There's an interesting trend of some cars having their daytime running lights and their low beams in completely separate positions, with the car design only emphasizing the former. This effectively reduces the height of the headlight even if the car is taller. Here's an example:
This is largely poor regulation. The assumption that "more bright = more safe" and the lack of enough real-world testing.
The only other product analogy that comes to mind is "thicker = better" for hiking socks. When they got too thick, they applied too much pressure to the heal and also provided additional moment distance making it far easier to roll an ankle.
Yes, and this poor attitude of "safety" meaning "safe for the driver" extends to all sorts of terrible safety regulations.
41% of vehicle deaths are people not even in a car[1]. Yet car safety regulation is heavily focused on the 59% that are, nothing to regulate the ridiculous gender-affirming hood heights or aftermarket lifts that turn a survivable collision into a deadly collision.
It doesn't help your case when you state inflammatory remarks like "gender-affirming hood heights". This isn't reddit.
The data even points to the fact that, by total vehicles vs vehicles that cause pedestrian deaths, regular passenger cars cause 19.9 pedestrian deaths per 1MM registered vehicles while trucks, as and entire category, cause 19.2 pedestrians deaths per 1MM registered vehicles.
"nothing to regulate" is also an exaggeration. Many states to regulate aftermarket lifts. 6" lifts are typically the maximum legally allowed limit for trucks like the F150. You only see them higher because there is no enforcement of the rule.
> You only see them higher because there is no enforcement of the rule.
Unenforced rules effectively don't exist. Selectively enforced rules are a focal point for discrimination and corruption. I don't think you're making the argument you think you are.
> Yet all car safety regulation on the 59% that are
I don’t think you meant literally “all”, but one that comes to mind that definitely is intended for pedestrian safety is around requiring that EVs make audible noises when they’re moving at slow speeds (the fake humming as they move forward, and the beeping as they reverse).
However I think your EV examples shows an important attitude about what types of vehicles can be regulated. EVs are fair game for regulation, oversize trucks and SUVs are not. That's an attitude not based on safety, but on societal priorities.
This two-class system extends even beyond safety regulations, into emissions regulations too. Trucks and oversize SUVs get a free-ride out of everybody else in society.
Car headlights are regulated. My hunch is that the regulations are based on technical background that is not up to date with modern light sources including LEDs and HIDs.
Styling works against us too. The ability to control the geometry of the light beam improves with the size of the optics relative to the emitter, but people want car with sexy little lights.
I designed optics for lighting in a past light, though never for an automotive application. This issue is actually on my radar because of the blinding brightness of bike lights on the local bike paths.
Yeah but more bright is more safe ... for me driving around with the light of a thousand suns coming out of the front of my care at night it seems pretty safe, "good luck everybody else".
Often less bright is safer. Unless there are heavy clouds the moon (even a partial mood) is often bright enough that once my eyes adjust (which takes time!) I can see better without any lights at all. When my headlights are on I see really good in the space where the lights are, but beyond that I see nothing, when my headlights are often I can't see as well in that area, but I see much farther. I want everything that can to have lights so they are easier to see, but I can see a candle from miles away so this is minimal. With no lights at all I have better chances of seeing things that don't have lights in time to take action.
A big problem is bright screens and displays inside of cars at night. Your night vision never kicks in so you need extra bright lights to see, thus these bright lights that only light up a small section of the road. The more dispersed and even lighting of the old lights is so much better.
I don't like my wife's car for several reasons, but one thing it absolutely nails is the dash: all the lights are orange. It's a night-and-day difference (pun intended) to most cars that have blue lights everywhere, plus an LCD screen in newer models.
Night visón comment is 100% spot on. Most haven’t even experienced it. Here’s a trick, when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, keep one eye closed the whole time if there are lights. When back in bed open that eye. That’s night vision.
One of my favorite features of my Mazda 3 is that it has a HUD projector in the windshield that gets turn by turn directions via Apple CarPlay so I can turn off the screen and still get navigation.
I was taught to adjust my mirrors so that I would have to shift my head slightly in the direction of the mirror to see the side of my car in the mirror. I didn't realize this approach wasn't the "normal" way!
I do this on long drives, but always have to put it back to normal when it's time to park. It would be neat if cars would implement some sort of automatic switch between this configuration and the straight-back mode when reversing.
So you also angle the mirrors down a ton ? My old car (a VW) had an option to automatically do this on the passenger side mirror when in reverse. Not sure id want to do this manually each time though (up and down)
With manual mirrors I aim for driving and 'hope and pray' when parking.
My current car has cameras which show me the ground around it when I press a button which solves all my needs. Probably a better solution, but not on most cars from what I can tell.
There is the possibility (as said by an apologetic driver) that it sometimes may be a badly functioning automation ("Too high? Oh but it's automatic").
Yeah, since they started to introduce super duper led headlights and 144 Hz animations on turn signals it's been more and more blinding to drive at night even across the ocean.
It was. We had sealed beam headlights for a while till we didn’t. There were common rules for aiming and it worked. The lights weren’t all that bright and the styling was not stellar, however.
As an EU citizen, I notice that our regulators tend to target industries that operate outside of the EU. There is a massive car lobby in Europe with dozens of big companies and regulation would have a big effect on them.
There are headlights that are illegal in the US but legal in Europe. Opposite world of what we normally have.
My observations from the UK, formerly almost 'Europe':
Boomers need cataract operations! A huge part of the car dependent population are elderly. These folks need ten times the light to see anything when compared to the seventeen year old learner driver (that doesn't go out at night, because their driving instructor clocked off hours ago).
My thoughts regarding this are somewhat anecdotal, however, I have heard a mystery boomer rant and rave about the headlights on his 'Italian car' (they make them in Eastern Europe and slap an Italian flag on). My observation from being in the offending car, shouting here because aforementioned elderly person had hearing issues too: I CAN SEE EVERYTHING FOR MILES!!!
Next: state of the roads
As a pesky cyclist, I used to prefer roads to cycle paths because of the smoother riding experience and improved speed. Not nowadays. In the UK, and dare I say it, the West, we have a problem with potholes. Cars also come with low profile tyres and they weigh 50%+ more than the cars we had before airbags and electronic safety systems came along. This is a combination that results in frequent flat tyres.
What was something that rarely happened is now practically inevitable. As a pesky cyclist, I should be the one getting punctures and fixing tyres, not the motorist. To compound the misery, few cars come with a genuine spare wheel, partly because of the weight problem with today's cars. My bicycle with kit and caboodle weighs far less than that spare wheel, so this nobbling of the spare wheel makes sense to me, but still, a normal car is two orders of magnitude heavier than what I roll with.
Back to the headlights, the elderly cohort with money for new cars, the boomers, don't live in cities, they have nice places in the countryside that require car dependency. With this, and the usage of B-roads, there is a genuine requirement for super-bright lights. Some brands, such as Audi, sell into the market for those that want innovative lights, where the primary innovation is yet more light.
As for built up areas, the lighting situation has also changed. Even as a cyclist, I am running what amounts to 'daytime running lights' because of the light pollution. I put my lights on well before sundown, whereas I never used to. The law is 'after sundown' and I used to be okay with that, but if it is four in the afternoon, mid-summer, I am putting the rear light on, at least.
It does not seem that I am alone in this, many cars have full lighting rather than what we used to call 'sidelights' on.
It is no longer pitch black inside a car, SAAB style. There is so much lighting going on, with a glowing iPad style screen at the minimum, ambient lighting strips on the deluxe cars. The headlights have to compete with this. So more brightness, please!
As I see it, we are caught in a cycle of degrading roads, heavier cars, brighter lights and an elderly cohort that actually needs massive amount of light to see anything. Sure there is clever tech so nobody has to dim their lights, and we have it on posh AUDIs and the like, but this is the spiral we are in, and the good old USA shows where it is going, what the end game looks like.
Into the mix we also have cyclists playing the stupid-lights game. Nowadays cycling is conspicuous leisure, not transport, and plenty of the carbon fibre crew spend hundreds on these stupid lights. Obviously I am somewhat 'shadow fleet' so I don't do that, I just have what heavy goods drivers 'want' from the well-behaved cyclist, which is standard issue, basic flashing lights, a complement of reflectors, high viz and manners.
I yearn for being able to see the Milky Way and the moon providing variable amounts of light throughout the night, with anything moving at night having modest levels of lighting. The situation as it stands means that, along with pedestrians, pets and other animals, I am as good as invisible at night on my bicycle.
Fortunately it looks like we will be losing cheap oil thanks to the tangerine person, unfortunately many millions will starve, but a lot of lights will be getting turned off soonly and the age of car dependency will be over.
I drive a 40 year old vehicle and a friend created an aftermarket adjustable headlight frame allowing it to move from all-in-one rectangular headlight/high beam sealed units to modern LED bulbs and then an accessory of choice on the inner spaces left over. I chose a classic-looking LED that does regular, high beam, DRL, and amber turn signal all in one and then put off-road fog lights on the inner spaces. But I would not leave the house after night with the vehicle until I adjusted them to DOT spec. Because they are so much brighter and sharped-edged than factory, I can see that they don’t go above oncoming windshields and are aligned properly horizontally.
The excellent guide that I used to align my lights:
Was discussing at home (USA) this same idea that vehicle lights are brighter and drivers are less inclined to be bothered to dip. I rented a car in the UK several years ago which auto-dimmed the beam and was fascinated by the technology which would allow it to differentiate light sources and identify oncoming vehicles.
This feature must be old. My Subaru Forester 2018 has it. What non-US cars have are those new zone dimmable lamps.
Regardless I keep my auto dim off and just down. I don’t usually need the headlamps in high beam mode.
What would be useful is a taller median between both sides on a highway since often the blinding is because of a difference in the direction facing due to the grade of the highway. Facing people who are looking up a hill is awful.
It is true, that many drivers drive with the high beam on. My cabin is frequently illuminated by their lamps. My lamps never illuminate the cabin of a car I follow by comparison. This strange asymmetry does annoy me and I am certain I’m in the right but it’s usually resolvable by allowing them to pass.
If you are using low-beams and driving more than about 45 mph, you can hit something (or someone) before you had time to see it (or them). Granted, that doesn't matter if you're following someone else, since they'll hit it first. Which is why you need high-beams on when there isn't someone else around to light up the distant part of the road for you--and which depends on how often you drive remote roads.
If my comment was interpreted as some advocacy for the removal of high-beams, please allow me to correct the record: I think they're a good feature to have.
This has been available in the US for a long time. I had it on the car I bought in 2016, and on another I bought in 2023. It's just not mandatory, so it usually comes as a part of some safety / driver assistance package. And even if you have it, you need to enable it.
I think most if not all US cars do this now. My current one doesn't even have a way to keep the brights on permanently. Now to wait 8 or so years for all the old ones to cycle out :(.
The average car in the US is 12 years old, so the average lifespan is obviously longer. Though average includes some collectors car that nobody drives daily.
And to make it worse, there are so many large vans and pickup trucks (empty too) speeding, that also have very bright and eye level cornea melting LED lights.
For a long time it was aftermarket HID kits. Installing those was a bit of a pain because of the separate ballasts and associated wiring. They were blinding because the projectors required a cut off and most were installed in halogen housings.
Now most people are installing aftermarket LED kits. For the most part those are less blinding. I upgraded our old Impreza with some but chose the lowest lumen numbers I could find and they are also engineered to emit light in the same locations and angles that the halogen ones did. I did some tests with the garage door and standing in front of it where a car would be and it's non-blinding for oncoming traffic.
Not sure at all. Most LED retrofit kits have bulbs that create light in a totally different pattern than the original and don't correctly use the cutoff of the headlight
This is so much worse now that crossovers are the default car in the US. I seem to be the last person in America driving a car that isn't a tank and have never understood why everyone loves those massive machines so much.
I heard in Germany when a vehicle is being inspected (yearly?) the headlights' angles are checked to not be beaming into oncoming traffic. Feels like useful regulation to include in every country.
I have brown eyes, still hurts to drive at night. Canadian situation is just as bad as our neighbours down south. Now I long for the days of being blinded by yellow headlamps again.
Straight pipes on Harleys are illegal. But when cops are the ones driving the Harleys who is going to enforce it? This is the problem with certain types of regulations. Like sheriffs who ignore gun regulation in their county.
They work okay on straight roads with no median. But often fail in these cases:
- cresting a hill. Normal people can see the cone of light from the approaching car and often turn classic high beams down before it blinds fellow drivers. These do it only when it detects the actual light source, giving a 0.2-0.5 (about) flash of bright light.
- Wet and snowy ground. Even when they re-align themselves somewhat properly they can be blinding due to reflections which are not part of the angle-calculation algorithm.
- Failure to detect pedestrians and cyclists. Self-evident, but when I am not in a car I am impressed by how blinding it is.
Personally I consider them to decrease safety for everyone except the car with those headlights. I also feel like it is yet another badly designed automation which adds to the ability to slightly doze off and pay a little less attention to traffic.
As someone who has retrofitted headlights with proper HID projectors, deal with RHD to LHD conversions, on some vehicles you can make your headlights look absolutely amazing, with no glare or harm to oncoming traffic. Some of these OEM headlight designs are atrocious. 2015ish F250's are some of the worst headlights when it comes to this.
What really pisses me off? LED bulbs only available in 6000k or higher. I had to import some Osram H4 bulbs from the netherlands because they are a warmer factory 3000K temperature. We really need regulation on glare, because right now it's the wild west.
I've heard of people around my parts sneaking around at night with black masks, taking baseball bats to specific headlights on trucks late at night. Apocryphal or no, stories like that are being cheered by regular people.
The federal government took upon itself responsibility for things like this, because it's impractical at best for cities or states to regulate these. It's too bad that politics and bloat has made governance of this particular issue more or less impossible. Self regulation is obviously a joke, the standard suite of choices mean the default options for consumers are obnoxious as hell.
It'll have to become a big enough issue to warrant attention and action by the President, either this one or whoever comes next, or nothing will ever be done.
Maybe a convention of states that runs all current politicians, judges, and bureaucrats out of their jobs (in a sane, phased way) and establishes term limits and bans on careerism and bloat. Citizens can bypass the feds and kick their asses to the curb - imagine a total reset, in which we put forth competent, responsible people.
This problem will never be fixed. Gonna have to wear adaptive sunglasses at night for driving.
Tesla is a big part of this. They ship their headlights misaligned from the factory, so they point right into the drivers eyes. Tesla has no quality culture at all. A bunch of wankers.
I think the gigantic prevalence of huge or lifted trucks is a bigger influence, especially given the tendency to mod them out (poorly) with aftermarket lights.
Truck headlights are already on a level with sedan drivers' eyes. There are far more F-150s on the road than there are Teslas.
Not only is this NOT the case, but all Tesla vehicles since something like 2021 have included matrix lights. They have adaptive beams to automatically darken sections of the headlight beam to avoid blinding other drivers.
I'm sure they don't. The law requires a 10 degree downward angle for directed headlights out of the factory. It would never pass NHTSA testing without it. High beams are a different matter: They are designed to scatter in a wide arc, but people shouldn't be using them when there's opposing traffic.
While all automakers are incentivized to make driving in the competition's vehicles as hellish as possible, Tesla is doubly so. The worse it gets to drive, the more likely people are to want self-driving.
I dunno, I think all manufacturers are at fault. Even the ones that are properly aligned are ridiculously bright, but aimed down. Which is fine if two vehicles approach each other on flat ground. But if two vehicles approach the crest of a hill, then the headlight that was aimed down is now aimed straight at the other driver.
And don't get me started on jackasses that put LED bulbs in old halogen housings.
I like having bright LED headlights, however I also made sure my headlights are correctly aimed and that my auto-leveling is working correctly. My car also auto-dims high beams and has ADB/turning lights. So, in short, I understand why people like bright lights and I'm also conscientious so my vehicle is not the problem.
I drive a normal height hatchback. I live in Texas. The /vast/ majority of vehicles on the road are trucks and SUVs, and many of them have aftermarket lift kits which further exacerbates the problem. The main problem is vehicle height and improperly aimed headlights. There's no real enforcement or regulation for headlight aiming, and worse we have no effective vehicle height restrictions. Not only do these insecure little men blind you at night, their cattle guard/reinforced bumper mounted to the frame will decapitate you if they hit you because of the bumper height difference from the 6+ inch Chinese lift kit they added to their truck to stroke their ego and allow them to "bully" drivers on the road by intentionally tailgating and driving aggressively in their oversized vehicle.
The problem is epidemic in America, and it's a problem of both regulation and culture. As long as the typical American driver is somebody who enters the road ignorant of basic driving dynamics, with a selfish attitude, inattentively barreling down the road in their massive fuck-off symbol of insecurity, we are not going to fix this.
This is a pet peeve of mine, so when a headlight went out a few weeks ago I asked my mechanic about bulb options. He said he had no other choices for me, so now I am part of the problem too.
Seems like a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation / use case for regulation....
There are already regulations forbidding the use of unapproved LED retrofits in housings designed for incandescent bulbs in most countries. The fact that your mechanic gets away with installing them, and you get away with driving your now-illegal car shows how well they are enforced.
Unless your car's design is particularly evil (a real possibility), changing a headlight bulb is usually easy to do yourself, and approved, incandescent headlight bulbs are easy to source most places.
There are LED replacement bulbs that mimic the light emitting pattern of halogen and also are not massively bright. Those are fine and cops are not going after people with that kind of thing.
There's an interesting trend of some cars having their daytime running lights and their low beams in completely separate positions, with the car design only emphasizing the former. This effectively reduces the height of the headlight even if the car is taller. Here's an example:
https://youtu.be/KGhycuensJw?si=ZCycH7l5hQDktqqK&t=54
Surprisingly the Cybertruck also has this layout.
This is largely poor regulation. The assumption that "more bright = more safe" and the lack of enough real-world testing.
The only other product analogy that comes to mind is "thicker = better" for hiking socks. When they got too thick, they applied too much pressure to the heal and also provided additional moment distance making it far easier to roll an ankle.
Yes, and this poor attitude of "safety" meaning "safe for the driver" extends to all sorts of terrible safety regulations.
41% of vehicle deaths are people not even in a car[1]. Yet car safety regulation is heavily focused on the 59% that are, nothing to regulate the ridiculous gender-affirming hood heights or aftermarket lifts that turn a survivable collision into a deadly collision.
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... Table 1, paragraph above
It doesn't help your case when you state inflammatory remarks like "gender-affirming hood heights". This isn't reddit.
The data even points to the fact that, by total vehicles vs vehicles that cause pedestrian deaths, regular passenger cars cause 19.9 pedestrian deaths per 1MM registered vehicles while trucks, as and entire category, cause 19.2 pedestrians deaths per 1MM registered vehicles.
"nothing to regulate" is also an exaggeration. Many states to regulate aftermarket lifts. 6" lifts are typically the maximum legally allowed limit for trucks like the F150. You only see them higher because there is no enforcement of the rule.
> You only see them higher because there is no enforcement of the rule.
Unenforced rules effectively don't exist. Selectively enforced rules are a focal point for discrimination and corruption. I don't think you're making the argument you think you are.
If you are so knowledgeable, then what argument am I making?
It doesn't help your case when you state inflammatory comments like "If you are so knowledgeable, then what argument am I making?". This isn't reddit.
Dont like a taste of your own medicine, do you?
How is this helping? We're not on the playground here.
> Yet all car safety regulation on the 59% that are
I don’t think you meant literally “all”, but one that comes to mind that definitely is intended for pedestrian safety is around requiring that EVs make audible noises when they’re moving at slow speeds (the fake humming as they move forward, and the beeping as they reverse).
Forget about EVs.
Most regular SUVs should be taken off the road.
Look at this example: a dozen kids aligned in a neat row in front of the SUV and the soccer mom drivers can see none of them!
https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...
Fair point, I edited my comment to reflect it!
However I think your EV examples shows an important attitude about what types of vehicles can be regulated. EVs are fair game for regulation, oversize trucks and SUVs are not. That's an attitude not based on safety, but on societal priorities.
This two-class system extends even beyond safety regulations, into emissions regulations too. Trucks and oversize SUVs get a free-ride out of everybody else in society.
Blame the chicken tax.
Car headlights are regulated. My hunch is that the regulations are based on technical background that is not up to date with modern light sources including LEDs and HIDs.
Styling works against us too. The ability to control the geometry of the light beam improves with the size of the optics relative to the emitter, but people want car with sexy little lights.
I designed optics for lighting in a past light, though never for an automotive application. This issue is actually on my radar because of the blinding brightness of bike lights on the local bike paths.
I think the problem is even worse because the mentality quickly extends from "more bright = more safe" to "drive faster."
Do you have any sources you can share about sock thickness and ankle injuries?
Yeah but more bright is more safe ... for me driving around with the light of a thousand suns coming out of the front of my care at night it seems pretty safe, "good luck everybody else".
Often less bright is safer. Unless there are heavy clouds the moon (even a partial mood) is often bright enough that once my eyes adjust (which takes time!) I can see better without any lights at all. When my headlights are on I see really good in the space where the lights are, but beyond that I see nothing, when my headlights are often I can't see as well in that area, but I see much farther. I want everything that can to have lights so they are easier to see, but I can see a candle from miles away so this is minimal. With no lights at all I have better chances of seeing things that don't have lights in time to take action.
A big problem is bright screens and displays inside of cars at night. Your night vision never kicks in so you need extra bright lights to see, thus these bright lights that only light up a small section of the road. The more dispersed and even lighting of the old lights is so much better.
I don't like my wife's car for several reasons, but one thing it absolutely nails is the dash: all the lights are orange. It's a night-and-day difference (pun intended) to most cars that have blue lights everywhere, plus an LCD screen in newer models.
Night visón comment is 100% spot on. Most haven’t even experienced it. Here’s a trick, when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, keep one eye closed the whole time if there are lights. When back in bed open that eye. That’s night vision.
Seriously. First thing I do when driving is turn off the screen
One of my favorite features of my Mazda 3 is that it has a HUD projector in the windshield that gets turn by turn directions via Apple CarPlay so I can turn off the screen and still get navigation.
Blindzone Glare Elimination Method can help address some of this
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/blindzoneglaremi...
It doesn't help at all with head on traffic, but glare via my side mirrors has been reduced greatly since I implemented this.
I was taught to adjust my mirrors so that I would have to shift my head slightly in the direction of the mirror to see the side of my car in the mirror. I didn't realize this approach wasn't the "normal" way!
I do this on long drives, but always have to put it back to normal when it's time to park. It would be neat if cars would implement some sort of automatic switch between this configuration and the straight-back mode when reversing.
Why do you need to see the sides of your own vehicle to park ?
I don't, but I need to see things an inch away. I need to see the lines which are often close to my car as well.
Meanwhile when parking I don't need to see things more than a couple feet from my car.
So you also angle the mirrors down a ton ? My old car (a VW) had an option to automatically do this on the passenger side mirror when in reverse. Not sure id want to do this manually each time though (up and down)
With manual mirrors I aim for driving and 'hope and pray' when parking.
My current car has cameras which show me the ground around it when I press a button which solves all my needs. Probably a better solution, but not on most cars from what I can tell.
Many cars do this. Typically they point the mirrors in and down when the car is set into reverse, so you can see the curb.
Same in europe, since a few years.
It should be illegal, but there you are.
There is the possibility (as said by an apologetic driver) that it sometimes may be a badly functioning automation ("Too high? Oh but it's automatic").
> Same in europe, since a few years.
Yeah, since they started to introduce super duper led headlights and 144 Hz animations on turn signals it's been more and more blinding to drive at night even across the ocean.
The US is worse - an F150s headlights are at eye level if you're sitting in a Corolla. Nothing on European roads is quite as bad.
Theoretically the higher headlights could be angled down more to at least sort of help this ? Unless you were right in front of the vehicle.
The worst are the trucks with the insane aftermarket light bars
I don't understand why headlight elevation isn't standardized.
It was. We had sealed beam headlights for a while till we didn’t. There were common rules for aiming and it worked. The lights weren’t all that bright and the styling was not stellar, however.
First generation Audi Matrix LED lights would have a word. Those blind oncoming traffic for a full second before dimming.
They were banned in the US, ironically.
I wish they would go back to the old headlights from the 70s, they and a slight yellow tint to them and all headlights were at the same level.
Since the late 90s I think, no matter what setting is used, everyone is blinded when by people in back of you and people coming towards you.
Actually, it's worse in the US due to our regs.
Many European active headlights solutions were banned in the US upon release thanks to the NHTSA. Meanwhile us Europeans got blasted by them daily.
As an EU citizen, I notice that our regulators tend to target industries that operate outside of the EU. There is a massive car lobby in Europe with dozens of big companies and regulation would have a big effect on them.
There are headlights that are illegal in the US but legal in Europe. Opposite world of what we normally have.
My observations from the UK, formerly almost 'Europe':
Boomers need cataract operations! A huge part of the car dependent population are elderly. These folks need ten times the light to see anything when compared to the seventeen year old learner driver (that doesn't go out at night, because their driving instructor clocked off hours ago).
My thoughts regarding this are somewhat anecdotal, however, I have heard a mystery boomer rant and rave about the headlights on his 'Italian car' (they make them in Eastern Europe and slap an Italian flag on). My observation from being in the offending car, shouting here because aforementioned elderly person had hearing issues too: I CAN SEE EVERYTHING FOR MILES!!!
Next: state of the roads
As a pesky cyclist, I used to prefer roads to cycle paths because of the smoother riding experience and improved speed. Not nowadays. In the UK, and dare I say it, the West, we have a problem with potholes. Cars also come with low profile tyres and they weigh 50%+ more than the cars we had before airbags and electronic safety systems came along. This is a combination that results in frequent flat tyres.
What was something that rarely happened is now practically inevitable. As a pesky cyclist, I should be the one getting punctures and fixing tyres, not the motorist. To compound the misery, few cars come with a genuine spare wheel, partly because of the weight problem with today's cars. My bicycle with kit and caboodle weighs far less than that spare wheel, so this nobbling of the spare wheel makes sense to me, but still, a normal car is two orders of magnitude heavier than what I roll with.
Back to the headlights, the elderly cohort with money for new cars, the boomers, don't live in cities, they have nice places in the countryside that require car dependency. With this, and the usage of B-roads, there is a genuine requirement for super-bright lights. Some brands, such as Audi, sell into the market for those that want innovative lights, where the primary innovation is yet more light.
As for built up areas, the lighting situation has also changed. Even as a cyclist, I am running what amounts to 'daytime running lights' because of the light pollution. I put my lights on well before sundown, whereas I never used to. The law is 'after sundown' and I used to be okay with that, but if it is four in the afternoon, mid-summer, I am putting the rear light on, at least.
It does not seem that I am alone in this, many cars have full lighting rather than what we used to call 'sidelights' on.
It is no longer pitch black inside a car, SAAB style. There is so much lighting going on, with a glowing iPad style screen at the minimum, ambient lighting strips on the deluxe cars. The headlights have to compete with this. So more brightness, please!
As I see it, we are caught in a cycle of degrading roads, heavier cars, brighter lights and an elderly cohort that actually needs massive amount of light to see anything. Sure there is clever tech so nobody has to dim their lights, and we have it on posh AUDIs and the like, but this is the spiral we are in, and the good old USA shows where it is going, what the end game looks like.
Into the mix we also have cyclists playing the stupid-lights game. Nowadays cycling is conspicuous leisure, not transport, and plenty of the carbon fibre crew spend hundreds on these stupid lights. Obviously I am somewhat 'shadow fleet' so I don't do that, I just have what heavy goods drivers 'want' from the well-behaved cyclist, which is standard issue, basic flashing lights, a complement of reflectors, high viz and manners.
I yearn for being able to see the Milky Way and the moon providing variable amounts of light throughout the night, with anything moving at night having modest levels of lighting. The situation as it stands means that, along with pedestrians, pets and other animals, I am as good as invisible at night on my bicycle.
Fortunately it looks like we will be losing cheap oil thanks to the tangerine person, unfortunately many millions will starve, but a lot of lights will be getting turned off soonly and the age of car dependency will be over.
If you think this is bad, try walking alongside a small road after dark. Some of the oncoming lights are blinding even from a few blocks away.
That was me, sorry. My car has automatic high-beams that only turn down for other vehicles.
I'm ecstatic every time I'm blinded by laser strong strobing light from the approaching vehicle, especially in the pitch dark country side. Thank you.
This scourge is so bad.
I drive a 40 year old vehicle and a friend created an aftermarket adjustable headlight frame allowing it to move from all-in-one rectangular headlight/high beam sealed units to modern LED bulbs and then an accessory of choice on the inner spaces left over. I chose a classic-looking LED that does regular, high beam, DRL, and amber turn signal all in one and then put off-road fog lights on the inner spaces. But I would not leave the house after night with the vehicle until I adjusted them to DOT spec. Because they are so much brighter and sharped-edged than factory, I can see that they don’t go above oncoming windshields and are aligned properly horizontally.
The excellent guide that I used to align my lights:
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html
Was discussing at home (USA) this same idea that vehicle lights are brighter and drivers are less inclined to be bothered to dip. I rented a car in the UK several years ago which auto-dimmed the beam and was fascinated by the technology which would allow it to differentiate light sources and identify oncoming vehicles.
This feature must be old. My Subaru Forester 2018 has it. What non-US cars have are those new zone dimmable lamps.
Regardless I keep my auto dim off and just down. I don’t usually need the headlamps in high beam mode.
What would be useful is a taller median between both sides on a highway since often the blinding is because of a difference in the direction facing due to the grade of the highway. Facing people who are looking up a hill is awful.
It is true, that many drivers drive with the high beam on. My cabin is frequently illuminated by their lamps. My lamps never illuminate the cabin of a car I follow by comparison. This strange asymmetry does annoy me and I am certain I’m in the right but it’s usually resolvable by allowing them to pass.
If you are using low-beams and driving more than about 45 mph, you can hit something (or someone) before you had time to see it (or them). Granted, that doesn't matter if you're following someone else, since they'll hit it first. Which is why you need high-beams on when there isn't someone else around to light up the distant part of the road for you--and which depends on how often you drive remote roads.
If my comment was interpreted as some advocacy for the removal of high-beams, please allow me to correct the record: I think they're a good feature to have.
> resolvable by allowing them to pass
How do they ever find out that they're wrong if you don't turn your highbeams on after they pass?
This has been available in the US for a long time. I had it on the car I bought in 2016, and on another I bought in 2023. It's just not mandatory, so it usually comes as a part of some safety / driver assistance package. And even if you have it, you need to enable it.
A looooooong time! :)
https://www.underhoodservice.com/gms-autronic-eye-1952/
I think most if not all US cars do this now. My current one doesn't even have a way to keep the brights on permanently. Now to wait 8 or so years for all the old ones to cycle out :(.
Double that. I think the average lifespan of a car in the US is ~16 years.
The average car in the US is 12 years old, so the average lifespan is obviously longer. Though average includes some collectors car that nobody drives daily.
And to make it worse, there are so many large vans and pickup trucks (empty too) speeding, that also have very bright and eye level cornea melting LED lights.
I also complain about this but it’s obviously not ever going to change.
I always have blue blockers (yellow and also dark orange lenses) in my car and wearing them totally prevents pain and fatigue for my eyes.
The worst offenders are people buying aftermarket extra bright headlights, then incorrectly installing them at an angle that blinds oncoming traffic.
For a long time it was aftermarket HID kits. Installing those was a bit of a pain because of the separate ballasts and associated wiring. They were blinding because the projectors required a cut off and most were installed in halogen housings.
Now most people are installing aftermarket LED kits. For the most part those are less blinding. I upgraded our old Impreza with some but chose the lowest lumen numbers I could find and they are also engineered to emit light in the same locations and angles that the halogen ones did. I did some tests with the garage door and standing in front of it where a car would be and it's non-blinding for oncoming traffic.
Not sure at all. Most LED retrofit kits have bulbs that create light in a totally different pattern than the original and don't correctly use the cutoff of the headlight
There are even worse offenders. Some super cheap aftermarket kits seem to have the same horrific flashing as minimum viable Christmas lights.
Barely perceptible flashing yet somehow gratingly and distractingly so.
This is so much worse now that crossovers are the default car in the US. I seem to be the last person in America driving a car that isn't a tank and have never understood why everyone loves those massive machines so much.
I heard in Germany when a vehicle is being inspected (yearly?) the headlights' angles are checked to not be beaming into oncoming traffic. Feels like useful regulation to include in every country.
I have blue eyes, it hurts to drive at night.
I have brown eyes, still hurts to drive at night. Canadian situation is just as bad as our neighbours down south. Now I long for the days of being blinded by yellow headlamps again.
Unfortunately the first TUV inspection is three years after initial registration. In Spain it’s four years. Plenty of time to blind people.
Straight pipes on Harleys are illegal. But when cops are the ones driving the Harleys who is going to enforce it? This is the problem with certain types of regulations. Like sheriffs who ignore gun regulation in their county.
EU folks: are ADBs the panacea that all these articles always make them out to be? I’ve seen mixed reports.
They work okay on straight roads with no median. But often fail in these cases:
- cresting a hill. Normal people can see the cone of light from the approaching car and often turn classic high beams down before it blinds fellow drivers. These do it only when it detects the actual light source, giving a 0.2-0.5 (about) flash of bright light.
- Wet and snowy ground. Even when they re-align themselves somewhat properly they can be blinding due to reflections which are not part of the angle-calculation algorithm.
- Failure to detect pedestrians and cyclists. Self-evident, but when I am not in a car I am impressed by how blinding it is.
Personally I consider them to decrease safety for everyone except the car with those headlights. I also feel like it is yet another badly designed automation which adds to the ability to slightly doze off and pay a little less attention to traffic.
The fucking strobing light when the eyes are working in the scotopic vision.
They can be pretty shitty if you're a pedestrian or cyclist, because quite a lot of them don't "see" you, so you just get blinded by the full beams.
https://archive.is/20260610124844/https://www.theatlantic.co...
As someone who has retrofitted headlights with proper HID projectors, deal with RHD to LHD conversions, on some vehicles you can make your headlights look absolutely amazing, with no glare or harm to oncoming traffic. Some of these OEM headlight designs are atrocious. 2015ish F250's are some of the worst headlights when it comes to this.
What really pisses me off? LED bulbs only available in 6000k or higher. I had to import some Osram H4 bulbs from the netherlands because they are a warmer factory 3000K temperature. We really need regulation on glare, because right now it's the wild west.
I've heard of people around my parts sneaking around at night with black masks, taking baseball bats to specific headlights on trucks late at night. Apocryphal or no, stories like that are being cheered by regular people.
The federal government took upon itself responsibility for things like this, because it's impractical at best for cities or states to regulate these. It's too bad that politics and bloat has made governance of this particular issue more or less impossible. Self regulation is obviously a joke, the standard suite of choices mean the default options for consumers are obnoxious as hell.
It'll have to become a big enough issue to warrant attention and action by the President, either this one or whoever comes next, or nothing will ever be done.
Maybe a convention of states that runs all current politicians, judges, and bureaucrats out of their jobs (in a sane, phased way) and establishes term limits and bans on careerism and bloat. Citizens can bypass the feds and kick their asses to the curb - imagine a total reset, in which we put forth competent, responsible people.
This problem will never be fixed. Gonna have to wear adaptive sunglasses at night for driving.
https://archive.is/I4K0L
Tesla is a big part of this. They ship their headlights misaligned from the factory, so they point right into the drivers eyes. Tesla has no quality culture at all. A bunch of wankers.
I think the gigantic prevalence of huge or lifted trucks is a bigger influence, especially given the tendency to mod them out (poorly) with aftermarket lights.
Truck headlights are already on a level with sedan drivers' eyes. There are far more F-150s on the road than there are Teslas.
Not only is this NOT the case, but all Tesla vehicles since something like 2021 have included matrix lights. They have adaptive beams to automatically darken sections of the headlight beam to avoid blinding other drivers.
You might be surprised to learn that it doesn't work properly.
Do they detect pedestrians, cyclists, windows of buildings adjacent to the road? Or they piss off everyone with cold bright strobing light?
I'm sure they don't. The law requires a 10 degree downward angle for directed headlights out of the factory. It would never pass NHTSA testing without it. High beams are a different matter: They are designed to scatter in a wide arc, but people shouldn't be using them when there's opposing traffic.
YES! Tesla account for the majority blinding headlights in my area. The rest is idiot drivers who just drive with their high beams on.
While all automakers are incentivized to make driving in the competition's vehicles as hellish as possible, Tesla is doubly so. The worse it gets to drive, the more likely people are to want self-driving.
No they don't.
I dunno, I think all manufacturers are at fault. Even the ones that are properly aligned are ridiculously bright, but aimed down. Which is fine if two vehicles approach each other on flat ground. But if two vehicles approach the crest of a hill, then the headlight that was aimed down is now aimed straight at the other driver.
And don't get me started on jackasses that put LED bulbs in old halogen housings.
I like having bright LED headlights, however I also made sure my headlights are correctly aimed and that my auto-leveling is working correctly. My car also auto-dims high beams and has ADB/turning lights. So, in short, I understand why people like bright lights and I'm also conscientious so my vehicle is not the problem.
I drive a normal height hatchback. I live in Texas. The /vast/ majority of vehicles on the road are trucks and SUVs, and many of them have aftermarket lift kits which further exacerbates the problem. The main problem is vehicle height and improperly aimed headlights. There's no real enforcement or regulation for headlight aiming, and worse we have no effective vehicle height restrictions. Not only do these insecure little men blind you at night, their cattle guard/reinforced bumper mounted to the frame will decapitate you if they hit you because of the bumper height difference from the 6+ inch Chinese lift kit they added to their truck to stroke their ego and allow them to "bully" drivers on the road by intentionally tailgating and driving aggressively in their oversized vehicle.
The problem is epidemic in America, and it's a problem of both regulation and culture. As long as the typical American driver is somebody who enters the road ignorant of basic driving dynamics, with a selfish attitude, inattentively barreling down the road in their massive fuck-off symbol of insecurity, we are not going to fix this.
This is a pet peeve of mine, so when a headlight went out a few weeks ago I asked my mechanic about bulb options. He said he had no other choices for me, so now I am part of the problem too.
Seems like a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation / use case for regulation....
There are already regulations forbidding the use of unapproved LED retrofits in housings designed for incandescent bulbs in most countries. The fact that your mechanic gets away with installing them, and you get away with driving your now-illegal car shows how well they are enforced.
Unless your car's design is particularly evil (a real possibility), changing a headlight bulb is usually easy to do yourself, and approved, incandescent headlight bulbs are easy to source most places.
There are LED replacement bulbs that mimic the light emitting pattern of halogen and also are not massively bright. Those are fine and cops are not going after people with that kind of thing.
There are a lot of options if you search online