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I understand that currently this is sort of a collective action problem, but I'm a bit baffled why people ever thought they needed brighter headlights in the fi

I understand that currently this is sort of a collective action problem, but I'm a bit baffled why people ever thought they needed brighter headlights in the first place. In the city, it's so bright that you don't even need headlights to see whatsoever. When cars started automatically dimming the dash via a light sensor, there was actually a period of time where I totally forgot to turn on my headlights because things were so well lit -- even at night -- that I didn't need them whatsoever. Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. So who are they for? I think broadly people may just not be able to avoid excess unless restricted by the facts of their environment. Allow people a plethora of calories, they'll get too fat. Allow them a plethora of entertainment, they'll drive themselves insane. And somehow .. allow them too many bright lights and they'll all just blind each other.

nikanj 11mo ago
Out in the country: moose and other animals
- Lio 11mo ago
  Moose are less of a problem in the UK than you might expect. ;) (I'll give you other animals though.)
  - Maxion 11mo ago
    There are other countries than the UK.
    - graemep 11mo ago
      The story is about the UK. it would b ridiculous to set UK brightness levels on the grounds of what would be needed in Finland.
  - IncreasePosts 11mo ago
    No thanks, I have no where to keep them.
jonahrd 11mo ago
Well.. deer, for one. It's much easier to spot animals crossing the road with bright headlights than without. I still also agree headlights are too bright, by the way, but I'm just providing an example for your question
- silon42 11mo ago
  Not necessarily... I had H4 or H1/H7 before, which were dimmer, but the edge cutoff was much smoother... With current car that has Xenon headlights (+ LED for day), they have a much sharper cutoff at the edge, making it harder to see pedestrians and other stuff near the road. Probably the LED/laser headlights are even worse in this aspect.
Lammy 11mo ago
> So who are they for? They're so machines can see better, not so humans can see better. There are so many more doorbell cameras, ALPR cameras, fixed building cams, PTZ building cams, dash cams, external vehicle cams, etc than ever before, and they all want to be able to spy on you as effectively as possible even at night.
geerlingguy 11mo ago
Many places don't pay for reflective paint, unfortunately. Here in Missouri they used it for a year or two and it was a vast improvement... but then they cut the paint budget and now we're back to invisible lines with even a small rain (no matter what the brightness of the headlights).
Magnets 11mo ago
animals and other objects on the road, and potholes
DiogoRolo 11mo ago
In the countryside, outside highways, the pain is usually non-reflective or just in such a bad state that you can't even see it. Usually bright headlights / highbeams are useful in there.
jansper39 11mo ago
Most of my driving is down small, unlit country roads and I'm constantly coming across deer, sheep, people in dark jackets (walking back from the pub) and people riding bikes (occasionally with no lights on). I'm quite thankful for bright headlights.
- Maxion 11mo ago
  Driving in the countryside, good headlights are *so* much safer.
  - eertami 11mo ago
    This is exactly what high beams are for, and even 20 year old cars have very bright high beams that are plenty safe. The problem referred to in the article is dipped beam headlights being too bright and often too high, which are making things less safe by dazzling other drivers and road users.
    - robot-wrangler 11mo ago
      > This is exactly what high beams are for, Judging from comments in this thread, large numbers of people are suggesting that they are actually entitled to blind others because toggling back and forth is an inconvenience for them, and/or the "smart" cars that are auto-toggling high beams have left many drivers completely ignorant that toggling is actually possible. Related question, are cars that have completely removed manually controlling high beams actually street legal?
    - darkwater 11mo ago
      I'm pretty sure a technical solution can be found that improves normal headlight visibility compared to non-xenon lamps from 10-15-20 years ago WITHOUT blinding incoming traffic. High beam were always blinding, and unless you are completely alone you will not use them, even in the middle of a rural area, so they are out of the equation.
  - kedean 11mo ago
    Good headlights are. The modern levels of brightness do not qualify as good headlights. Modern headlights become unsafe as soon as any other person is on the business end of them, due to the fact that they can no longer see properly. It puts other vehicles at the risk of crashing from being blinded, both cars and smaller vehicles like bicycles.
thedanbob 11mo ago
> And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Animals, specifically deer. That said, you can use brights when no other cars are nearby, and when there is a car coming its worth a few seconds of extra risk to not blind the other guy and put him at risk.
- alt227 11mo ago
  Why does nobody think that if these lights are dazzling oncoming drivers, they are also dazzling these precious deer and pedestrians people keep saying they need to see so well.
- ComputerGuru 11mo ago
  > its worth a few seconds of extra risk There really isn’t that much increase; when there’s another driver then you both have the combined the light output of both headlights, coming from two different directions.
- toast0 11mo ago
  Once we figure our deer wasting disease, we need to start the breeding program for reflectorized deer. It'll solve a lot of problems.
stuaxo 11mo ago
Lights in other settings that were upgraded to LEDs became much brighter: night clubs usef to be mostly dark for instance. I don't think it happened through any plan, if anyone was looking at the specs, they probably just thought "bigger number better".
- chipsrafferty 11mo ago
  Nightclubs are still too dark. Streets are too bright.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
linuxftw 11mo ago
Low beam lights were previously much dimmer and angled much lower. Rural driving absolutely required high beams.
gadders 11mo ago
>>Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Have you actually driven in the country? Out in the country where I live, some roads are single track with no painted lines, cats eyes or street lights. There is occasional foot traffic, sometimes not wearing reflective gear. There are also animals, and 6" deep potholes that I would rather not hit as well.
robot-wrangler 11mo ago
> I understand that currently this is sort of a collective action problem, There's something really obnoxious and antisocial about this that makes me really mad. Test your lights on yourself, people. If your manufacturer did something stupid here it's unfortunately on you to fix it. Usually the mentality of "got mine, fuck everyone else" is self-destructive but maybe not obviously so because cause/effect are a few steps away from each other. But if you blind everyone else on the road so you can see better then it's kind of endangering you directly and immediately! This is a huge issue in US western states especially, since they are full of long dark drives. You'll literally be blinded for several seconds if you encounter another car even if you're averting your eyes. Bad but not horrible if it's 1/10 of chance encounters that are antisocial, but it's been getting worse for years and odds are now much closer to 1/2.
crazygringo 11mo ago
> there won't be pedestrian foot traffic You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? There are all sorts of things you need to be able to see to avoid. People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Not to mention spotting dangerous icy patches at night in the winter. I take it you don't really drive in country? Which is fine, but it's good to be aware of the many potential hazards.
- graemep 11mo ago
  > You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. > People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over. I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time.
  - Leif24 11mo ago
    >> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? >Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. Not something I've commonly seen when driving, but certainly as a kid out in the country I ran around in the dark near the road. >> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. >Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over. >I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time. I've seen all of these multiple times (tbf the trash cans were in the city, not the country) out in upstate NY and rural Indiana and Kentucky. Maybe trees don't drop branches over in the UK, but over in the US that is certainly a hazard to be expected during and after severe weather. To be clear, I agree that excessively bright running lights and people who can't seem to properly transition between hibeams and lowbeams are problem. I just don't agree with the sentiment from the gp that "[o]ut in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights."
shortercode 11mo ago
Assuming that the lines on the road are in good condition or even exist. Uneven roads, potholes, and corners/junctions with no signage can all be a challenge is poor conditions with old style headlights ( our 2 cars have old and new style lights respectively ). That being said while I don’t struggle much with the glare from oncoming headlights I find that visibility beyond the oncoming vehicle can be severely limited by the bright light. This often causes me to slow down and squint to be careful of any dangers beyond the vehicle.
pjmlp 11mo ago
What road lines? There are plenty of country side roads in Europe that really dark with normal medium lights. Now I fully agree that full intensity is too high as shipped in most cars.
delaminator 11mo ago
> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. I guess you don't actually drive at night in the countryside then. You need lights to see where the road is, not where pedestrians might be - on none existent footpaths
- everdrive 11mo ago
  I live in the woods in the northeast US, and also grew up in the 80s-90s in a very rural area and I've owned a number of cars when I was young, some with comically dim lights. You really don't need the bright lights. You never have. Slow down, look for movement, and use your brights intelligently.
  - lan321 11mo ago
    Slow down is kind of the general tip, but I find it kinda BS. I can drive slowly focusing on the bushes on the way to/from work in bumfuck nowhere, or I can get some beacon of god aux LEDs for cheap and turn night into day.
    - everdrive 11mo ago
      > or I can get some beacon of god aux LEDs for cheap and turn night into day. But only if you don't care about other drivers on the road. And of course, how many of those other drivers on the road care about who they're impacting? A lot of them have your attitude.
      - lan321 11mo ago
        My point is about bumfuck nowhere. Places where at night you may or may not see another car for the X km it takes you to get home. That with time people tend to forget they have their high beam bound to the beacon of god, with or without an extra switch, is a separate issue. The light itself makes sense. If there's a constant stream of vehicles I'm not really worried about visibility all that much. The suicidal wildlife is mostly culled, for potholes you can track the person in front...
Aachen 11mo ago
Despite the "I need this in the sticks" responses here, I think the most common answer is the silent group that didn't ask for it but it just comes with the car. This group is silent anyway, they didn't have the issue/need but also won't complain about the extra light, whereas a few other people did and so you can just make 1 size fits all with no repercussions (besides perhaps selling more replacement lamps)
- alt227 11mo ago
  I have always lived in the sticks and I hate these new headlights, you could always see fine with the old ones on a dark country lane.
  - hollerith 11mo ago
    I wonder whether some fraction of the population has shit night vision and whether this fraction's preferences are driving this trend to too-bright headlights. That would explain scenes on TV and in movies with very low "key", which to me are awful and frustrating because I cannot see anything, but maybe that is just how the (dimly-lit) scene would actually look in real life to the cinematographer or editor responsible for the visual design of the scene.
- Tox46 11mo ago
  If i may add, they won't complain because the headlights of their cars aren't the ones that are flashing directly at their own face. To them the problem will always be the other's cars having the lights too bright.
- doctorshady 11mo ago
  In the early 2020s, I was driving at night in rural America on a daily basis in a nineties car with pre-LED yellow lights. There were plenty of animals in the road, and I never felt they were hard to see or stop for, even with no street lights. I really don't know what everyone's talking about when they swear they need all this extra light. What I will say is with newer cars where the center console had an LCD screen and far more lighting, it did feel genuinely dangerous to drive through these same areas. Any real solution to this should start with all this being adjustable (I assume it actually is in most models?), or even far dimmer in its stock state with your lights on.
xxs 11mo ago
>Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Animals and pedestrians (along with pot holes) are the prime reason.
widforss 11mo ago
Have you seen what a moose can do to a car?
skeletal88 11mo ago
I don't need bright lights, most people don't and we havent done anything to get them, they just come with the car for most people.
- alt227 11mo ago
  You bought a car which had them, that was a choice. I have never bought a car with extreme bright headlights, and I never will.
  - skeletal88 11mo ago
    My car does not have extremelty bright headlights But the choice of headlight is probably one of the lowest factors when deciding on which car to buy, you just live with what the car manufacturers are shoving on us.
    - alt227 11mo ago
      ...or you choose to buy from a manufacturer who aligns more with your personal morals and opinions.
thedougd 11mo ago
Smartphones, infotainment systems, and large LCDs in the cabin are killing drivers' night vision.
- iso1631 11mo ago
  I find it easier to drive my wife's modern car with all that than my 2005 car which has barely any internal lights (dim light around the speedo, dim light on the radio) You're not wrong, but it's a minor contribution at most.
  - alt227 11mo ago
    Thats probably because it has ridiculously bright headlights to compensate.
    - iso1631 11mo ago
      Could be because the driver seat is a little higher, but the poing being that ripping out the maps screen isn't going to help
tw04 11mo ago
You must not live where there’s wildlife… I can tell you it’s basically impossible to see deer at night without your brights on until you’re basically hitting it.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  This can also be adjusted to by reducing speed.
  - lawn 11mo ago
    You have to go so slow that you double the length of the trip, which is a big deal when a 2 hour trip turns into a 4 hour ordeal.
  - DannyBee 11mo ago
    Sure but you should be able to safely drive the speed limit under normal (Ie not pouring rain, snow, etc) conditions. Night is a normal condition.
    - tikkabhuna 11mo ago
      Bear in mind that the UK has a “national speed limit” of 60mph for much of the countryside. This is very much a limit, a maximum, and you’re expected to drive to the conditions of the road. If it’s perfect weather conditions and twisting roads not wide enough for 2 cars, you shouldn’t be driving at the speed limit.
      - steve_gh 11mo ago
        Absolutely. The legal speed limit is 60 in the country - on any road not marked with a lower speed limit. This means that legally, you can drive at 60mph down a twisty single track road with 1.5m earth and rock banks topped with hedges. You would be an irresponsible nutter with a death wish to try through! And if you crashed, "I was driving at / under the speed limit" wouldn't wash - you would be charged with Driving without Due Care and Attention, or Dangerous Driving depending on the consequences of the crash.
catlikesshrimp 11mo ago
We needed some brighter lights before the current craze. When you aren't using strong lights your pupils open more. Now we need much brighter lights than traditionam because the lights from other cars leave you blind for too long. Context: I live in 3rd world country with non lit interurban roads. People must to walk and ride bicycles, only they do irresponsibly without anything reflective, maybe only with their cellphone screens lit because they are using it. I sometimes reduce speed to 30 km/h when a car comes from the opposite direction.
iso1631 11mo ago
In the country you need decent lights on the road to spot the potholes, animals, and people. And of course you get pedestrian traffic, especially at this time of year when people are walking dogs after getting home from work. The problem isn't as much bright lights though, it's lights shining in your face. 1) "auto dipping" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic 2) "matrix" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic 3) Headlights are adjusted to point as high as possible, on cars with ridiculous high headlights, so although they are pointing "down" (just), they are pointing into your car 4) My 2005 car's headlights are yellow. Modern ones are white. If I drive with full beam on, I don't even get flashed. Yellow isn't as dazzling. Of course it's all rather meaningless, nobody chose brighter lights
DeathArrow 11mo ago
I have poor night vision, many times there are no road marks at all. I need to see whether the road continues straight, goes left or right, so I need decent headlights.
k1rd 11mo ago
I remember light used to be much paler and became brighter around the 2010. just go drive in an old car (20+ years) and a new car. You are right also especially that there is a good side to it: in countryside roads you will able to see pedestrians/bicycles that don't use refractory lights better. Surely you are blinding everyone else.
mapt 11mo ago
Just because this is YC, I thought I should pitch in - A high-trust society that solved coordination problems through legislation, could solve this with a win-win technofix solution where everybody's headlights are as bright as the sun and nobody suffers ill effects. That technofix solution is polarized headlights, and right-angle-polarized night driving glasses or windshield tints.
- Spoom 11mo ago
  Wouldn't that, uh, make your own headlights invisible to you?
  - mapt 11mo ago
    Polarized light reflecting off a textured surface scrambles into nonpolarized light. There are modest costs (signage & road markings shouldn't be perfectly smooth, retroreflectors work a little differently, and you lose a certain percent efficiency), but they're much less intense than the costs of the current situation.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  > high-trust society that solved coordination problems through legislation What is the point of being high trust in the first place if you have to have a government violence backed law for everything? High trust societies don't have governments dealing BS minutia like automobile headlights. That is expensive in all sorts of ways, assuming you even do it right and don't accidentally create some perverse rent seeking bureaucracy or certification group that has incentive to push things in a dumb direction over time. And high trust societies don't need to do that stuff because they're high trust and collaborative in the first place so those problems solve themselves. The big players identify the problem, mostly solve it with some sort of industry standard, and whatever rounding error is left is a nuisance so small it's not worth addressing. This is how like the overwhelming majority of automotive (and a million other industries too, computer stuff being a particularly relevant one here) stuff was done before regulation and how a lot of the more cutting edge stuff is still done now with the added step of the regulator saying "hey that thing everyone's mostly doing, it's law now, errybody do it" once things settle. I don't mean to pick on you specifically, the questionable take you're peddling is pervasive all over HN.
taeric 11mo ago
I confess this is why I just assumed my eyes were going bad. I am getting old, and this shift seemed to have coincided with about the time I moved to a more rural area. In the city, I don't know that I ever used "brights" on my cars. In rural, it helps to see when there are basically no road lamps.
vladvasiliu 11mo ago
> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. I don't know about the UK, but out here in France, this is wrong on most counts. Many country roads have no lines, reflective or otherwise. There will be pedestrians walking around. Also, roads are not always in tip-top shape nor clean, so you need light to be able to see. However, I do agree that maybe extremely bright lights mounted high are a nuisance.
- bunderbunder 11mo ago
  Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road. But I find that bright white headlights actually make that second problem worse. The bright white light means your eyes don't adjust as well to the dark, so you can really only see straight ahead. So it's much harder to spot deer standing in the relative gloom along the side of the road than it is with older halogen headlights.
  - vladvasiliu 11mo ago
    You're right, and it's actually even worse when the road has very reflective white lines. Basically, everything outside of the road is invisible. However, in France, they somehow haven't figured how to not have their lines disappear when it rains ever so slightly. I think that there's some kind of middle ground. Older cars used to have pretty dim lights. When my dad got a Citroën C5 with Xenon lights many years ago, it was a game changer. That car and one almost identical one (Peugeot 407) were fairly popular around these parts when they came out, and I don't remember ever having issues with their headlights blinding me. But something started to shift some 5 years ago: more and more cars started having blinding lights. Combined with taller and taller cars, it started being a pain. I also think that people pay less attention to the state of their cars. Some (like that C5) have auto-levelling lights, and the Xenons seem to last forever (never had to touch them in almost 20 years of service). However, I have the impression that there are more and more cars with headlights which are simply out of whack. I base that judgement on the fact that most of the time, only one of the headlights will blind me, while the other seems fine. And I'm mostly talking "basic" cars, not some high-end mercedes with matrix lights or whatever they're called which may be misdetecting something.
breppp 11mo ago
I never wanted bright lights, I just paid extra for LEDs in the hope that I won't need to change these anymore
kappi 11mo ago
When you are driving in the night during heavy rainfall, good head light is difference between life and death. Get out of your bubble please!
- phatfish 11mo ago
  And when your ridiculous LED lamps blind the oncoming driver on a corner during heavy rain and they crash into you, you wish weren't so selfish. I guess it is more likely they crash into the car behind you or just run off the road themselves. Unfortunately being a selfish pays off most of the time.
Aurornis 11mo ago
> The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Reading these comments is a reminder that a lot of people aren’t familiar with the diversity of roads and environments across the country and around the world. Painted reflective road lines in good shape are a luxury, especially in areas with heavy snow and snowplows coming through a lot. Pedestrians aren’t a concern, but deer and other animals are. The deer are much worse than pedestrians because they move faster and don’t understand how to avoid cars. Country roads also have very different conditions across the world. In some places you have clear visibility 100 feet to the tree line. In some places I drive, the trees are dense right up to the road with only a couple feet of clearance to the car. Some roads are also so rough that the biggest hazards are avoiding pot holes. Some roads I drive are up against mountain faces and the road may have large rocks that have fallen on it. I personally don’t feel the need for brighter headlights because I keep my headlight lenses clear, washed, and waxed, and I’m young with good eyesight. I also use brights in the countryside and toggle them off when other drivers are coming. However, downplaying the challenges of country road driving is weird.
- everdrive 11mo ago
  >However, downplaying the challenges of country road driving is weird. This is a total non sequitur, but we live in the country, and we had a few friends who had only ever lived in the city. A few of them independently expressed anxiety about visiting us due to needing to drive on "curvy country roads." I'm not making a broader point here, but I'd never heard this concern expressed before and was really surprised that it was a big obstacle for some people.
  - Yizahi 11mo ago
    I have close to two decades of driving experience and I dread driving on the rural roads. Roads where you can barely fit two cars side by side, or even narrower, unexpected cars rushing towards you from the closed dead corners, badly signed crossings etc. But mostly its narrow roads, it is extremely stressful for me, and double so in the twilight and in the darkness.
icetank 11mo ago
My guess is that the average population of car drivers is aging. With age comes worse eyesight and and the ability to see in the dark. So a lot of people are probably more comfortable with having brighter headlights.
globular-toast 11mo ago
> In the city, it's so bright that you don't even need headlights to see whatsoever. And, in the UK at least, you don't legally need to use them either. If it's lit and the speed limit is no more than 30mph, you only need sidelights and taillights on in the dark. Unfortunately most people will flash their lights at you if they see it as they assume you've forgotten to put them on.
htek 11mo ago
Most people don't change the brightness of their lights. This is driven by industry using HID and LED lights that have a higher color temperature than the old lighting. It's really a failure of governmental regulation (or lack thereof, in this case).
- mingus88 11mo ago
  LED upgrades were very popular in the early 2000s. IIRC that style of light was introduced by Lexus and Audi around 2003 The tuner community naturally started retrofitting those lights into their cheaper Hondas and Toyotas, as they were signals of luxury and performance. Those times were bad, since those folk were not aiming them properly. Mainstream brands followed shortly afterwards, and now they are standard equipment. Honestly there is no going back. People won’t want a car with dim lights when every other car has “nicer” ones. I agree it will take regulation to fix, and I am not at all confident in that ever happening. What used to be a $30 part at the auto store is now at least $300 in special parts and labor to replace a headlight, on the low end
rickydroll 11mo ago
People who drive in rural New England. Headlights don't illuminate far enough to stop in time at 40 or 50 miles an hour, let alone at highway speeds. Snarky view is you may wreck your car, but at least you'll have a year's worth of venison.
- mingus88 11mo ago
  Where I live, it doesn’t matter how far your lights throw down the roadway, you still have less than a couple seconds to notice the deer sprinting out of the woods directly in front of you
arethuza 11mo ago
I live in rural Scotland - a lot of minor roads round here have no markings?
Yizahi 11mo ago
I don't even use my high beams usually, and neither do I have LED, xenon or laser headlights. But I often do wish that I magically had brighter headlights without being an asshole, both in the city and rural. In the city any 2 lane or smaller road can be unexpectedly crossed by pedestrians, on crossings and not. And pedestrians nowadays are wearing all black, completely invisible on the side of the road. And on the rural roads, I want as far visibility as I can get, because the load is usually 1.5 lane, barely fitting two cars at below walking speed, so when I see an opposite traffic I need to immediately slow down and take to the right, almost touching the ditch or the wall, to pass safely. Additionally I need to spot opposing car in the dead corners, where there is zero visibility etc. And finally the same problem as in the city with pedestrians crossing rural roads, which is even more dangerous because it is unexpected and darker. So I can see a powerful motivation to fit bright headlights in the cars, regardless of the other's comfort.
Etheryte 11mo ago
This is pretty detached from reality. Many places in the countryside don't even have road lines, never mind reflective ones. People walk out in the countryside all the time. Animals are a very big reason to have bright lights in the countryside, too.
- alt227 11mo ago
  Headlights dazzle animals, which is why they stand there staring into your lights until they get hit. The less light your car is giving off, the more chance wildlife has to get out of its way becasue it can actually see your car not just a massive bright light like the sun coming towards them.
psunavy03 11mo ago
Ah, the old "I am a free-thinking rational being, but everyone else are a bunch of NPCs who can't be allowed to have what they want without enlightened supervision" argument.
jcranmer 11mo ago
> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. The first time I used the hi-beams in my life was when I came off the ferry on Manitoulin Island and drove to my hotel from there. This is what that road looks like: https://maps.app.goo.gl/L7JajQbGQA7Fog1g9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/L7JajQbGQA7Fog1g9. No reflectors, the road lines aren't reflective, no ancillary lights from civilization to be aware of, and of course since it's so rural, you get to deal with all of the wildlife running around. I turned my hi-beams and realized for the first time in my life all the things I wasn't seeing before.
esseph 11mo ago
Out in the country there's no lines on the road. In fact, the road could be gravel for many, many miles, or just a dirt road. And I NEED those lights, especially this time of year where it's getting dark earlier and the deer, moose and elk are moving around during light transition hours.
gorgoiler 11mo ago
Where they pass through rural areas the high-speed, multi-lane roads in the UK and continental Europe are unlit. Partly for cost, partly to avoid light pollution. Brighter lights mean being able to see hazards further ahead of you.
7952 11mo ago
Maybe it all comes down to allowing people to feel comfortable driving more quickly on country roads. Also, the number of people who actually choose new cars is quite limited, and they may be influenced by stupid factors.
SoftTalker 11mo ago
You assume country roads have painted lines? Not where I live. And you also need to watch for deer, racoons, and other critters crossing ahead of you. High beams are essential on dark country roads.
- alt227 11mo ago
  Bright headlights dazzle wildlife. You do not need retina burning suns for headlamps to see animals on country roads.
  - SoftTalker 11mo ago
    You need to be able to see as far down the road as you can, and off to the sides, to have a better chance at seeing and avoiding a deer.
pwg 11mo ago
> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Not correct on all counts. Depending upon "where" out in the country, you can very well be the only car on the road for as far as you can see to the horizon. A very many country roads do not have any reflectors (those are often only installed on highway roads, not the roads you use to get to/from your destination to the highway. Some country roads will have reflective paint lines, but a good many will have non-reflective paint lines, and/or no lines at all or the paint is so worn down that they may as well have no lines at all. And while the rate of encountering pedestrians will be way less than in a city, it is very much not the case that there "won't be pedestrians". There very much will be pedestrians, sometimes. And for those rare sometimes you very much want to be able to recognize them from as far away as possible. The purpose of high beams in the country is not "brighter" (calling them "high beams", while correct, causes many to believe that "high" refers to "brighter"). The purpose of "high" beams is longer throw (the light goes further down the road, so you can see obstacles from a greater distance). The "high" in "high beams" refers to the fact that the angle of throw is set "higher" to cause the lamps to illuminate a greater distance down the road.
nullhole 11mo ago
Worth pointing out that headlights (and tail lights) aren't just for your ability to see things, they're also for the ability of other drives to see you. So, headlights are still needed in the city, even if the streetlamps are good enough to see the road, and even during the day. Running lights help, but it's still easier to identify a car with two (normal, non-blinding) headlights on than one with just running lights on, and much much easier when compared against a car with no lights on at all.
wiredpancake 11mo ago
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userbinator 11mo ago
So who are they for? Marketing.
duskdozer 11mo ago
I think everything is just way brighter now. We improved LEDs and stuck them in everything and amped them way up. Just going outside at night in a residential area gets your eyes blasted out with unshielded 8000K streetlights and spotlights people put up on the outside of their houses. I have to keep my computer monitors' brightness levels almost all the way down just to be able to use them, and they're not even the ones marketed as ultra-bright.

nikanj 11mo ago

Out in the country: moose and other animals

Lio 11mo ago
Moose are less of a problem in the UK than you might expect. ;) (I'll give you other animals though.)
- Maxion 11mo ago
  There are other countries than the UK.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    The story is about the UK. it would b ridiculous to set UK brightness levels on the grounds of what would be needed in Finland.
- IncreasePosts 11mo ago
  No thanks, I have no where to keep them.

jonahrd 11mo ago

Well.. deer, for one. It's much easier to spot animals crossing the road with bright headlights than without. I still also agree headlights are too bright, by the way, but I'm just providing an example for your question

silon42 11mo ago
Not necessarily... I had H4 or H1/H7 before, which were dimmer, but the edge cutoff was much smoother... With current car that has Xenon headlights (+ LED for day), they have a much sharper cutoff at the edge, making it harder to see pedestrians and other stuff near the road. Probably the LED/laser headlights are even worse in this aspect.

Lammy 11mo ago

> So who are they for? They're so machines can see better, not so humans can see better. There are so many more doorbell cameras, ALPR cameras, fixed building cams, PTZ building cams, dash cams, external vehicle cams, etc than ever before, and they all want to be able to spy on you as effectively as possible even at night.

geerlingguy 11mo ago

Many places don't pay for reflective paint, unfortunately. Here in Missouri they used it for a year or two and it was a vast improvement... but then they cut the paint budget and now we're back to invisible lines with even a small rain (no matter what the brightness of the headlights).

Magnets 11mo ago

animals and other objects on the road, and potholes

DiogoRolo 11mo ago

In the countryside, outside highways, the pain is usually non-reflective or just in such a bad state that you can't even see it. Usually bright headlights / highbeams are useful in there.

jansper39 11mo ago

Most of my driving is down small, unlit country roads and I'm constantly coming across deer, sheep, people in dark jackets (walking back from the pub) and people riding bikes (occasionally with no lights on). I'm quite thankful for bright headlights.

Maxion 11mo ago
Driving in the countryside, good headlights are *so* much safer.
- eertami 11mo ago
  This is exactly what high beams are for, and even 20 year old cars have very bright high beams that are plenty safe. The problem referred to in the article is dipped beam headlights being too bright and often too high, which are making things less safe by dazzling other drivers and road users.
  - robot-wrangler 11mo ago
    > This is exactly what high beams are for, Judging from comments in this thread, large numbers of people are suggesting that they are actually entitled to blind others because toggling back and forth is an inconvenience for them, and/or the "smart" cars that are auto-toggling high beams have left many drivers completely ignorant that toggling is actually possible. Related question, are cars that have completely removed manually controlling high beams actually street legal?
  - darkwater 11mo ago
    I'm pretty sure a technical solution can be found that improves normal headlight visibility compared to non-xenon lamps from 10-15-20 years ago WITHOUT blinding incoming traffic. High beam were always blinding, and unless you are completely alone you will not use them, even in the middle of a rural area, so they are out of the equation.
- kedean 11mo ago
  Good headlights are. The modern levels of brightness do not qualify as good headlights. Modern headlights become unsafe as soon as any other person is on the business end of them, due to the fact that they can no longer see properly. It puts other vehicles at the risk of crashing from being blinded, both cars and smaller vehicles like bicycles.

thedanbob 11mo ago

> And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Animals, specifically deer. That said, you can use brights when no other cars are nearby, and when there is a car coming its worth a few seconds of extra risk to not blind the other guy and put him at risk.

alt227 11mo ago
Why does nobody think that if these lights are dazzling oncoming drivers, they are also dazzling these precious deer and pedestrians people keep saying they need to see so well.
ComputerGuru 11mo ago
> its worth a few seconds of extra risk There really isn’t that much increase; when there’s another driver then you both have the combined the light output of both headlights, coming from two different directions.
toast0 11mo ago
Once we figure our deer wasting disease, we need to start the breeding program for reflectorized deer. It'll solve a lot of problems.

stuaxo 11mo ago

Lights in other settings that were upgraded to LEDs became much brighter: night clubs usef to be mostly dark for instance. I don't think it happened through any plan, if anyone was looking at the specs, they probably just thought "bigger number better".

chipsrafferty 11mo ago
Nightclubs are still too dark. Streets are too bright.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

linuxftw 11mo ago

Low beam lights were previously much dimmer and angled much lower. Rural driving absolutely required high beams.

gadders 11mo ago

>>Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Have you actually driven in the country? Out in the country where I live, some roads are single track with no painted lines, cats eyes or street lights. There is occasional foot traffic, sometimes not wearing reflective gear. There are also animals, and 6" deep potholes that I would rather not hit as well.

robot-wrangler 11mo ago

> I understand that currently this is sort of a collective action problem, There's something really obnoxious and antisocial about this that makes me really mad. Test your lights on yourself, people. If your manufacturer did something stupid here it's unfortunately on you to fix it. Usually the mentality of "got mine, fuck everyone else" is self-destructive but maybe not obviously so because cause/effect are a few steps away from each other. But if you blind everyone else on the road so you can see better then it's kind of endangering you directly and immediately! This is a huge issue in US western states especially, since they are full of long dark drives. You'll literally be blinded for several seconds if you encounter another car even if you're averting your eyes. Bad but not horrible if it's 1/10 of chance encounters that are antisocial, but it's been getting worse for years and odds are now much closer to 1/2.

crazygringo 11mo ago

> there won't be pedestrian foot traffic You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? There are all sorts of things you need to be able to see to avoid. People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Not to mention spotting dangerous icy patches at night in the winter. I take it you don't really drive in country? Which is fine, but it's good to be aware of the many potential hazards.

graemep 11mo ago
> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. > People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over. I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time.
- Leif24 11mo ago
  >> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball? >Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too. Not something I've commonly seen when driving, but certainly as a kid out in the country I ran around in the dark near the road. >> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. >Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over. >I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time. I've seen all of these multiple times (tbf the trash cans were in the city, not the country) out in upstate NY and rural Indiana and Kentucky. Maybe trees don't drop branches over in the UK, but over in the US that is certainly a hazard to be expected during and after severe weather. To be clear, I agree that excessively bright running lights and people who can't seem to properly transition between hibeams and lowbeams are problem. I just don't agree with the sentiment from the gp that "[o]ut in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights."

shortercode 11mo ago

Assuming that the lines on the road are in good condition or even exist. Uneven roads, potholes, and corners/junctions with no signage can all be a challenge is poor conditions with old style headlights ( our 2 cars have old and new style lights respectively ). That being said while I don’t struggle much with the glare from oncoming headlights I find that visibility beyond the oncoming vehicle can be severely limited by the bright light. This often causes me to slow down and squint to be careful of any dangers beyond the vehicle.

pjmlp 11mo ago

What road lines? There are plenty of country side roads in Europe that really dark with normal medium lights. Now I fully agree that full intensity is too high as shipped in most cars.

delaminator 11mo ago

> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. I guess you don't actually drive at night in the countryside then. You need lights to see where the road is, not where pedestrians might be - on none existent footpaths

everdrive 11mo ago
I live in the woods in the northeast US, and also grew up in the 80s-90s in a very rural area and I've owned a number of cars when I was young, some with comically dim lights. You really don't need the bright lights. You never have. Slow down, look for movement, and use your brights intelligently.
- lan321 11mo ago
  Slow down is kind of the general tip, but I find it kinda BS. I can drive slowly focusing on the bushes on the way to/from work in bumfuck nowhere, or I can get some beacon of god aux LEDs for cheap and turn night into day.
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    > or I can get some beacon of god aux LEDs for cheap and turn night into day. But only if you don't care about other drivers on the road. And of course, how many of those other drivers on the road care about who they're impacting? A lot of them have your attitude.
    - lan321 11mo ago
      My point is about bumfuck nowhere. Places where at night you may or may not see another car for the X km it takes you to get home. That with time people tend to forget they have their high beam bound to the beacon of god, with or without an extra switch, is a separate issue. The light itself makes sense. If there's a constant stream of vehicles I'm not really worried about visibility all that much. The suicidal wildlife is mostly culled, for potholes you can track the person in front...

Aachen 11mo ago

Despite the "I need this in the sticks" responses here, I think the most common answer is the silent group that didn't ask for it but it just comes with the car. This group is silent anyway, they didn't have the issue/need but also won't complain about the extra light, whereas a few other people did and so you can just make 1 size fits all with no repercussions (besides perhaps selling more replacement lamps)

alt227 11mo ago
I have always lived in the sticks and I hate these new headlights, you could always see fine with the old ones on a dark country lane.
- hollerith 11mo ago
  I wonder whether some fraction of the population has shit night vision and whether this fraction's preferences are driving this trend to too-bright headlights. That would explain scenes on TV and in movies with very low "key", which to me are awful and frustrating because I cannot see anything, but maybe that is just how the (dimly-lit) scene would actually look in real life to the cinematographer or editor responsible for the visual design of the scene.
Tox46 11mo ago
If i may add, they won't complain because the headlights of their cars aren't the ones that are flashing directly at their own face. To them the problem will always be the other's cars having the lights too bright.
doctorshady 11mo ago
In the early 2020s, I was driving at night in rural America on a daily basis in a nineties car with pre-LED yellow lights. There were plenty of animals in the road, and I never felt they were hard to see or stop for, even with no street lights. I really don't know what everyone's talking about when they swear they need all this extra light. What I will say is with newer cars where the center console had an LCD screen and far more lighting, it did feel genuinely dangerous to drive through these same areas. Any real solution to this should start with all this being adjustable (I assume it actually is in most models?), or even far dimmer in its stock state with your lights on.

xxs 11mo ago

>Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Animals and pedestrians (along with pot holes) are the prime reason.

widforss 11mo ago

Have you seen what a moose can do to a car?

skeletal88 11mo ago

I don't need bright lights, most people don't and we havent done anything to get them, they just come with the car for most people.

alt227 11mo ago
You bought a car which had them, that was a choice. I have never bought a car with extreme bright headlights, and I never will.
- skeletal88 11mo ago
  My car does not have extremelty bright headlights But the choice of headlight is probably one of the lowest factors when deciding on which car to buy, you just live with what the car manufacturers are shoving on us.
  - alt227 11mo ago
    ...or you choose to buy from a manufacturer who aligns more with your personal morals and opinions.

thedougd 11mo ago

Smartphones, infotainment systems, and large LCDs in the cabin are killing drivers' night vision.

iso1631 11mo ago
I find it easier to drive my wife's modern car with all that than my 2005 car which has barely any internal lights (dim light around the speedo, dim light on the radio) You're not wrong, but it's a minor contribution at most.
- alt227 11mo ago
  Thats probably because it has ridiculously bright headlights to compensate.
  - iso1631 11mo ago
    Could be because the driver seat is a little higher, but the poing being that ripping out the maps screen isn't going to help

tw04 11mo ago

You must not live where there’s wildlife… I can tell you it’s basically impossible to see deer at night without your brights on until you’re basically hitting it.

barbazoo 11mo ago
This can also be adjusted to by reducing speed.
- lawn 11mo ago
  You have to go so slow that you double the length of the trip, which is a big deal when a 2 hour trip turns into a 4 hour ordeal.
- DannyBee 11mo ago
  Sure but you should be able to safely drive the speed limit under normal (Ie not pouring rain, snow, etc) conditions. Night is a normal condition.
  - tikkabhuna 11mo ago
    Bear in mind that the UK has a “national speed limit” of 60mph for much of the countryside. This is very much a limit, a maximum, and you’re expected to drive to the conditions of the road. If it’s perfect weather conditions and twisting roads not wide enough for 2 cars, you shouldn’t be driving at the speed limit.
    - steve_gh 11mo ago
      Absolutely. The legal speed limit is 60 in the country - on any road not marked with a lower speed limit. This means that legally, you can drive at 60mph down a twisty single track road with 1.5m earth and rock banks topped with hedges. You would be an irresponsible nutter with a death wish to try through! And if you crashed, "I was driving at / under the speed limit" wouldn't wash - you would be charged with Driving without Due Care and Attention, or Dangerous Driving depending on the consequences of the crash.

catlikesshrimp 11mo ago

We needed some brighter lights before the current craze. When you aren't using strong lights your pupils open more. Now we need much brighter lights than traditionam because the lights from other cars leave you blind for too long. Context: I live in 3rd world country with non lit interurban roads. People must to walk and ride bicycles, only they do irresponsibly without anything reflective, maybe only with their cellphone screens lit because they are using it. I sometimes reduce speed to 30 km/h when a car comes from the opposite direction.

iso1631 11mo ago

In the country you need decent lights on the road to spot the potholes, animals, and people. And of course you get pedestrian traffic, especially at this time of year when people are walking dogs after getting home from work. The problem isn't as much bright lights though, it's lights shining in your face. 1) "auto dipping" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic 2) "matrix" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic 3) Headlights are adjusted to point as high as possible, on cars with ridiculous high headlights, so although they are pointing "down" (just), they are pointing into your car 4) My 2005 car's headlights are yellow. Modern ones are white. If I drive with full beam on, I don't even get flashed. Yellow isn't as dazzling. Of course it's all rather meaningless, nobody chose brighter lights

DeathArrow 11mo ago

I have poor night vision, many times there are no road marks at all. I need to see whether the road continues straight, goes left or right, so I need decent headlights.

k1rd 11mo ago

I remember light used to be much paler and became brighter around the 2010. just go drive in an old car (20+ years) and a new car. You are right also especially that there is a good side to it: in countryside roads you will able to see pedestrians/bicycles that don't use refractory lights better. Surely you are blinding everyone else.

mapt 11mo ago

Just because this is YC, I thought I should pitch in - A high-trust society that solved coordination problems through legislation, could solve this with a win-win technofix solution where everybody's headlights are as bright as the sun and nobody suffers ill effects. That technofix solution is polarized headlights, and right-angle-polarized night driving glasses or windshield tints.

Spoom 11mo ago
Wouldn't that, uh, make your own headlights invisible to you?
- mapt 11mo ago
  Polarized light reflecting off a textured surface scrambles into nonpolarized light. There are modest costs (signage & road markings shouldn't be perfectly smooth, retroreflectors work a little differently, and you lose a certain percent efficiency), but they're much less intense than the costs of the current situation.
potato3732842 11mo ago
> high-trust society that solved coordination problems through legislation What is the point of being high trust in the first place if you have to have a government violence backed law for everything? High trust societies don't have governments dealing BS minutia like automobile headlights. That is expensive in all sorts of ways, assuming you even do it right and don't accidentally create some perverse rent seeking bureaucracy or certification group that has incentive to push things in a dumb direction over time. And high trust societies don't need to do that stuff because they're high trust and collaborative in the first place so those problems solve themselves. The big players identify the problem, mostly solve it with some sort of industry standard, and whatever rounding error is left is a nuisance so small it's not worth addressing. This is how like the overwhelming majority of automotive (and a million other industries too, computer stuff being a particularly relevant one here) stuff was done before regulation and how a lot of the more cutting edge stuff is still done now with the added step of the regulator saying "hey that thing everyone's mostly doing, it's law now, errybody do it" once things settle. I don't mean to pick on you specifically, the questionable take you're peddling is pervasive all over HN.

taeric 11mo ago

I confess this is why I just assumed my eyes were going bad. I am getting old, and this shift seemed to have coincided with about the time I moved to a more rural area. In the city, I don't know that I ever used "brights" on my cars. In rural, it helps to see when there are basically no road lamps.

vladvasiliu 11mo ago

bunderbunder 11mo ago
Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road. But I find that bright white headlights actually make that second problem worse. The bright white light means your eyes don't adjust as well to the dark, so you can really only see straight ahead. So it's much harder to spot deer standing in the relative gloom along the side of the road than it is with older halogen headlights.
- vladvasiliu 11mo ago
  You're right, and it's actually even worse when the road has very reflective white lines. Basically, everything outside of the road is invisible. However, in France, they somehow haven't figured how to not have their lines disappear when it rains ever so slightly. I think that there's some kind of middle ground. Older cars used to have pretty dim lights. When my dad got a Citroën C5 with Xenon lights many years ago, it was a game changer. That car and one almost identical one (Peugeot 407) were fairly popular around these parts when they came out, and I don't remember ever having issues with their headlights blinding me. But something started to shift some 5 years ago: more and more cars started having blinding lights. Combined with taller and taller cars, it started being a pain. I also think that people pay less attention to the state of their cars. Some (like that C5) have auto-levelling lights, and the Xenons seem to last forever (never had to touch them in almost 20 years of service). However, I have the impression that there are more and more cars with headlights which are simply out of whack. I base that judgement on the fact that most of the time, only one of the headlights will blind me, while the other seems fine. And I'm mostly talking "basic" cars, not some high-end mercedes with matrix lights or whatever they're called which may be misdetecting something.

breppp 11mo ago

I never wanted bright lights, I just paid extra for LEDs in the hope that I won't need to change these anymore

kappi 11mo ago

When you are driving in the night during heavy rainfall, good head light is difference between life and death. Get out of your bubble please!

phatfish 11mo ago
And when your ridiculous LED lamps blind the oncoming driver on a corner during heavy rain and they crash into you, you wish weren't so selfish. I guess it is more likely they crash into the car behind you or just run off the road themselves. Unfortunately being a selfish pays off most of the time.

Aurornis 11mo ago

> The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Reading these comments is a reminder that a lot of people aren’t familiar with the diversity of roads and environments across the country and around the world. Painted reflective road lines in good shape are a luxury, especially in areas with heavy snow and snowplows coming through a lot. Pedestrians aren’t a concern, but deer and other animals are. The deer are much worse than pedestrians because they move faster and don’t understand how to avoid cars. Country roads also have very different conditions across the world. In some places you have clear visibility 100 feet to the tree line. In some places I drive, the trees are dense right up to the road with only a couple feet of clearance to the car. Some roads are also so rough that the biggest hazards are avoiding pot holes. Some roads I drive are up against mountain faces and the road may have large rocks that have fallen on it. I personally don’t feel the need for brighter headlights because I keep my headlight lenses clear, washed, and waxed, and I’m young with good eyesight. I also use brights in the countryside and toggle them off when other drivers are coming. However, downplaying the challenges of country road driving is weird.

everdrive 11mo ago
>However, downplaying the challenges of country road driving is weird. This is a total non sequitur, but we live in the country, and we had a few friends who had only ever lived in the city. A few of them independently expressed anxiety about visiting us due to needing to drive on "curvy country roads." I'm not making a broader point here, but I'd never heard this concern expressed before and was really surprised that it was a big obstacle for some people.
- Yizahi 11mo ago
  I have close to two decades of driving experience and I dread driving on the rural roads. Roads where you can barely fit two cars side by side, or even narrower, unexpected cars rushing towards you from the closed dead corners, badly signed crossings etc. But mostly its narrow roads, it is extremely stressful for me, and double so in the twilight and in the darkness.

icetank 11mo ago

My guess is that the average population of car drivers is aging. With age comes worse eyesight and and the ability to see in the dark. So a lot of people are probably more comfortable with having brighter headlights.

globular-toast 11mo ago

> In the city, it's so bright that you don't even need headlights to see whatsoever. And, in the UK at least, you don't legally need to use them either. If it's lit and the speed limit is no more than 30mph, you only need sidelights and taillights on in the dark. Unfortunately most people will flash their lights at you if they see it as they assume you've forgotten to put them on.

htek 11mo ago

Most people don't change the brightness of their lights. This is driven by industry using HID and LED lights that have a higher color temperature than the old lighting. It's really a failure of governmental regulation (or lack thereof, in this case).

mingus88 11mo ago
LED upgrades were very popular in the early 2000s. IIRC that style of light was introduced by Lexus and Audi around 2003 The tuner community naturally started retrofitting those lights into their cheaper Hondas and Toyotas, as they were signals of luxury and performance. Those times were bad, since those folk were not aiming them properly. Mainstream brands followed shortly afterwards, and now they are standard equipment. Honestly there is no going back. People won’t want a car with dim lights when every other car has “nicer” ones. I agree it will take regulation to fix, and I am not at all confident in that ever happening. What used to be a $30 part at the auto store is now at least $300 in special parts and labor to replace a headlight, on the low end

rickydroll 11mo ago

People who drive in rural New England. Headlights don't illuminate far enough to stop in time at 40 or 50 miles an hour, let alone at highway speeds. Snarky view is you may wreck your car, but at least you'll have a year's worth of venison.

mingus88 11mo ago
Where I live, it doesn’t matter how far your lights throw down the roadway, you still have less than a couple seconds to notice the deer sprinting out of the woods directly in front of you

arethuza 11mo ago

I live in rural Scotland - a lot of minor roads round here have no markings?

Yizahi 11mo ago

I don't even use my high beams usually, and neither do I have LED, xenon or laser headlights. But I often do wish that I magically had brighter headlights without being an asshole, both in the city and rural. In the city any 2 lane or smaller road can be unexpectedly crossed by pedestrians, on crossings and not. And pedestrians nowadays are wearing all black, completely invisible on the side of the road. And on the rural roads, I want as far visibility as I can get, because the load is usually 1.5 lane, barely fitting two cars at below walking speed, so when I see an opposite traffic I need to immediately slow down and take to the right, almost touching the ditch or the wall, to pass safely. Additionally I need to spot opposing car in the dead corners, where there is zero visibility etc. And finally the same problem as in the city with pedestrians crossing rural roads, which is even more dangerous because it is unexpected and darker. So I can see a powerful motivation to fit bright headlights in the cars, regardless of the other's comfort.

Etheryte 11mo ago

This is pretty detached from reality. Many places in the countryside don't even have road lines, never mind reflective ones. People walk out in the countryside all the time. Animals are a very big reason to have bright lights in the countryside, too.

alt227 11mo ago
Headlights dazzle animals, which is why they stand there staring into your lights until they get hit. The less light your car is giving off, the more chance wildlife has to get out of its way becasue it can actually see your car not just a massive bright light like the sun coming towards them.

psunavy03 11mo ago

Ah, the old "I am a free-thinking rational being, but everyone else are a bunch of NPCs who can't be allowed to have what they want without enlightened supervision" argument.

jcranmer 11mo ago

esseph 11mo ago

Out in the country there's no lines on the road. In fact, the road could be gravel for many, many miles, or just a dirt road. And I NEED those lights, especially this time of year where it's getting dark earlier and the deer, moose and elk are moving around during light transition hours.

gorgoiler 11mo ago

Where they pass through rural areas the high-speed, multi-lane roads in the UK and continental Europe are unlit. Partly for cost, partly to avoid light pollution. Brighter lights mean being able to see hazards further ahead of you.

7952 11mo ago

Maybe it all comes down to allowing people to feel comfortable driving more quickly on country roads. Also, the number of people who actually choose new cars is quite limited, and they may be influenced by stupid factors.

SoftTalker 11mo ago

You assume country roads have painted lines? Not where I live. And you also need to watch for deer, racoons, and other critters crossing ahead of you. High beams are essential on dark country roads.

alt227 11mo ago
Bright headlights dazzle wildlife. You do not need retina burning suns for headlamps to see animals on country roads.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  You need to be able to see as far down the road as you can, and off to the sides, to have a better chance at seeing and avoiding a deer.

pwg 11mo ago

> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them. Not correct on all counts. Depending upon "where" out in the country, you can very well be the only car on the road for as far as you can see to the horizon. A very many country roads do not have any reflectors (those are often only installed on highway roads, not the roads you use to get to/from your destination to the highway. Some country roads will have reflective paint lines, but a good many will have non-reflective paint lines, and/or no lines at all or the paint is so worn down that they may as well have no lines at all. And while the rate of encountering pedestrians will be way less than in a city, it is very much not the case that there "won't be pedestrians". There very much will be pedestrians, sometimes. And for those rare sometimes you very much want to be able to recognize them from as far away as possible. The purpose of high beams in the country is not "brighter" (calling them "high beams", while correct, causes many to believe that "high" refers to "brighter"). The purpose of "high" beams is longer throw (the light goes further down the road, so you can see obstacles from a greater distance). The "high" in "high beams" refers to the fact that the angle of throw is set "higher" to cause the lamps to illuminate a greater distance down the road.

nullhole 11mo ago

Worth pointing out that headlights (and tail lights) aren't just for your ability to see things, they're also for the ability of other drives to see you. So, headlights are still needed in the city, even if the streetlamps are good enough to see the road, and even during the day. Running lights help, but it's still easier to identify a car with two (normal, non-blinding) headlights on than one with just running lights on, and much much easier when compared against a car with no lights on at all.

wiredpancake 11mo ago

[dead]

userbinator 11mo ago

So who are they for? Marketing.

duskdozer 11mo ago

I think everything is just way brighter now. We improved LEDs and stuck them in everything and amped them way up. Just going outside at night in a residential area gets your eyes blasted out with unshielded 8000K streetlights and spotlights people put up on the outside of their houses. I have to keep my computer monitors' brightness levels almost all the way down just to be able to use them, and they're not even the ones marketed as ultra-bright.