Truly sick of hearing about "misalignment" and other nonsense from LEDsplainers and apologists. No alignment is going to fix the issue of giant trucks and 4WDs tailgating other drivers and blasting thousands of lumens into the cabins of their cars. The fact that modern LED headlights need to be within a Goldilocks zone of multiple operating parameters simply to avoid blinding other drivers is an inherent problem of these headlights.
The amount of ink spilled over LEDs is incredible when you consider how simple the situation really is. For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't. Regulators need to sort it out.
Yes, the size of those vehicles is definitely a factor. No alignment is going to account for the truck headlights being the same level as your eyes. Misalignment is definitely a thing though. Particularly with lifted trucks and the lack of auto-leveling when carrying a load. This affects halogens as well
But I think a lot of the blinding you see day to day is actually illegal HID/LED retrofits in reflector housings. Factory LEDs are not nearly as bad as those Amazon LEDs in reflectors.
It's not just retrofits. There are a headlights are much brighter stock than they were 10 years ago, and even where they're correctly aligned, they're assuming a perfectly flat road.
Unfortunately, perfectly flat roads are like spherical cows, so everyone is getting blinded by these newer, brighter headlights.
And now that active control is in play they're going to get even brighter and more blinding. YAY!
I constantly get flashed in my Kia Telluride. My headlights are stock and aligned (had them checked (supposedly)). If I'm cresting a hill it's way worse and I can expect at least one person to flash me.
The worst ones I face are the Acura MDX “jewel eye” LED headlights. They are terrible whether oncoming or following. I can tell from a long way away that it’s an MDX.
since forever we have had cars that did not need to beep when in reverse gear. Now, some mental damaged people think it is acceptable to live in an experimental industrial electronic concert. And there is now a market for "ringtones for cars". So the issue is, regulators must be sound minded and present and active... And be able to respond to instances of common sense...
Trucks have had reverse beepers for a very long time, because the drivers can't see behind them (though modern remote back-up cameras can fix this). Car drivers didn't need this because they had good visibility to the rear.
These days, everyone is driving around in a gigantic off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility, though again the back-up cameras mitigate this.
As for common sense and regulators, decades ago it was considered perfectly fine and normal for people to not wear seatbelts, and to be regularly impaled on the steering column in a crash. Regulators eventually decided this wasn't good enough, but it took them a very long time. Seat belts were offered back in the early 60s I think, maybe 50s, but people didn't use them. Any idiot can tell that a seat belt keeps you from being impaled on the steering column, but obviously much of the population didn't have much common sense.
According to the weighs of some perspective, very little can be an excuse to turn all areas of anthropic presence into a gigantic constructions site. Because it makes it unlivable.
> off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility
Save for the actually changed proportions, I know off-road vehicles with outstanding visibility, "normal roaders" with almost no rear visibility, and many vans have no rear windows at all (they only use side mirrors) since forever and still not having posed a problem. Is it possible that some measures follow the trend of "do something stupid to justify your salary by showing you have done something", in the intersection with "preserve life at all cost irregardless of the destruction of its quality"?
> Any idiot can tell
Although, an analysis cannot stop at "Points: pro" of the branch "case A", and a decisor (but not regulator) will only take guesses on the details unknown in the Cost/Risk/Benefit - he would be an idiot if he thought that from "A shows advantages" followed that A would be preferable. And the Issue is that there is an epidemic of unrestrained lack of good sense.
Worst of all is the Tesla backup sound. It's as if they hired some 20th century avant-garde musician to come up with the most jarring sound imaginable. That awful dystopian groan emanates through my house every day as my neighbors back into their driveway.
Just use a nice sounding V8 recording I say. I'd prefer that any day of the week, and it's immediately identifiable as a car noise.
I have a Model 3, and it's one of the ones that doesn't make sounds when backing up. Which also means no funny horn honk sounds and the like. At first I felt like I was missing out on a cool feature, but then heard the backup sound made by a newer Model 3 and felt like I got pretty lucky.
To be fair, I've noticed that I have to be a lot more careful in parking lots when driving the Tesla. People just don't hear it, and will happily walk right down the middle of the lot not realizing they're blocking a car. I can't blame them either.
I get to see a totally different kind of behavior when I drove my built-for-track-day STI. At low RPMs, its 430hp engine has you feeling the presence of the vehicle as much it has you hearing it. People are so obviously more aware of it than the Tesla when walking in parking lots.
Many cars have adaptive headlights, which can attenuate parts of the light field containing other cars ("matrix"/adaptive/glare-free etc lights). They have to be disabled in the US because it's against regulations. The hardware is there, it had been working in Europe for the past decade, it's just the regulators in the US don't care to update regulations from 1950s.
Last time somebody mentioned to me the "good times of the boundaries of good, common sense, largely represented in the Administration" - just nine hours ago.
I dislike bright LEDs at night, but not nearly as much as when people use terms like this as an insult. I'm sure you'll agree that people making poor choices isn't a sign of mental illness, and that by suggesting as such does harm to those who struggle with mental illness.
I shouldn't be surprised anymore that people on the internet would down vote a comment like this, but I am.
Seriously, what's the logic there? Someone has a problem with me taking issue with someone using "mental damaged people" as a way of describing people who make poor decisions? Try replacing "mental damaged people" with "gay people" or "brown people" or "millennials" or "old people" and see how you feel. Maybe it'll help make sense as to why "mental damaged people" is equally unacceptable.
Imagine if I'd suggested that the parent commenter was "mental damaged"? I think most people would agree that would be out of line, and it absolutely would be, yet do we feel the same way when the parent commenter calls other people the same thing? Is it more acceptable because they're some ambiguous and faceless group of people with terrible headlight etiquette?
People don't need to have a mental illness to make poor decisions. People do just fine without help.
Suggesting that people with disruptive high beams are "mental damaged people" is harmful because it reinforces views that people with mental illnesses are "less than", or are stupid or not trustworthy, or scary. They're not. They're people we know and love, and they're often struggling to even admit that they need help. It's hard enough without also feeling like society will look down on you for something you didn't ask for and have little control over.
It's also just incorrect. People who are not "mental damaged people" have headlights that are too bright and adjusted poorly.
Note the first HN guideline for commenting says "Be kind,", and I think calling out harmful behavior counts. My motivation isn't to fire of zingers and get points and show how virtuous I am. It's because I love, live with, am related to, work with, and care for people in my life who struggle with mental illness. Odds are the parent commenter does too. Odds are that other readers do too. Calling out bad behavior that harms marginalized people and people with similar challenges might not be fun to be called out on, especially if it wasn't the intention, but might change how you communicate on the internet.
That said, by calling out downvotes, I'm equally as guilty of not honoring the HN guidelines as the parent commenter. If readers choose to focus on that single violation, that's a choice they're free to make, though I'd encourage you to consider my arguments before making that choice.
I can't remember the last time I was blinded by a semi truck, and those are larger than anything else on the road. There must be some sort of solution for tall vehicles other than "don't be tall"
> For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't.
That's some serious rose tinted glasses you're wearing there. This has been a problem for decades, regardless of the type of lightbulb. The number of cars with badly adjusted incandescent lightbulb fixtures is insane.
I found things to be better in the UK, where alignment was part of the annual MOT, but even there it was still a regular thing to find someone with lighbulbs adjusted so badly that the beam was shining on the inside roof of my car.
Halogen headlights were significantly lower lumens, lower color temperature and more diffuse. That's not rose tinted glasses. It's fact.
No one is forgetting that there were badly adjusted halogen headlights or misused high beams. The point is that despite this we didn't have anything close to the blinding landscape of the modern road.
If I'm going to be on 2-lane roads at night I wear lightly tinted sunglasses and even then the oncoming lights are a big problem. It's very scary to be driving a 2-ton piece of steel at 50-60 mph and then be intermittently blinded for 1-2 seconds at a time.
Curious if you're familiar with the anti-glare mode for your rear view mirror? The tab at the bottom you can flip up/down. I have electrochromatic rear view so never have any blinding problem, but I've been in friends cars that complain about headlights behind them and have no clue there's a switch to dim them!
Some car models even have dimming side mirrors these days!
...though, come to think of it, maybe the fact that manufacturers keep inventing new ways to combat extra bright lights is a sign that the problem is worsening.
I have these and auto dimming rearview mirror. It helps but there's a non dimmed frame around the edge which still gets me and often even the dimmed view is too bright with some trucks.
is there a dimmer available for when these lifted megalumen trucks blind my infant in her rear facing car seat? to hell with these people and the harm their insecurities cause others.
I know you're trying to make light of this and be funny, but this is not a joke and you come across as wanting to condone or enable selfish, harmful asinine behavior.
Wow. And you come across as someone with a stick somewhere you don't want it. Good day.
(for the record, my headlights are so dim even I can barely see them. and not a single person in the whole world will read my comment and proceed to buy super bright headlights. it's literally just a cute picute of a baby in sunglasses. just wow.)
I bought a totally stock boring crossover SUV new from the dealer in 2020 and I‘m sick of people constantly flashing their lights at me. Are my factory headlights illegal? It’s possible, but I doubt it. Is it illegal to flash your brights at someone when their own headlights are perfectly legal? I don’t know, but it’s certainly distracting and doesn’t seem safe in precisely the same way that excessively bright headlights are unsafe.
The amount of ink spilled over LEDs is incredible when you consider how simple the situation really is. For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't. Regulators need to sort it out.