Submitted 1 day ago by TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I know I’m not the only one who feels like I’m getting visually assaulted everytime I drive at night. It was bad 10 years ago but now, it seems like headlight manufacturers have a deal with insurance companies and optometrists to make the lights as bright as possible. Is this ever going to stop or is there some kind of race in the headlight industry to see who can reproduce the power of the sun first?
It pisses me off to no end, but what the fuck can I do about it lol
I bought glasses for this very reason. “Night vision” glasses. While the lights are still bright your eyes recover quickly.
I haven’t accepted it. Speak for yourself
In Canada, the federal government just put out a nationwide poll for input on this exact subject, as it’s coming near to the time to review the related legislation. It’s very possible that some of the headlight implementations currently on the road will soon be illegal nationwide.
Thank god, I’ve been sick of this shit for over a decade. I don’t know who would vote against dimmer lights.
The poll closed 20 April: tc.canada.ca/…/canadian-experience-vehicle-headli…
I seem to recall it opened in February. There were lots of news articles on Lemmy about it at the time.
In regional areas the extra light at night is genuinely helpful.
However, thats on unlit roads with so little traffic that you only see an oncoming car once every 5 or 10 minutes.
On roads with more traffic theyre just not necessary because there aren’t any animals or other obstacles.
Because (particularly in the US) people have the attitude of “I know that it’s going to be shit for other people, but it makes me feel a little better about things, so I’m going to do it anyway”
That’s a very complex thought process. Let me unveil the real reason:
“whoah that’s cool”
That’s it. If someone made a pan-nuclear LED with the same brightness as the surface of an entire white dwarf, people would buy it. That’s where the thinking ends. Where the light ends up, other people, etc… Who cares?
For me it’s not the brightness, but the color temperature of the light that gets me. Why do we strictly regulate the color of turn signals and brake lights, but not headlights? Warm white should be mandated.
I’m passionate about this issue, between this and the size of the vehicles it has made night driving miserable, I used to love a nice relaxing night drive.
Trucks with 3 sets of LED lights blinding me all the time
Yes, it’s like the wild west. In addition to the too-bright headlights, I’ve seen trucks with additional bars of lights on top, or one time I saw one with a big ass panel of ultra-bright LEDs right on their front grill. Like what the fuck, if you need that much light you shouldn’t drive, and if you’re being that much of an asshole you certainly shouldn’t. We’ve really been conditioned to accept so much asshole behavior in the USA.
This is a US and Canada problem. This is basically a non-issue in the rest of the world.
There are two standards for headlights, one established by the UN that applies to 99% of countries. Whereas the US and Canada have the other standard that is far worse for glare.
The global standard has strict rules on glare, requiring a sharp cutoff line at the top of the beam. The american regulations do not have this. American regulations do not account for headlight height off the ground, defining alignment purely with angles. An SUV or pickup with its headlights mounted above your eyeline can legslly shine the fullest part of its lights directly into your eyes at all times. In contrast, the international regulations account for height, and require tall vehicles to incline their headlights further downward to avoid dazzling other drivers.
This problem can be solved for new cars instantly by switching to the international standard. The auto industry is international. They sell in markets with the global standard and could switch their headlights immediately after a change in the law. This is an easily solvable problem.
If you’re saying that it’s not a problem in Europe then I can’t imagine how bad it is in America. I get blinded by taller vehicles all the time on the road in Denmark. I also don’t think most people’s automatic high beams work correctly.
Totally agree. I’ve never even been to the American continent and I feel OP’s question. I wrote a top-level comment further down.
Anyhow:
automatic high beams
This is a thing now?!
I shouldn’t be surprised. The stretch of motorways I use every day has tunnels, and I noticed that many if not most newer cars’ tail lights get brighter inside it. And I’m not imagining this. And it makes no sense when you think about it; if anything, it should be the other way ’round. It’s just more computer-made gimmickry designed to rope in customers.
(Yes, lights need to be on also during daytime in this EU country.)
It’s gotten so bad in the Netherlands, too. Especially with newer BMWs and Audis. Since both our countries don’t make cars, this probably is true in all of Europe.
Bad like turning down the rear view mirror, covering the side view with my hand, and then asking a passenger to cover the other side view. Then still having a cabin full, and I mean evening reading under a tree full, of light.
Bad like deciding to pick one single line or marker, maybe a painted, solid white line that’s right in front of my front passenger wheel, and concentrating on following just that one line for the whole duration that the truck is headed towards me in the other lane. Because I can’t see anything if I’m just looking around. I need to concentrate on one thing to be able to decipher the image.
And my eyes are great otherwise. I have perfect color perception. I prefer to hike at night without any light, even if it’s moonless. This shit is just out of control. The stuff coming from the factories is bad enough, but these magats who make their vehicles intentionally harmful to others in every way they can, really make driving extremely dangerous for everyone.
Thank you for the informative text, but it is definitely a problem in the rest of the world too, at least in Europe. The front lights of cars have gotten too bright for urban settings, and perhaps there are just too many cars around, to the point I have read and heard dozens different people in recent years wondering if it’s just their perception.
Driving a bicycle at night on the side of a road is impossible if you are not equipped as well with a sun in a box.
Its (like many things) mostly the us’s fault. A slide away from rules into vibe based everything.
I remember a long time ago when I was first getting my license you had to pass a headlight test where you parked in a spot and there where painted lines on a wall for both high and low beams. It was how you adjusted your lights and was common in Canada. Now no one even knows what I am talking about. The rules are still there but no one enforces them and most forgot they can even adjust their lights (not sure new cars and trucks can be anymore).
Manufacturers in North America are now putting their lights so high up on vehicles and use such bright piercing lights on everything that night driving has become a nightmare. The answer to getting blinded is now to out blind others, its madness.
I love that people are asking me if I have some kind of visual deficiency when the phenomenon of blinding lights is so common that it’s in the simpsons from 27 years ago lol
And those are “only” halogen. It’s gotten much worse since then. Like you said, a sort of arms race.
Its gotten to a point that seems impossible, just full clown world. Its gotten to the point that my favorite car to drive at night is my Fiero, because I am so low I am below most of the blinding lights.
It’s also common with European cars, which are much lower and yet have increasingly bright (and bluer?) lights.
The brightness is an issue, but the placement and angle are the bigger problem. Its the slippery slope of following american trends. Years ago Mercedes Benz (I think) put out a car that used IR light and a heads up screen (no visible headlights, just running lights) showing the driver the night landscape without needing to blind everyone. It was banned in the states, no real reason why but the idea went dead.
What can any of us do about anything? Everything sucks ass and I have no idea what to do. Should I talk to my literal neo nazi neighbors until I’ve somehow successfully re-educated them? That’s fucking stupid and not possible. The second they turn around from our conversation, they see a television, in their own house, in all the restaurants, in every waiting room in the country, blaring FOX News.
In the USA, the lack of proper technical inspections and adjustable headlight beams, is a problem with raised vehicles. WTF, riding a motorcycle against a raised POS Bro Dozer, with multiple light bars, is the closest thing to a blinding UFO encounter. One cannot see jack shit! In Europe, that pile of rolling bolts would not be allowed on the public roads.
This one time riding my motorcycle, the days adventures ran a little longer than anticipated. As night fell so did the temperatures. Coming down the mountain a 4Runner or Tacoma was behind me with their high beams on. The lights were so bright I could feel them on my back. I folded in my mirrors and accepted the free heat.
Because consumer protection and regulation seems to have stopped being a real thing after Reagan. Since then everything good has been legacy agencies patching at the edges where they had authority (all gone now thanks to the Supreme Court).
its just so american to only think in a timeline of presidents :) always gets me
i guess adaptive headlights were also invented by reagan
My apologies.
Deregulation happened completely randomly in a vacuum like a decaying lump of a radioactive element with no cause.
Adaptive headlights only recently became legal in the US.
That’s because a significant amount of the regulatory agency leadership is appointed by the executive and follows their policy priorities?
We haven’t. Many states have new laws on the books about this issue, and others on the horizon. The issue is that they approved at one point, so there will most likely be a grandfather clause for existing ones on the road because you can’t force car manufacturers to go back and recall all these things to be retroactively compliant with a new law at cost to them. Not how laws work.
You can ban the sale of super high power bulbs, though. all of the bright headlamps fail (even LEDs, eventually…) and they simply get replaced with compliant bulbs.
It is less about the output in lumens of the lamp, but more about the angle and color temperature.
In most cars, the difference between regular headlight operation and “brights” has nothing to do with the output, it’s about the angle of the beams. Of course, when you angle the headlights up so you can see farther down the road, now you also point them at oncoming drivers eyes.
The scourge of “blue” headlights amplifies the problem. They’re no brighter, but they are more uncomfortable to stare down.
In most cars, there are a variety of ways to fine-tune the angle of the beams with often little more than a screwdriver. The problem is that most people have no idea that they need to be adjusted. This is why regular inspections are important as well as some sort of standards that can be applied across a wide variety of cars.
The reality is that correcting poor angle on headlights is a trivial task, should only take a few moments. Additionally, most modern headlight systems are active and can adjust the angle by pointing the lamp down or using shutters or individual LEDs to change the angle or beam pattern. Eventually, this will just be an irritating thing of the past, but it will take a number of years before every GM truck and SUV is off the road as well as a lot of current Hyundai/Kia products (anecdotally observed by me to be the worst offenders).
It gets worse when you combine super LED brights with matrix headlights that are marketed to “allow the high beams to remain on even with oncoming traffic”.
The last part: it can work like that, with a transition period
We as a society just accept everything. It’s what we were trained to do. We get mad and make posts like this one, then go back to our daily lives, having changed little to nothing about our behavior or the behavior of others. It’s not necessarily our fault - it’s difficult for one person to make a real change, but that’s just the reality of our society.
It’s all part of The Shittening
We used to be a proper country.
The auto industry lobbied to deregulate headlights, and of course, they got what they wanted. Ostensibly, it was to allow for more aerodynamic designs. Of course, the real reason was to have a proprietary part that often needed replacement so they could charge hundreds of dollars directly for something that used to be cheap and standardized.
Ultimately, though, I blame the systematic dismantling of our public education. Basic values of citizenship used to be taught in public schools, and most kids grew up to be fairly decent. That’s not as common anymore.
They lobbied to deregulate it because they were only allowed to use one specific design. That’s why until the Ford Taurus every car had the same round headlights.
We need laws against the current stupidity, but can you imagine the waste if we were still forced to use one specific incandescent bulb everywhere?
Switch to one specific LED bulb instead. (Or two! Your choice of circle or rectangle.)
There was actually four different standard designs. You had the rectangular lights which came as either a 4x6" quad configuration, or the larger 5x7"design with one light on each side. Then there was the 5 3/4" round lights which were also a quad configuration, and the 7" round lights with one on each side. Prior to 1975 there was only the round designs and prior to 1958 when the quad 5 3/4" light configuration were allowed, the only legal headlight was the 7" round design, which itself dated back to 1939.
The reason for the standardization in 1939 was that similar to today, every car had different lights in different configurations, though the main problem then was finding replacement lights when they inevitably burned out or got damaged.
The first car with composite headlights was actually the Ford Thunderbird, but the Taurus is one everyone noticed.
What’s funny is that we’ve actually incorrectly regulated headlights in the US. It’s the only example I can think of off the top of my head where deregulation might help.
We’ve banned euro-style dynamic lights that can carve out dim spots for oncoming traffic on the fly.
(Of course this doesn’t preclude other additional regulation that we do need about angle and things of that nature.)
Also why did they make them cooler? Everything used to me more tinted red and now everything has gone to blue which is worse for your night vision.
Same reason we just accepted increasingly loud exhausts. Too many selfish idiots on the roads to enforce it effectively.
Same reason we accepted living further and further away from amenities. Cars are a self-reinforcing malady.
Not even the same. LEDs statistically are better for helping light up the roads during the night, and reducing lack of visibility crashes.
No one said loud exhausts or LED lights* cause crashes. They are just annoying to other people. So I would say they are exactly the same.
*we’re not talking about all LED lights here. We’re talking about misaligned and excessively bright LED lights. I’m sure new, modern lights let drivers see better (that’s why they are put in the new cars) but they don’t have to blind other drivers to do that.
That’s not what we’re talking about, did you read the title???
I have light sensitivity, the new lights cause physical pain. I completely stopped driving at night because of them and sometimes have to wear sunglasses at night as a passenger. They’re hell
I know they have gotten brighter over the years but that’s not what’s been the biggest issue for me. To me it’s the fact these trucks keep getting taller, 3 feet ago it wasn’t as bad because the lights were closer to the road, now the headlights on these trucks are damn near eye-level.
Yeah I don’t understand why everyone needs a tank-sized SUV to drive their kids home from school. I’d love to get a small sedan sized truck with a normal car engine but the back is a truck bed, but those are long gone as an option in the states. When I was in Australia I saw these, they call them a ute.
Because hurting people with your truck headlights is MANLY.
It’s not just cars. Also super blinding lights on bicycles, aimed too high. And the worst of all: straight at your face aiming super blinding lights from fricking joggers on park roads that have public lighting!!
The park is not an island. The rider risks his life elsewhere, and it’s a hassle to keep turning the headlight on and off every fave miutes.
The majority of bike lights throw a circle/oval/flood pattern which means they have to be aimed high to be usable. It’s just a flashlight at that point. It’s easy to make a decent beam pattern but neither the manufacturers nor the buyers give a shit.
I point mine down so it illuminates the road in front of me, and slightly in the direction facing away from oncoming traffic. I also use the dimmest setting, and don’t have it in blink mode unless it’s foggy out.
Nah SUV lights that automatically lower their lights waaaay to late are definitely the worst. Especially when they use their high beams in a 30 km/h zone like the one I live in. All just because idiot drivers couldn’t give a fuck and let their car do everything for them automatically.
The bicycles with nor just the headlights, but the flashing white lights to dazzle your vision. Genius. “Let me be seen by blinding you.” Right up there with motorcycles riding with their highbeam on. People cannot see you if you blind them.
It’s not like they even help seeing things, it just makes things bright as hell. Ever try reading a reflective sign and your high beams just bleed out the text? Yeah, not really useful…
Given that we accepted the switch from being “personnel” to being “human resources”, headlights seem like a fairly small detail.
Probably because I used to complain about it a lot, and people like to do things that I complain about, specifically to torment me because they think it’s funny, without giving any thought to the reasons why I was complaining about it in the first place…
Can you start complaining about some generous stranger suddenly putting 500 million in my bank account?
Damn it! I hate it when random strangers suddenly depost $500 million into TheReanuKeaves’s bank account. It’s the fucking worst!
How’s that?
See the thing is cars scare me and I don’t drive. Luckily my husband drives.
And bikes. The cyclists who in broad summer cloudless noon daylight still find the need to strap a quasar to their handlebars baffles me. I feel like buying the brightest array of LEDs and walking around with a backpack filled with batteries and just clobbering these fucking idiots right in the retinas.
A number of e-bikes now come with built-in lights that are just on all the time, hence the reason why bikes that are all lit up in the middle of the day are starting to become common.
A lot of these lights have little or no adjustments either.
Worse: bikers with a glaring headlamp.
Sometimes it’s a piercingly bright red taillight. It’s noon in summer you fucknozzle, WE SEE YOU. We don’t need to see you three time zones over. I wish I was physically capable of exerting great violence upon people because that’s where we are as a society.
The mindset of these people aggravates me, they’re in the same category as door hoggers: people who smack themselves in the way of bus, metro, or elevator exits… let people off first!
A huge number of people are unaware that headlights must be aimed. Some are not adjusted by the manufacturer or dealer before sale (Tesla, Toyota). Sometimes a large enough pothole or going over a speed bump too fast will knock alignment off.
Couple this with American police driving primarily SUV’s (higher up, less bothered) and no longer issuing “fix-it” tickets unless using headlights as an excuse to pull over minorities, and we wind up with tons of issues. Feed the prison system- Don’t waste time making the roads safer!
Lawmakers are increasingly separated from those they are elected or appointed to represent by heightened economic status, and are not affected by issues that plague everyday citizens. No longer are they accountable to their constituents- Money drives their political aims.
As a frequent night driver, I often see people late at night using only the decorative running lights (because they don’t understand the light controls?) or with one or both headlights aimed at the ground just a few feet ahead of their car from hitting a bump or a minor accident. Sometimes one or both headlights will be pointed too high. Other times, drivers have their brights on purposefully because their low beams are burned out, or perhaps for their own benefit.
It is a complex issue that I can see only getting worse in the future. Social consciousness needs to become a thing in America.
Calibrated headlights shouldn’t impair vision too much. Laser headlights are becoming more mainstream too, those gets even brighter but directed. Do you have an astigmatism by chance? Is it aftermarket and modified headlights causing the issue? My pet peeve is lifted trucks running brights behind me. Could be 6 car length back and still light up my interior like a stadium
Poorly aimed headlights are the real killer. They might not even be brights, they’re just aimed to the heavens because people don’t know how to maintain their car.
Well obviously if its a big enough problem to be regulated its not imaginary, and only due to something like alignement
los0220@lemmy.world 18 minutes ago
It’s fucking horrible even here in EU, where I would expect it to be better regulated. Can’t imagine how bad it’s in the US.
I’ve even seen multiple posts on local subreddits about people buying SUV/crossovers and one of the main reason was being blinded by other SUVs.
Fucking horrible it should be checked at every MOT, and it sometimes is, but the newer vehicles are exempt from yearly MOTs for some stupid reason.