Im pretty sure the factory headlights on my car are LED, and they project a decent pattern. Much better than the time I tried to put LED’s in a halogen-headlight motorcycle.
The problem has nothing to do with the light technology. It has to do with the cutoffs and properly aiming the headlights. Also tall vehicles have higher headlights even if aimed properly.
even if they’re properly aimed stupidly bright headlights still blind people on hills or around corners
also automatic high beams can fuck off
IMO regarding LED headlights, it mostly has to do with manufacturers putting LEDs in reflector housing.
Because of the way LED boards are, you can’t get a centric light. Standard LED boards are a cob, the best being those thin blades, but none of them are suitable for a pure reflector set up without pissing light everywhere.
LED head lights belong strictly in projector housings in order to have good cut off and spread. I drove an IONIQ 5 ultimate last year, and the head lights were shockingly bad. Not only did light piss everywhere, but it was downright dangerous in an urban setting as it would not illuminate the side walks nor the side of the road, so I could not see pedestrians waiting to cross at night.
I retrofitted the projector beam headlights in my 2020 Elantra with Diode Dynamics SL2 Pros, and after a height adjustment, they don’t blind anyone, nor bleed everywhere, have a great sharp-but-not-too-sharp cut off due to the mechanical shutter, and I can see the sides of the road clearly. They’re also not overly bright. I now have a 2026 K4 Hatchback, and the LED projectors are also great.
tall vehicles could have low beams but they make the front of the car look ridiculous therefore unmarketable.
Meh, modern split headlight designs allow you to have a marketable front-end with headlights at the correct height.
Look at the Kona for example. The DRLs are way at the top yet the head lights are at the fender line. I think it looks good.
Kona is doing headlights pretty good imo
Back in the 80s this was never an issue no matter how large the truck. It’s definitely related to light technology.
Yea, sure. And back in the 80s I was younger, so technology must be why I’m older now.
Look at the height of an 80s truck compared to today.
Also, do the LED bulbs in your house blind you, too?
Lumens produced by headlights in the 80s was significantly less than the lumens produced today. Less than 1000 back then and typically 2000 or so today. The light was a warmer yellow then and white/blue today which eyes are more sensitive to.
About 80% of cars on the road still use halogen bulbs, the same ones from the 80s. Lumens isn’t the problem, it’s lux, I.E. how much light hits the road (and other drivers eyes), which is influenced as much by the housing as the light source.
The actual problem is the terribly lax enforcement of glare and cutoff standards, along woth pretty much no standards on anything else related to the housing.
As often as not, you’re getting blinded by a halogen with a housing that shouldn’t be legal.
But wait, there’s more! You and I both want those housings banned, but I read a study recently showing they’re saving lives more, even if they’re annoying. So, oh well.
Interesting because old cars without a light cutoff seem to blind me more than modern cars and those people would usually be getting closer to you with high beams beause their low beams don’t show shit, meaning even more blinding light.
LEDs don’t have ro be that bright and can and should have regulated lumen and color temperature outputs. I shouldn’t feel like looking at my mirror at night is like looking at the sun
What happens when you don’t have regulated standards? That. The color of the light is also important. Brightest doesn’t mean best.
Yep. Higher frequency lights actually inhibit your ability to see details, making driving less safe.
do you have a source for that? because it sounds completely insane
Hot off the press: https://research.uga.edu/news/blue-light-has-a-surprising-effect-on-your-eyes-study-finds/
But it’s common knowledge that we have more green and red cones in our eyes so we’re naturally able to perceive more of those wavelengths.
oh lmao, i thought you were talking about the flicker frequency, but you mean short wavelength i.e. blue.
Yeah that sounds less insane, though i still question how important it is compared to the benefits of photopic lighting.Waves have both wavelength and frequency. Increasing one decreases the other. High frequency light and short wavelength light means the same thing.
i rarely hear people say “frequency” in regards to photons, though. You say “wavelength” because it makes more sense for the context of something that is generally instantaneous.
“frequency” makes sense for things that change over time, but light almost always presents itself to us as a spatial wave, you see the wave-nature of light in diffractions and stuff as opposed to pressure waves (sound) where it obviously changes over time and is difficult to view in terms of space.
Sure, and you have radio waves and microwaves, but you also have VHF and UHF TV, ULF radio for submarines, and even radio stations are given by their frequency (even if people these days don’t think about what those numbers refer to).
Led lights also have on/off frequenzy so if you are talking in a context with LEDs you should clarify which frequency you mean
TIL!
i am seeing green headlights nowadays and it makes me irrationally anger
might as well just put in RGB bulbs at that point and go full caramelldansen
I thought headlights in the US are strictly regulated with archaic standards. European headlights had a more sophisticated auto dimming and direction control, from what i remember.
Some things may be regulated, but others are a free for all where the manufacturer can do whatever sells their car. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many complaints these days of being blinded by the NOT high beams. And light bars should be illegal on a road, period.
I don’t know about inspections in other states, but in mine (that is reducing what they check starting next year for some reason) they make sure your headlights and brights come on. They don’t do any check for aim or lumen output or anything else.
If you’ve never seen them, Technology Connections on Youtube has had a few videos ranting about how bad the headlight situation is in the US.
I love it when he gets angry about something.
Europeans also don’t tend to have the headlights 1.50m or more above ground level, because anyone who isn’t 'Murican still builds comparably normal cars and no useless “Trucks”. Even though they also get worse and worse (fuck SUVs).
It’s getting worse in Europe too.
Yeah, and the worst thing is that environmental policies might be to blame (to my knowledge).
Larger vehicles have less strict emission rules. And because “the market” also wants cheap stuff and just making the car bigger is easier than reinventing the engine… a cynic might call this shift malicious compliance by the manufacturers.
We can only hope this trend is reversable once EVs become dominant, those benefit from less size and weight.
No wltp has this for N vehicles but then you need another driving license, except in a few cases. M vehicles don’t benefit from being bigger
The US used to be that way but in like the 90s or 00s we abandoned the regulations
Auto dimming headlights are great in principle but in my experience a pain in the ass! They don’t dim early enough, especially when cars are rounding corners so you actually dazzle a lot more people. Then if you try to dip them early but the auto-dip gets there first you end up flashing the car ahead.
pretty sure it’s not so much about regulation, but about enforcement (as is usual)
People who describe this as a problem with headlight technology are idiots. The problem is over-bright headlights shining in people’s eyes, regardless of the technology.
it’s fascinating how many people have no earthly clue what LED is and just treat it like magic, honestly i’m just glad the cultural memory of gas lamps is gone and no one thinks bright lamps will cause the room to run out of oxygen…
LEDs will cause the room to run out of electricity!
oh, but that’s good! That means any fans will stop running, which preserves the oxygen!
I know you are joking but who even says that… LEDs are one of the most energy efficient light there is. Anything else will basically cost more… People are stupid.
driving in a car and meeting the foul lifted truck headlights
Or the asshole truck with undercarriage lights AND mounted lights on a bar over the cab.
This has nothing to do with it, but I started reading “driving in” and my mind automatically filled it up with “my truck, right after a beer, hey that bump.is shaped like a beer”.
Thanks for reviving me the earworm. :3
What a great song, for sure.
its so frustrating that now that electric cars are getting really good everything else about cars is getting really bad. i dont want a big suv with bright cold white headlights and built in driver monitoring and screens everywhere. please just sell me a 90s family sedan but electric
also can we PLEASE find a better place for curtain airbags than in the pillars??? i would like to be able to see oncoming traffic when going around curves
The airbags go in the pillars because the pillars were mandated to be thicker, not the other way around.
Fun fact, this is why we have touchscreens in cars. Basically everything shitty about cars today can be traced back to the chicken tax.
Thats what moving your head is for :)
Alternatively: Ants in your pants.
Those are all high beams.
If they are pointed at a person that is against the law & a dick move by a person (regardless if it’s a mechanical failure).
Brightness isn’t bad, it’s a safety feature.
(And countries do have a min/max brightness laws, measured a bit differently tho.)There is also a failure of the greedy car industry - we have adaptive headlights (where you have your high
beansbeams dynamically shaded or separated to not shine on other cars specifically) for 30 years now but they remain optional extras (except on Chinese cars). And memes of cars shining in your face exist.
(USA only allowed this a few years back, that’s why in the USA movies even cars promoted by that movie always used the base model ugly headlights.)
(This last low beam adaptive bit is from the 70s actually.)The second failure is also legislative - all the places that don’t have legislature setting the max height (positioning from the ground) of headlights have SUVs shining lights in ppls faces even when just using low beams.
As said, ppl are just dicks with high beams, low beams set too high, and using fog lamps all the time bcs it’s ‘sporty’.
Adaptive headlights suck balls. They don’t recognize another car’s headlights approaching a corner, so they blind other drivers for a second anyway every time. I hate that people are too lazy to move a single finger at the expense of other drivers.
Counter point: I would much rather be blinded for a half second before the automatic headlights dip than be continued to be blinded by the asshole they doesn’t manually dip their headlights at all.
Yes, this!
It’s exactly what I do too (finger that button).Ppl are angry at a tech bcs it works 90% of the time instead of 100.00% … and rather use the alternative that they themselves bitch about how it doesn’t work either.
Think I got flashed at two times in two years of having adaptive LEDs. Many more times for forgetting my high beams on with halogens or HIDs (it takes a bit to get used to using high beams properly again after not needing them between about april-may and august). That despite the fact that some of those halogen and HID lights were so burnt out that I couldn’t see with low beams.
Personally I can easily tell when a car has adaptive lights and 99% of the time they recognize me from farther away than the average driver switches off high beams.
I don’t flash people with automatic headlights, that’s just pointless. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t briefly blinded by them a dozen times an hour.
Also enforcement issues. Cops don’t like headlight regulations and thus don’t enforce them
Watched the JerryRigEverything video on the Rivian and thought the adaptive headlights were cool as fuck. Also learned his wife is in a wheelchair, and then went down the rabbit hole of their garden, factory, and elevator in the home.
Anyway, the idea is fucking awesome. :-)
Yeah, but why aren’t adaptive lights everywhere & mandated by law?
Unfortunately, people in charge are children and get money for not making regulations. That’s the gist anyway. :-/
Fuck caaaaars 🥰
As far as I’m concerned, LEDs should be illegal. Except for specifically in projector housings with projection lenses that have been properly aimed. Those are the lenses and housings that give your light a razor-sharp cutoff point, and when aimed properly, it means that you will not blind people.
I did this for my car. I live very rural. There’s no such thing as city light pollution, much less streetlights. So when it’s dark, it’s dark dark. And there are deer, elk, and all other manner of animal based hazards. I went through the trouble of making sure to aim my lights in such a way that on the standard lights my cutoff is just below the side mirrors and rear window lines of the average family sedan, not an SUV or anything like that.
When I turn on my high beams they are oh hey look it’s high noon in front of me for like a mile. But the standard lights were specifically configured to not do that. Unlike all the other people in my area that simply put massively bright LEDs in their completely normal light housings that do not have the ability to make a sharp cut-off so all they do is blind literally everyone like assholes regardless of high beams.
but why? the intensity of the light can be regulated and is one of the most energy efficient lights there is. You can get the same intensity than the lights above with leds, it’s just less taxing on your battery.
It’s the alternator that handles running load, not your battery, and the difference is negligible. The alternator is not like a battery where it can super accurately adapt its load. Most alternators are just on or off. Some of them have a couple states that they can clutch through, but even then, you’re not making a huge difference on the strain of the electrical system.
Without a sharp cutoff, it’s not the intensity only that’s the problem. The color temperature also makes a very big difference. Bright white or blue light is much more damaging to people’s nighttime vision. So even if it’s a lower intensity, it’s still causing more harm. If it’s not properly aimed and cut off from being right in their face.
But… All of the issues you raised can be changed. Not every LED is bright blue, that can be properly adapted. The technology of light emission isn’t at fault for the parameters the car builders input for it.
Haven’t you seen house LED bulbs that have changeable light colour, temperature and intensity? There’s no reason car manufacturers can’t bound their illumination system properly not to blind people. I’m not denying the issue, I agree with the validity of all the issues you raised, I’m just trying to point your ire to the actual cause.
Don’t need them to be bright as the damn sun
Just move the contrast and shadow sliders back down when you approach another car.
Legislate this crap now
