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?
See the thing is cars scare me and I don’t drive. Luckily my husband drives.
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.
It’s all part of The Shittening
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
It was banned in the states
UV scare. They had to use UV lights to make it work. But they weren’t on the same wavelength as say a tanning bed but people made a noise about it anyways.
No IR not UV. Not the same wavelength UV and IR are on the opposite sides of the visual spectrum.
Given that we also accepted the switch from being “personnel” to being “human resources”, headlights seem like a fairly small detail.
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.
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.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.
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.
a painted, solid white line that’s right in front of my front passenger wheel
Important technique
Because hurting people with your truck headlights is MANLY.
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.
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.)
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?
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" round 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 designs 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 (in the US) was actually the Ford Thunderbird, but the Taurus is one everyone noticed.
Switch to one specific LED bulb instead. (Or two! Your choice of circle or rectangle.)
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…
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
