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The Headlight Brightness Wars
- MarkSweep 2y agoIs there any similar campaign to have something done about loud vehicles?
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoThat's a war thats being won by EVs.
- Aardwolf 2y agoBy using engine simulation sounds
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoBecause they're too quiet?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThere are EV's that have gotten tickets for being too loud: https://www.thedrive.com/news/hyundai-steps-in-to-help-elantra-n-owner-ticketed-for-loud-stock-exhaust-report https://www.thedrive.com/news/hyundai-steps-in-to-help-elant...
- uxp100 2y agoThat’s a link to a standard gas vehicle being ticketed.
- glennpratt 2y agoThe Elantra N is not electric.
- Freak_NL 2y agoElectric cars. Although that zany hwooooooooo sound they make is naff.
- soco 2y agoThat sound is only when they drive below 30kmh (or 20?) and could be actually more obvious if you ask me. Let's not forget this warning sound is not for the driver/owner, but for the people on the street.
- multimoon 2y ago[flagged]
- lotsofpulp 2y ago>I have yet to see a logical implementation of this argument that doesn’t unilaterally just ban everything that makes noise . 99.99% of the times a noise disturbs the peace, it is a loud motorcycle or other ICE vehicle. One that was modified to intentionally produce excessive noise.
- edflsafoiewq 2y agoOr a dog.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoSometimes, but a dog’s sounds only travel a few houses away. I can hear noise from vehicles racing down roads 1,000+ feet away.
- multimoon 2y agoWhere you’re going to find disagreement with a significant portion of the population is if fifteen seconds of a low rumble of a car passing by is “disturbing the peace”. You cannot expect complete silence at all hours of the day, and to do so is naive. Highways and semis create by far the most noise pollution. Dogs bark, people have parties outside, etc. The world is not a place requiring sterilization of the senses.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoSurely, most would agree there is a difference between a productive activity making noise and making noise specifically to disturb?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agoThat's a false dichotomy. What about a recreational activity that has no intention to be disruptive?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mattw2121 2y agoI am similarly irritated by loud vehicles and wonder why they are allowed to persist. Would this be better enforced if it didn't rely 100% on officer testimony? I wonder if there is a market for a "sound camera" that could be marketed to police departments. The idea would be that you point this thing at cars, like their radar gun, and it captures video, sound, and the # of decibels. Only thing I don't know is if there is a way to attribute particular sounds to particular objects found in the video. This would, potentially, give them the hard evidence to ticket these cases. If there is an easy way to make money off these, the police would be sure to enforce it.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoYes, in the Netherlands, NYC and elsewhere: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera-loud-exhaust-case/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera...
- throw0101b 2y ago> Is there any similar campaign to have something done about loud vehicles? There are already US regulations on car noise,[0] and in more general circumstances,[1][2] but once it's purchased it can be altered by the owner, and then it's often up to local authorities to enforce local (and state[3]) noise by-laws. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/325.7 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/325.7 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_Control_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_Control_Act [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_regulation [3] https://www.semasan.com/resources/exhaust-noise-laws-state https://www.semasan.com/resources/exhaust-noise-laws-state
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ortusdux 2y agoNew York has implemented automated tickets for loud vehicles: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39105913/new-york-automated-sound-tickets/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39105913/new-york-automat... I'd like to see a version for headlights, but the logistics would be tricky. It's common in my area for people to lift their trucks, and they rarely readjust their headlights afterwards.
- estebank 2y agoEvery vehicle in (most?) states have to already be checked regularly for things like emissions. There's no reason we couldn't check for improper lights as part of that.
- ortusdux 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
- dzhiurgis 2y agoI'm all in for freedom, but this is kinda crazy.
- toast0 2y agoEmissions inspections are being sunset in more places. Even where they're alive and well, it's gone from an active check with a tailpipe detector and a dynamometer to just plugging into the ODB-II and a visual inspection for unauthorized emission modifications. maybe a check for smoke in neutral when going from idle to full throttle and back. Americans don't want their cars inspected, so a new inspection criteria is unlikely. For those subject to mandatory safety inspections, it might already be part of the test.
- rascul 2y agoSome states do check for headlight alignment.
- hn_acc1 2y agoI'm always amazed at how loud passenger pickup trucks are by default here in the US - growing up in Canada, pickup trucks were generally quiet / unobtrusive unless user modified. Here, they seem to come LOUD from the factory - probably less regulations, and it's cheaper to have a loud muffler and/or get a few more hp/lb-ft for the towing wars.
- levocardia 2y agoAnd because the clientele who buy trucks generally WANT something that sounds loud and powerful. Not saying that's good or bad, just how it is.
- stonesthrowaway 2y agoI hope so. It's a "war" that I can get behind. Nothing more annoying than some insecure loser revving his engine while driving by your house. It's both noise and air pollution. Should be banned outright.
- unethical_ban 2y agoThis is an abdication of duty, or else an unwillingness to admit flawed decision-making, at NHTSA. Any time I am approached by a new vehicle going over a minor hill, I am blinded by their LEDs. Makers like BMW obviously market such blinding lights as power, awareness, etc. but it is a danger to everyone on the road. If you're in the middle of nowhere highway, hit the brights. Otherwise, these lights need regulated. I wonder if there is a resistance mod that could be put in to lower the brightness for someone who cared to.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoI agree with most of what you said, but BMW lights autodim very aggressively because they know it's annoying as hell. I know because i found how to verify that's enabled, and was testing it just hours ago. Around here, there are geriatric drivers aplenty at certain times of year who drive with brights on all the time, hills or straightaways or anything. very annoying. including in daylight.
- multimoon 2y agoI’d argue the biggest offender here is Ford/GM The German cars will at least attempt to dim the beam or auto turn off high beams, in Europe they’ll even divert the beam around you but for some reason we don’t allow that in the US. I drive a BMW as my daily and the computer makes every effort to not blind people. GM and Ford I just get constantly blinded by gigantic pillars of LEDs, regardless if I’m driving another truck or a low sports car.
- fiddlerwoaroof 2y agoI think the NHTSA just approved these, so hopefully they’ll start being more common 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...
- jp191919 2y agoBut they stupidly didn't follow the SAE's recommendations and made it harder to implement in the US by deviating from the standard used in the ROW. https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-technology-that-could-save-lives-1811354 https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-techno...
- cf100clunk 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332314 (12 points, 5 comments)
- thefz 2y agoWhover wants to oppose these kind of headlights, and SUVs, will have my vote.
- spydr 2y agoIs your comment about SUVs simple because you notice this issue is more prevalent in taller cars or because you don’t like them for other reasons? I myself have not noticed this correlation. Some of the time it’s after market crap the owner didn’t bother to adjust properly, but most of the time it’s newer cars such as Teslas where see this issue , and the sedans are fairly low to the ground
- HankB99 2y agoWith taller vehicles the headlights often start out higher off the ground. Even if aimed properly, that puts oncoming drivers in a brighter portion of the light as the distance closes.
- anon84873628 2y agoTaller cars with higher lights definitely cause more of a problem for other drivers, simply due to the geometry involved. I have a sedan, when another sedan pulls up behind me I don't see their lights. When a tall vehicle pulls up behind me, their lights shine directly through my rear window, reflect directly from the rearview mirror, and cause glare on my windshield. Incredibly frustrating.
- thefz 2y agoCars with a taller front end are more noticeable and I also hate SUVs. There's no need to move a 2000kg monster vehicle around, they use a lot of space and pollute a lot.
- k__ 2y agoI always wondered if polarization could be a solution to the problem. Polarising headlights and adding a filter to the windshield.
- djbusby 2y agoTo all windshields?
- maxerickson 2y agoWouldn't the filter also end up dimming the things you are trying to see?
- estebank 2y agoEven if this could be made to work, which it can't with polarization, it would still show huge disregard for anyone in an older vehicle or any other mode of locomotion.
- k__ 2y agoThen maybe not in the windshields but in glasses and contact lenses.
- shrubhub 2y agoWow... Fuck cyclists and other road users, I guess!
- jp191919 2y agoThe blame lies completely with the NHTSA. https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-technology-that-could-save-lives-1811354 https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-techno...
- martijnvds 2y agoAdaptive lighting isn't the best solution either. Here in the Netherlands there are lots of complaints from people on bicycles who get blinded by "adaptive" lights that don't adapt, or don't do so quickly enough, probably because they dont recognise the "profile" or shape of a bicycle. The problem is even worse when coming over a hill.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago[flagged]
- MiguelX413 2y agoWhat's better?
- afiori 2y agothis sounds like the CGP Grey video about solving traffic whose solution* would completely eliminate pedestrian crossings. My rule of thumb is that f a solution is extremely comfortable for drivers then it is likely damaging to everybody else. * basically turning all cars in a coordinating mesh network
- Avshalom 2y ago... or we could take the cheaper, less failure prone, simpler option of not using ridiculously bright, blue headlights.
- kjs3 2y agoAnd miss a chance to blame the government for something? Perish the thought...
- arpinum 2y agoLink from the article demonstrates the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkwjMV2of_8&t=697s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkwjMV2of_8&t=697s . Auto companies are violating the spirit of the regs while being technically compliant.
- djoldman 2y ago> Chris Trechter, a lighting-focused engineer who used to work for Magna International, the largest automobile parts manufacturer in North America, told me the company would adhere to 108 in making headlights for clients like General Motors but that the rule is “archaic.” “It does not account for LEDs,” he said, “and there are giant loopholes that allow you to throw basically unlimited light as long as you meet all the other aspects of 108.” There are multiple references to this idea that you can have a basically unlimited brightness headlamp because the way it's tested is flawed. Anyone know how the testing process works?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42332716 It sounds like there is an area that is focused on for the test and they can engineer the lights to avoid putting too much light in that area.
- neuralRiot 2y agoCasually newer GM vehicles are one of the worst offenders together with Tesla with their poorly-shaped light beaming, that’s maybe a cosenquence of having a front end in the vehicle so high that the the headlights are level with the roof of “normal” sedans.
- nunez 2y agotbf newer Teslas all have matrix LEDs but they aren't enabled in the US because of NHTSA. I bet it's just a feature flag suite away too.
- brokenmachine 2y agoWhat's a matrix LED?
- sangnoir 2y agoA technical kludge around drivers who refuse to dip their hi-beams by creating a dynamic mask around other vehicles - matrix LED headlights act as a bright, low-resolution projector that keeps other vehicles unlit, but lights up everything else.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jmole 2y agoHow about taillight brightness? I'm not sure if this has gotten better in recent years, but there are a bunch of high-end vehicles (looking at you AUDI) with extremely bright red LED taillights that are just painful to sit behind at a red light.
- alamortsubite 2y agoYeah, but it's not just the brightness. It's also the strobing, which is highly distracting and nausea inducing.
- Zak 2y agoI'm assuming it saves $0.47 per car to use slow PWM to set brightness rather than a linear regulator.
- marssaxman 2y agoIs it possible to control LED brightness with a linear regulator? I am surprised to hear it - when I was making light effects with LEDs years ago, I understood PWM to be the only practical mechanism, due to the strongly non-linear conductivity curve. But maybe it's possible, if you just want to fix your LEDs at a specific brightness which never changes, that you could find exactly the right current level...?
- kedikedi 2y agoYou can but it isn’t efficient. You lose (V_in - V_out)*I_led Watts to heat if you use a linear regulator. You might ask why not connect them in series and get the voltage difference as small as possible. But the “forward voltages” of LEDs are highly temperature dependent and car battery voltage is (somewhat) engine rpm dependent (might swing between 12 and 13.8V between no rpm and some rpm. It’s kept flat at 13.8V)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
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- teslabox 2y agoThe shift to unsafe high-blue lights is simply a matter of forgetting what was figured out. In the 20th century the lighting companies (GE, etc) had all the money in the world, and spent a lot on R&D. They figured out how to get the most efficient lights possible for their customers. The scientists figured out exactly how blue light causes inflammation in our eyes. There are good reasons why cities used orange High Pressure Sodium [HPS] Bulbs for street lights: HPS is very energy efficient (as good as most LEDs), and they emit light that is almost blue-free. Then LEDs were invented by companies that didn't have that old R&D. The automotive industry gradually switched to LEDs for the advantage of not needing to replace bulbs (but lights that fail are now >$1000 to replace instead of $5) Instead of putting safe low-blue LEDs on their cars (~2400K), auto manufacturers are using 4000K to 5000K LEDs. These have too much blue light. To understand modern lighting, the term "spectral power distribution" is quite helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_power_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_power_distribution Relative Spectral Power Distribution graphs show how much of each color of the rainbow is in a given source of light. Incandescent bulbs are mostly Red-orange-yellow light with a bit of green and even less blue. 5000K fluorescent or LED bulbs are mostly blue light with just enough red orange and yellow to trick people into thinking the light is 'white'. I emailed Daniel Stern a few years ago and asked, essentially, 'why aren't auto manufacturers putting safe lights on their cars?' The essence of his reply was that the automotive engineers still know how to design safe headlights, but there were other considerations in play. I took this to mean that the marketing department told the engineers, "cars with safe headlights don't sell anymore, so you need to design headlights with blue-white LEDs." Daniel's response also helped me realize that the worst of the headlights on the road in 2017 were LED retrofits, where people bought LEDs to replace the halogen bulbs their vehicle's headlights were designed to use. The shift to unsafe lights started in the 80's or 90's, when luxury brands started putting High Intensity Discharge lights on their vehicles. These lights have more blue light than the old incandescent and halogen headlights. Headlights with more blue became associated with more expensive cars, even though blue light is terrible for humans at night. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp Daniel has a webpage about how France used to require yellow headlights: https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/light_color/light_color.html https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/light_color/... The rest of Europe didn't require yellow headlights, and there was a problem of having to put cadmium in the glass, so France got rid of their requirement. I submitted an AskHN a few years ago, but it didn't get much traction: Ask HN: What prevents the automotive industry from using safe LEDs? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405 In 2020 I sat down to think about why blue light at night is so terrible, and sort of figured it out.
- codethief 2y agoLast year I did a little roadtrip along the West Coast and through parts of Nevada and one thing that boggled my European mind was that, at night, on ordinary roads cars coming from the other direction always had their high beams on and never switched to their low beams as we got closer to each other. Same thing when cars were behind me. Is switching to your low beams to avoid dazzling other drivers not a thing in the US?
- williamstein 2y agoIt is a thing. Your experience doesn’t at all match my experience driving on the West Coast for the last few decades.
- lupusreal 2y agoIt's absolutely a thing. Sometimes people forget, and you can remind them by flashing your highbeams at them. However that's maybe one in fifty encounters in my experience, most people remember most of the time. A lesser known trick is you can flash your highbeams before cresting a hill or going around a blind turn to warn drivers on the other side. I rarely encounter other drivers who do this, but when I do it almost always works.
- seiferteric 2y agoMaybe, but also I get flashed by people thinking I have my high beams on when I don't, so could be mistaken.
- SoftTalker 2y agoBecause your headlights are too bright.
- crims0n 2y agoSame, I drive a new model Suburban and constantly get flashed. I think it is the combination of the LED headlights and height at which they sit. I wish there was something I could do about it, but it isn't user adjustable.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoMy solution is to minimize driving at night. Harder to do in the winter, but still doable especially if you work from home.
- mackieem 2y agoI used to always find it _easier_ to drive at night because cars would be like little Christmas lights, and the contrast between headlights & the darkness of night made them very easy to spot; now I'm blinded everywhere I go. Haven't ever contemplated window tints but at this point it feels like I either need to do that, or get a higher vehicle. Or just not drive at night :')
- metalman 2y agosafety! Safety!! SAFETY !!! brighter is safer, you loose:) there has been another insane thing ,where the lights in schools have gotten impossibly bright, and school bussses have strobes on top that can be seen 50 miles away. Its guaranteed that there are saftey comitties trying to legeslate much more extream measures
- notatoad 2y agothis is sort of tangentially related: if you're feeling like every car on the road has overly bright headlights, get your eyes checked. i've been hearing people complain about bright headlights, and noticed myself feeling really sensitive to it lately. turns out i have a slight astigmatism, and wearing glasses when driving at night makes other cars headlights infinitely more tolerable. there's still the odd vehicle that has obnoxious headlights, but i went from most cars being intolerable to most cars being totally fine.
- Melatonic 2y agoThis is also true
- pesus 2y agoSome of us are also just stuck with naturally sensitive eyes, unfortunately.
- ziml77 2y agoI've seen images representing what light looks like with an astigmatism and that's absolutely what I see. Always been like that for me but I've never had glasses. If I ever get a car again I might have to see about getting a prescription for something to correct that.
- SoftTalker 2y agoCalifornia basically sets the standards that all automakers follow for cars sold in the USA. If they can't sell a car in California that basically makes it impossible for them to make money. California is so fond of regulating everything I hope they take this on. But whether it's California, or the Feds/DOT, someone needs to act. Headlight brightness is out of control.
- toast0 2y agoCalifornia emissions used to be a thing. California light emissions could be too. No California Light Resources Board sticker on your headlights and you get a ticket. Give it at the same time as you get one for no front plate. Somehow cars are sold without front plate holders installed even though they're mandatory in California, too :P But yeah, I'd welcome rules in California as a first step if the feds can't get it together.
- rpdillon 2y agoThis problem is a result of regulation, as it's not legal to have steerable headlights that solve its problem like folks do in Europe.
- ssl-3 2y agoIt is legal, though -- or at least, it has been legal for a couple of years. 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...
- SoftTalker 2y agoSteerable headlights seem too complicated/expensive and just another thing to go wrong. Just regulate the beam pattern and brightness with consideration given to modern LED lighting not 1980's incandescent bulbs.
- pxc 2y agoI have a degenerative eye disease. As one of its features is loss of visual acuity, my driving days are numbered. When they come to an end, I'll likely have to move, as it's just not possible to efficiently or affordably get around in environments other than urban when you're blind. Another feature of my condition is extreme light sensitivity, and difficulties with contrast. I generally need a lot of it, but at the same time, bright light washes out everything around it, blinding me. That feature seems to be progressing more rapidly than the loss of acuity in my case. Consequently, the extreme brightness of headlights nowadays is likely to cut my night driving still shorter, perhaps by years. If you're not facing such a prospect yourself, it can be difficult to appreciate what a loss of freedom and ease it is to give up driving. It sucks bad. I hope these overbright headlight haters continue to gain traction!
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 2y agoCataracts are commonplace in older drivers. Until the operation is done driving at night can get you dazzled. But if you get the fancy multifocal lenses, you will get halos.
- pxc 2y agoThat's a good point! Overly bright headlights are a problem for a lot of kinds of eyes, including some we should expect to see more than a few of on the road. (I will say for myself that my contact lenses have long been thick enough to cause the same kind of halos, and I also have mild astigmatism, so I'm used to seeing those symmetrical light patterns smearing over everything. Those cam be distracting for sure, but the light sensitivity issues I have are more like the moment you step directly out of a dark movie theater into the sunlight on a clear, bright day— visual information just disappears in the face of overwhelming brightness so that things are washed out, and there is often pain. In my experience, halos are more like overlays on the visual field and astigmatism artifacts are sparser with longer radius (not covering the whole range of angles surrounding the light source but jutting out vary far in long, stretched spearheads rotating almost kaleidoscopically).
- MortyWaves 2y agoI’m in the UK and there’s been an increase in the number of people driving with actual full blown full beam headlights on.
- switch007 2y agoHm I find the opposite. Often following a vehicle at night they're extremely shy about using full beam. Totally oblivious. I live near lots of rural, pitch black A roads and it's really needed
- jimnotgym 2y agoI would also like to add that the dazzling lights make it impossible to see the tiny indicators modern cars have
- jandrese 2y agoCan we get the same thing applied to bike headlights? At night it is easier to bike on the road than the bike trail because almost every bike headlight is in effectively high beam mode all the time and are powered by outrageously bright LEDs. Sometimes they even have an epileptic detecting strobe mode. Personally, I'm not sold on the safety benefits of blinding and dazzling all oncoming traffic.
- pleonasticity 2y agoThese cyclists unfortunately need to just point their headlight downward--included in the installation instructions for almost all bike headlights is the direction to point the light below horizontal. That is also the only difference between automotive high and low-beams: the angle at which they are directed.
- jandrese 2y agoYou would think that, but most bike headlights are just throwing as much light as possible in a 180 degree arc so the rider can spot drop bears and other related hazards. It is so rare for someone to have a light that directs the photons downward like an automotive headlight. When I was looking for a headlight my local bike shop didn't sell a single model that had that feature, in fact they made a big deal about having 180 degrees of illumination and 1000 lumen output and an oncoming traffic blinding strobe mode. Also, the bike shop stock was hilariously overpriced for what it was. $5 of flashlight components in a plastic case and they wanted $80. It felt like the entire industry was being grossly overcharged and underserved. I had to construct my own headlight out of a flashlight and a homemade deflector. For example: https://www.planetbike.com/products/beamer-700-bike-headlight/ https://www.planetbike.com/products/beamer-700-bike-headligh...
- ssl-3 2y agoThe shape of the beam is important, not just the angle of it. Part of what differentiates a low-beam headlamp from a high-beam headlamp is the shape of the beam. Bike lights, at least as-sold here in the States, seem to generally be built from flashlight parts. And unlike car low beams, flashlights project a circular beam. With a circular beam, it is really hard to illuminate the path ahead with any meaningful brightness without blinding others. A better beam pattern, ideally with sharp cutoffs, can illuminate a pathway and the obstacles that may be on it without unduly blinding others. --- I happened to buy one such light, just by chance, several years ago. It's a "Schwinn Intensa 100" from Wal-Mart, part number SW80251WM. It kind of sucks in terms of overall illumination and is no good for high-speed rides at night, but it does light up the path ahead and provides a sharp beam cutoff to avoid blinding others. (So actually, it's pretty excellent for casual riding.)
- _yb2s 2y agoI think they've always mistakenly focused on headlight brightness (using wattage as a proxy), but the focus should really be on beam shaping and optics quality. Most cars sold in Europe have had much brighter lights than the same models sold in the USA since the 70s and 80s, yet by using better optics, they had a sharp clearly defined cutoff that virtually eliminates all oncoming light to other drivers, while lighting the road itself and the side of the road a lot more. Yet, these brighter and more courteous lights had been illegal in the USA. I have a German SUV with extremely powerful HID headlights, and on top of that, it is lifted- pretty awful for other drivers right? No! Because it has good optics with a sharp cutoff, and steerable headlights with tilt sensors on the suspension, and always keeps the headlights pointed low enough to not blind oncoming drivers, even when going over a bump. On top of that, it steers the lights into turns, and away from oncoming drivers around bends.
- spaceisballer 2y agoYou’ve nailed it. I miss my Audi with headlights that moved when I turned the wheel. That alone would fix a lot of the issues of being blinded when coming around a curve. A lot of US pickup trucks just have lights across the whole front end, and if you drive a car it’s just illuminating the whole inside of your car and every mirror.
- michael1999 2y agoHow is it when you pull up behind me in my hatchback at a red-light?
- _yb2s 2y agoFrom the factory, the high beam cutoff would still be below the bottom of your windows and mirrors, so it still wouldn't be bright to you at all. Since I did lift my vehicle for offroad use, if your vehicle is unusually low and I pulled right up on your bumper it could still shine bright inside (but still below the rearview mirror level)- but I am quite aware of this, and never pull forward enough that the cutoff rises above the bottom of the car window in front of me. This is also just a good driving technique for me as well, because it leaves me enough room to escape the lane or drive around you if I need to in an emergency, e.g. due to a disabled vehicle, etc.
- jeffrallen 2y agoIt took thousands of words to get to alignment. That's the key. Switzerland has strict vehicle safety inspections, including an automated alignment test, and we don't have glare problems that I've noticed.
- norir 2y agoThe most compelling issue to me came at the end of the piece, but it is much deeper and harder to address: the increasing lack of civility and anti-collectivist tendencies in American life.
- mackieem 2y agoI live in Michigan and my time is spent between two vastly different affluence levels; the richer sides have excruciatingly bright headlights that blind me in my non-tinted Sonata, and the poorer sides are riddled with the droning of modified and/or broken exhausts. Used to like cars at one point but nowadays I find that my only (okay, only _daily_) grievances in life are noise from cars & driving at night in rich areas, both of which have soured my views on cars.
- nunez 2y agoShitty truck lifts with improperly adjusted headlights unifies them both.
- rigrassm 2y agoI actually prefer the newer trucks that have shitty lifts over ones without since that tends to at least point their headlamps over my car's roof as they try to ride 6" from my bumper.
- jackstraw14 2y agothis seems like wild generalizations from both angles you present and I can't figure out where you actually fall in this, as the narrator.
- retrochameleon 2y agoI thought it was pretty clear. He finds that cars primarily contribute nuisance to his life, so he doesn't like them that much anymore.
- g8oz 2y agoOh God yes please someone do something about this.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 2y agoSAE standards are there so North American manufacturers can cheap out.
- joe_the_user 2y agoI gotta say, the tone of this article offends me. They basically put things as "these people are complete weirdos though they might have a tiny spec of a point, chuckle". And "war"? You can see these a few voices in the wilderness with no leverage 'cause this little society presents the average person with no way to do anything about the many "little annoyances" of this society presents even when they add up to something nightmarish or happen to strongly affect a minority.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoIsn’t political leverage defined relative to the average person? So this seems like a tautology.
- nunez 2y agoI'm getting Gunnar computer glasses for night time driving. It's designed for the same problem in a different form: ever-bright LED monitors. And that's the heart of the problem, really. LEDs are getting brighter everywhere. As thigs get brighter, our vision acclimates to the new brightness until it's not bright enough, which drives demand for brighter things, which we acclimate to, etc. ad nauseum. As for me, I've switched to eInk panels for reading on the Internet (which is most of what I do) and use a red color filter at night or in dark spaces. I want to save my eyes for as long as possible!
- NoGravitas 2y agoI've been using yellow night-driving clipons for my glasses for the last few years, and they help a lot, but they don't solve the whole problem. They do make it generally tolerable.
- ddmf 2y agoThere are a couple of main issues: 1) is that some bulbs can be inserted into the holder two orientations, but only one is correct as there is often a shield stopping light bleeding up. 2) is that some lights appear to be almost horizontal rather than aimed down, if you're driving a smaller car you have lights almost aimed right at you - we need to tax cars based on size as well as emissions.
- xtiansimon 2y agoUltra bright vs fully tinted windows (front included). These are the days I feel greatest my German heritage.