of the low barrier to entry.
  - thephyber 2y ago
    IMHO, there’s diminishing returns in regulations that try to protect someone who actively doesn’t want to protect themselves. It just adds extra cost (R&D, complexity of design/manufacturing, different parts for different jurisdictions, different parts SKUs to stock, etc). The upside? It probably saves the lives of some people so reckless they shouldn’t be driving.
    - ilbeeper 2y ago
      And the pedestrians?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - lupusreal 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
abeppu 2y ago
But also, since it's a software-addressable issue, and because this process is likely such a headache, I wonder if in a couple of years they'll have a version that picks its headlight configuration based on your location. You'll drive over a border at night and do a slight double-take as your lights change their beam width or something.
onion2k 2y ago
Presumably, if there were a way for the headlights to comply with both US and EU regulations, they'd just have them be that way everywhere... Unless someone in the marketing department has determined that headlight brightness is a selling point for 0.001% of customers, in which case they'd configure them to the maximum allowed in the region.
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Ideally, a universal standard that balances both approaches would be the safest way forward
egorfine 2y ago
Bear in mind that matrix lights are the norm in EU on high end cars while in US they are prohibited. I bet that explains the brightness: you can have overly bright lights if they are matrix while obviously that would be detrimental in regular headlights.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Things like matrix lights used to be prohibited on new cars in the US. This has subsequently changed: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-driving-beam-headlights-new-vehicles-improving-safety-drivers https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...
  - egorfine 2y ago
    Oh, that's good news! (Why do I have a feeling that all the ways I can come up with to compliment the US for this achievement sound like irony?)
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      It's kind of meh news at this point. There's a ton of blinding vehicles on the road in the States, and it is getting worse at an accelerated rate, and even if fancy matrix-ey headlights became the norm it will take a Very Long Time for the old stuff to get cycled out. Up next, let me tell you about that time that we held onto analog AMPS cell phones for years longer than any developed country that I know if, and how when we did finally begin to transition to something digital we made sure that we failed to standardize on any one format and made all of them as incompatible with things like European GSM as we could.
      - egorfine 2y ago
        Oh yeah, tell me about it. > held onto analog AMPS cell *cough* faxes, anyone? *cough*

echoangle 2y ago

Since the brightness seems to be the issue, the only way I his makes sense to me is: The US limits the brightness to X, the EU limits the brightness to Y, and Y > X. Porsche could just make every car globally use X, but they’re a luxury brand so they probably try to use Y where they can, even if it is a bit of work to differentiate between markets.

tomatotomato37 2y ago
Porsche is also based in the EU so starting with a design that meets EU specs and then adjusting export models as needed is probably their procedure anyway
Symbiote 2y ago
It's a significant difference. I doubt any manufacturer would want to limit their European vehicles to the American maximum: > European lighting standards (UNECE) allow over two times the light output from high beam headlight systems as compared to the U.S. (Broertjes, 2018). U.S. compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 150,000 candela while European compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 430,000 candela (Official Journal of the European Union, 2018). This provides for gains in sight distance, but also increases the potential for glare to affect oncoming and preceding traffic when high beams are not dimmed. And > 3. European specification systems consistently provided more roadway lighting when an oncoming vehicle was approaching, or a preceding vehicle was close. > a. Based on static target illumination data, the increase in roadway lighting could be as much as 86 percent (comparison of average European specification high beam to U.S. specification low beam). https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/ResearchReportEuroSpecvsUSHeadlamps.pdf https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/ResearchReportEuroS... (scroll to at least page 19-20 for illuminating illustrations).
- maxerickson 2y ago
  The low beams on newer US cars are already blinding. Do people in the EU consistently behave politely and turn them off when appropriate?
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    The study is comparing "premium" headlights, which in the USA auto-lower for oncoming traffic, and in Europe auto-shade just that vehicle but leave the rest of the road fully illuminated. I don't have enough driving experience between the two countries to compare driver behaviour.
  - pmontra 2y ago
    People don't turn off low beams at night, why should they? They turn off high beams even if everybody forgets them on sometimes but that's inevitable. Low beams are getting too bright. I never turned my rear mirror into the anti glare position so often as in the last couple of years.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      I'm not sure why you'd bother trying to converse with me if you thought I was asking about people turning off low beams at night. Plenty of people turn on their high beams and don't bother to manage them. I guess automatic dimming systems should help with that. Looking a bit, they don't necessarily default to on in US vehicles, which is likely to minimize the benefit.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        The auto-dim systems don't always work, either. My mother-in-law's Toyota has this feature, and it seems to work when it wants to.
        trinix912 2y ago
        Same with a 2020 Honda Civic. Those auto-dim headlights shut themselves off in a timely manner about 50% of the time.
Kon-Peki 2y ago
This recall is for the high-beams. And yes, the EU allows brighter high-beams than the US. This seems to be the extent of the recall. But there are other differences between the EU and US. For example, on what the headlights are illuminating. US headlights shine more light off to the right of the vehicle than EU and I think it is due to the assumption that roadside signs are more often lit via headlights/refection in the US vs sign-mounted lighting in the EU. I think most people agree that EU regulations allow for significantly better headlights than US regulations allow. But those better headlights must be paired with an expensive adaptive system or they become terribly dangerous. If you compare "cheap car" headlights in the US vs EU they are probably very similar in performance.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
thephyber 2y ago
Brightness of two headlights is not a single floating point number. There are regulations governing the spread/angle, the minimum brightness, the maximum brightness, how much an object at X distance is illuminated, whether the angle of the beams is too bright in the vision of oncoming drivers, etc.
- mistercheph 2y ago
  and most manufacturers are guilty of dieselgate style skirting of regulations while upping the ante in the war to create the brightest most blinding headlight

potato3732842 2y ago

>So are the US and EU both saying that each other's way is wrong and too dangerous? Real life disagreements on minor technicalities between competing bureaucracies are not zero sum or conducted in breathless hand wringing internet rhetoric. It's more like a disagreement on a FOSS mailing list.

groos 2y ago
I believe EU allows directionally controllable projector headlights (my description, I don't know the official name). These can be brighter because they can be directed away from oncoming traffic. The US, in contrast, is lagging in approving this technology and puts an absolute limit on the brightness.
josephcsible 2y ago
I'm not surprised there's a disagreement. I'm surprised the disagreement is both sides saying "our way is safer", rather than it being one side saying "this safety benefit isn't worth it" and the other saying "yes it is".
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  The problem isn't the disagreement in specifications. It's the poor German quality control that doesn't prevent these mistakes from happening. This wasn't a significant problem when the parts were physically different for different markets and the assembly line would ensure the wrong parts weren't present.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > I'm surprised the disagreement is both sides saying "our way is safer" That's somewhat common for US/EU safety disagreements. Here's the canonical example, from back when the TTIP was still seriously being considered: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-american-eggs-would-be-illegal-in-a-british-supermarket-and-vice-versa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-am...

thephyber 2y ago

There are some notable value judgements that are different between US and EU regulations. I remember reading that the US car safety rules generally assume that the people in the car do not follow the rules, whereas EU regulations assume they follow the law and use seatbelts. US crash safety tests don’t care about the damage the car does to pedestrians, but EU regulations do factor that in. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449090584/why-arent-auto-safety-standards-universal https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449090584/why-arent-auto-safe...

KK7NIL 2y ago
> US car safety rules generally assume that the people in the car do not follow the rules > US crash safety tests don’t care about the damage the car does to pedestrians As a EU citizen living in the US, this makes perfect sense. The quality of driving here is far lower, I often see vehicles without plates or temp tags and it's not unusual to hear about uninsured drivers hitting people. It's ironic that such a car centric country naturally ends up with terrible drivers because of the low barrier to entry.
- thephyber 2y ago
  IMHO, there’s diminishing returns in regulations that try to protect someone who actively doesn’t want to protect themselves. It just adds extra cost (R&D, complexity of design/manufacturing, different parts for different jurisdictions, different parts SKUs to stock, etc). The upside? It probably saves the lives of some people so reckless they shouldn’t be driving.
  - ilbeeper 2y ago
    And the pedestrians?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lupusreal 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

abeppu 2y ago

But also, since it's a software-addressable issue, and because this process is likely such a headache, I wonder if in a couple of years they'll have a version that picks its headlight configuration based on your location. You'll drive over a border at night and do a slight double-take as your lights change their beam width or something.

onion2k 2y ago

Presumably, if there were a way for the headlights to comply with both US and EU regulations, they'd just have them be that way everywhere... Unless someone in the marketing department has determined that headlight brightness is a selling point for 0.001% of customers, in which case they'd configure them to the maximum allowed in the region.

ErigmolCt 2y ago

Ideally, a universal standard that balances both approaches would be the safest way forward

egorfine 2y ago

Bear in mind that matrix lights are the norm in EU on high end cars while in US they are prohibited. I bet that explains the brightness: you can have overly bright lights if they are matrix while obviously that would be detrimental in regular headlights.

ssl-3 2y ago
Things like matrix lights used to be prohibited on new cars in the US. This has subsequently changed: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-driving-beam-headlights-new-vehicles-improving-safety-drivers https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...
- egorfine 2y ago
  Oh, that's good news! (Why do I have a feeling that all the ways I can come up with to compliment the US for this achievement sound like irony?)
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    It's kind of meh news at this point. There's a ton of blinding vehicles on the road in the States, and it is getting worse at an accelerated rate, and even if fancy matrix-ey headlights became the norm it will take a Very Long Time for the old stuff to get cycled out. Up next, let me tell you about that time that we held onto analog AMPS cell phones for years longer than any developed country that I know if, and how when we did finally begin to transition to something digital we made sure that we failed to standardize on any one format and made all of them as incompatible with things like European GSM as we could.
    - egorfine 2y ago
      Oh yeah, tell me about it. > held onto analog AMPS cell *cough* faxes, anyone? *cough*