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It's not even that the US has bad optics in our headlights Dealers are the ones responsible for making sure headlights are properly aligned before being sold s

It's not even that the US has bad optics in our headlights Dealers are the ones responsible for making sure headlights are properly aligned before being sold so that the cut off is below the regulated height. This is, however, not at all enforced or incentivised. Which means that none does it and many headlights are aimed too high Many people also replace standard or HID bulbs with cheap LED bulbs which are not designed for the original housing and that results in crazy high lumens spraying everywhere without a proper cutoff. Police mask have no incentive to ticket for any of this and the end result is being blinded at night constantly by either mis aligned headlights or cheap super bright LED bulbs.

_yb2s 2y ago
That is all true, but even if properly aligned, most new cars in the USA have awful headlights with no sharp cutoff line at the top, so there is no way to point them to light the road well while not blinding oncoming drivers. Moreover, like I mentioned, quite a lot of European cars have systems to automatically align and even steer/shape the beams dynamically, and do not require that type of adjustment. VW's "dynamic light assist" for example, actively detects oncoming vehicles and dynamically reshapes the lighting pattern to block most of the light going directly towards other vehicles, while still lighting everything else.
MisterTea 2y ago
> Police mask have no incentive to ticket for any of this You used to get pulled over for running with high beams on in NYC. The usual reason for doing so was to hide a broken low beam head lamp and hope the cops didn't notice. Nowadays you can do whatever TF you want around here and no one seems to care.