This is a big issue, I’ve been thinking about aligning my head lights down so I can use brights. Why? Because they’re the old fashioned giant glass bulb ones (old jeep). They’re on so I don’t get a ticket and don’t really do anything. The car behind me lights the way.
If it’s the old classic glass 8" round headlights, there are some dot approved led versions that might be brighter
I’ve seen them but mines lifted so I’m not sure if it will affect people in sedans, my daily is a sedan and the new LED lights that pickups have illuminate my interior. I mean I plan to look into it, gotta lot of maintenance to do anyway.
Just move the contrast and shadow sliders back down when you approach another car.
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.
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.
even if they’re properly aimed stupidly bright headlights still blind people on hills or around corners
also automatic high beams can fuck off
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.
Back in the 80s this was never an issue no matter how large the truck. It’s definitely related to light technology.
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.
Fuck Your Headlights!
This should be a thing on lemmy too.
Until his cataract surgery, the “mental illness” types kept my dad from driving at night
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!
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’.
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. :-/
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.
If the obnoxiously bright blazing headlights of an oncoming car cause momentary blindness & disorientation to the point of losing the ability to see then crashing one’s car & serious injury or death, how can bright blazing headlights driver be brought to justice? He passed, he’s gone, he doesn’t know the wreck & death he caused. 🤔
What happens when you don’t have regulated standards? That. The color of the light is also important. Brightest doesn’t mean best.
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
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.
TIL!
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.
pretty sure it’s not so much about regulation, but about enforcement (as is usual)
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.
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.
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.
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.
lets not threaten individual inventors working for a company that improperly used the invention, didnt care to do testing, and doesnt care about its customers or anyone on the road
driving in a car and meeting the foul lifted truck headlights
Legislate this crap now
I don’t get it. Bright headlights bad? I have LED headlights and my car is fairly short, so I have a nice crisp beam of light that doesn’t get in people’s eyes. My current car has by far the best headlights I’ve ever had. I think BMW is/was using lasers for a while, I think? They didn’t seem that bright. I think there’s a pretty good amount of regulation that goes into headlights. Actual bad headlights are the ones on lifted trucks that engulf you in bright ass light through your mirrors.
Just because people aren’t flashing you doesn’t mean you’re not blinding them. Who wants to spend their whole drive flashing every vehicle with improper headlights.
High beams and astigmatism is a bad combo with halogens too.
I think the main problem is a lot of LED and Laser headlights are used by optics not designed for them, and there aren’t enough regulations or enforcement for proper tuning for them, so they end up too high and too bright and too dangerous.
That seems like mostly an issue with aftermarket headlights, at least in my area
You can retrofit LEDs and HIDs, but you have to do it with the correct projectors. Then there’s a proper cutoff and you even get more useful light output. But you should still only do this with self-leveling headlights already installed in the car and in the EU you’d need headlight washers as well.
Fake. Make the LEDs dimmer AND avoid the regular headlight out issues.
