Do you have a citation or was that an edgy culture war comment?
But don’t let that stop you from starting your diatribe
I don’t mean a simple “normal” flashing light, but the super bright ones that are like a camera flash strobe going off 2-3x per second which hurts your eyes and kills your night vision, making it hard to see anything including the actual cyclist.
Seems to me that all of this tech to create autonomous driving could be also used to augment human driving.
Earlier in the year I got a replacement rear-view mirror with an anti-glare coating and it's paid dividends. It helps so much at night on dark sections of road when newer cars with bright headlights are around me. Finally decided to also replace my side mirrors with ones that have a similar coating.
Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them.
So who are they for? I think broadly people may just not be able to avoid excess unless restricted by the facts of their environment. Allow people a plethora of calories, they'll get too fat. Allow them a plethora of entertainment, they'll drive themselves insane. And somehow .. allow them too many bright lights and they'll all just blind each other.
(I'll give you other animals though.)
I still also agree headlights are too bright, by the way, but I'm just providing an example for your question
With current car that has Xenon headlights (+ LED for day), they have a much sharper cutoff at the edge, making it harder to see pedestrians and other stuff near the road.
Probably the LED/laser headlights are even worse in this aspect.
They're so machines can see better, not so humans can see better. There are so many more doorbell cameras, ALPR cameras, fixed building cams, PTZ building cams, dash cams, external vehicle cams, etc than ever before, and they all want to be able to spy on you as effectively as possible even at night.
I'm quite thankful for bright headlights.
The problem referred to in the article is dipped beam headlights being too bright and often too high, which are making things less safe by dazzling other drivers and road users.
Judging from comments in this thread, large numbers of people are suggesting that they are actually entitled to blind others because toggling back and forth is an inconvenience for them, and/or the "smart" cars that are auto-toggling high beams have left many drivers completely ignorant that toggling is actually possible.
Related question, are cars that have completely removed manually controlling high beams actually street legal?
Usually bright headlights / highbeams are useful in there.
Animals, specifically deer. That said, you can use brights when no other cars are nearby, and when there is a car coming its worth a few seconds of extra risk to not blind the other guy and put him at risk.
There really isn’t that much increase; when there’s another driver then you both have the combined the light output of both headlights, coming from two different directions.
I don't think it happened through any plan, if anyone was looking at the specs, they probably just thought "bigger number better".
Have you actually driven in the country?
Out in the country where I live, some roads are single track with no painted lines, cats eyes or street lights. There is occasional foot traffic, sometimes not wearing reflective gear. There are also animals, and 6" deep potholes that I would rather not hit as well.
There's something really obnoxious and antisocial about this that makes me really mad. Test your lights on yourself, people. If your manufacturer did something stupid here it's unfortunately on you to fix it. Usually the mentality of "got mine, fuck everyone else" is self-destructive but maybe not obviously so because cause/effect are a few steps away from each other. But if you blind everyone else on the road so you can see better then it's kind of endangering you directly and immediately!
This is a huge issue in US western states especially, since they are full of long dark drives. You'll literally be blinded for several seconds if you encounter another car even if you're averting your eyes. Bad but not horrible if it's 1/10 of chance encounters that are antisocial, but it's been getting worse for years and odds are now much closer to 1/2.
You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball?
There are all sorts of things you need to be able to see to avoid. People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on. Not to mention spotting dangerous icy patches at night in the winter.
I take it you don't really drive in country? Which is fine, but it's good to be aware of the many potential hazards.
Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too.
> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on.
Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over.
I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time.
>Only in well light areas, usually with a low speed limit too.
Not something I've commonly seen when driving, but certainly as a kid out in the country I ran around in the dark near the road.
>> People, deer, fallen branches, large roadkill, garbage cans blown into the road by the wind, the list goes on and on.
>Of those only people are at all common, and not on large roads. I have never even seen roadkill large enough to be unsafe to drive over.
>I have only once come close to hitting any of these on country roads in the UK. I have been dangerously dazzled by oncoming bright headlights all the time.
I've seen all of these multiple times (tbf the trash cans were in the city, not the country) out in upstate NY and rural Indiana and Kentucky. Maybe trees don't drop branches over in the UK, but over in the US that is certainly a hazard to be expected during and after severe weather.
To be clear, I agree that excessively bright running lights and people who can't seem to properly transition between hibeams and lowbeams are problem. I just don't agree with the sentiment from the gp that "[o]ut in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights."
That being said while I don’t struggle much with the glare from oncoming headlights I find that visibility beyond the oncoming vehicle can be severely limited by the bright light. This often causes me to slow down and squint to be careful of any dangers beyond the vehicle.
There are plenty of country side roads in Europe that really dark with normal medium lights.
Now I fully agree that full intensity is too high as shipped in most cars.
I guess you don't actually drive at night in the countryside then.
You need lights to see where the road is, not where pedestrians might be - on none existent footpaths
You really don't need the bright lights. You never have. Slow down, look for movement, and use your brights intelligently.
But only if you don't care about other drivers on the road. And of course, how many of those other drivers on the road care about who they're impacting? A lot of them have your attitude.
In more open areas it can be quite helpful to have greater throw and flood illumination.
In the American Midwest, being able to spot ice patches or deer on the interstate with your brights is quite helpful.
Normal driving lights have no need for the intensity they have today though
Then we have pedestrians walking with no sidewalks or crosswalks, because city planning actively hostile to people walking.
Drive faster and you have to have brighter lights shining farther into the distance to be able to see at least a couple seconds ahead.
A lot of it is A roads - few pedestrians and they are on pavements.
On country lanes, I think traditional lights are usually bright enough. if not, slow down at might.
It’s the car drivers responsibility to not mow pedestrians down wherever or whenever they are walking.
Animals and pedestrians (along with pot holes) are the prime reason.
You're not wrong, but it's a minor contribution at most.
It's not as if you cannot see with normal, old-fashioned headlights. That's what I'm confused about; the problem with headlights at night is that they have a distance. So rather than being unable to see, what you actually get is less reaction time. ie, rather than seeing 'til the next hill or turn, you can really only see to the end of your headlight beam. Ultrabright headlights actually make this worse; you have no night vision whatsoever due to their brightness, and and anything outside of the beam is completely invisible. This isn't as much of a problem with old fashioned headlights as they don't trash your night vision quite as badly. In any case, the problem is that you have less time to react due to only being able to see within the beam of the light -- and brightness really does not affect this.
This is totally aside from that fact that the moose threat is NOT that they're in the road 1000 feet ahead of you and it's too dark to see -- it's that they come right out of the woods before you have time to react -- and brightness, again, does not actually affect this.
Moose aren't invisible to a normal headlight.
When you aren't using strong lights your pupils open more. Now we need much brighter lights than traditionam because the lights from other cars leave you blind for too long.
Context: I live in 3rd world country with non lit interurban roads. People must to walk and ride bicycles, only they do irresponsibly without anything reflective, maybe only with their cellphone screens lit because they are using it. I sometimes reduce speed to 30 km/h when a car comes from the opposite direction.
The problem isn't as much bright lights though, it's lights shining in your face.
1) "auto dipping" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic
2) "matrix" headlights don't detect oncoming traffic
3) Headlights are adjusted to point as high as possible, on cars with ridiculous high headlights, so although they are pointing "down" (just), they are pointing into your car
4) My 2005 car's headlights are yellow. Modern ones are white. If I drive with full beam on, I don't even get flashed. Yellow isn't as dazzling.
Of course it's all rather meaningless, nobody chose brighter lights
You are right also especially that there is a good side to it: in countryside roads you will able to see pedestrians/bicycles that don't use refractory lights better. Surely you are blinding everyone else.
A high-trust society that solved coordination problems through legislation, could solve this with a win-win technofix solution where everybody's headlights are as bright as the sun and nobody suffers ill effects.
That technofix solution is polarized headlights, and right-angle-polarized night driving glasses or windshield tints.
There are modest costs (signage & road markings shouldn't be perfectly smooth, retroreflectors work a little differently, and you lose a certain percent efficiency), but they're much less intense than the costs of the current situation.
This take is both pervasive (i.e. I don't want to pick on you, this ideologically motivated failing of logic is all over HN) and a sleazy slight of hand.
High trust societies don't have governments dispatching threats of enforcement violence over BS minutia like automobile headlights. That is expensive in all sorts of ways, assuming you even do it right and don't accidentally create some perverse rent seeking bureaucracy or certification group that has incentive to push things in a dumb direction over time.
In high trust societies the big players identify the problem, mostly solve it with some sort of industry standard, and whatever rounding error is left is a nuisance so small it's not worth addressing. There's no need to regulate minutia in a high trust society because the minutia solves itself for the most part.
This is how like the overwhelming majority of automotive (and a million other industries too) stuff was done before regulation and how a lot of the more cutting edge stuff is still done now with the added step of the regulator saying "hey that thing everyone's mostly doing, it's law now, errybody do it" once things settle.
I don't know about the UK, but out here in France, this is wrong on most counts. Many country roads have no lines, reflective or otherwise. There will be pedestrians walking around. Also, roads are not always in tip-top shape nor clean, so you need light to be able to see.
However, I do agree that maybe extremely bright lights mounted high are a nuisance.
But I find that bright white headlights actually make that second problem worse. The bright white light means your eyes don't adjust as well to the dark, so you can really only see straight ahead. So it's much harder to spot deer standing in the relative gloom along the side of the road than it is with older halogen headlights.
I guess it is more likely they crash into the car behind you or just run off the road themselves. Unfortunately being a selfish pays off most of the time.
Reading these comments is a reminder that a lot of people aren’t familiar with the diversity of roads and environments across the country and around the world.
Painted reflective road lines in good shape are a luxury, especially in areas with heavy snow and snowplows coming through a lot.
Pedestrians aren’t a concern, but deer and other animals are. The deer are much worse than pedestrians because they move faster and don’t understand how to avoid cars.
Country roads also have very different conditions across the world. In some places you have clear visibility 100 feet to the tree line. In some places I drive, the trees are dense right up to the road with only a couple feet of clearance to the car. Some roads are also so rough that the biggest hazards are avoiding pot holes. Some roads I drive are up against mountain faces and the road may have large rocks that have fallen on it.
I personally don’t feel the need for brighter headlights because I keep my headlight lenses clear, washed, and waxed, and I’m young with good eyesight. I also use brights in the countryside and toggle them off when other drivers are coming.
However, downplaying the challenges of country road driving is weird.
And, in the UK at least, you don't legally need to use them either. If it's lit and the speed limit is no more than 30mph, you only need sidelights and taillights on in the dark.
Unfortunately most people will flash their lights at you if they see it as they assume you've forgotten to put them on.
Headlights don't illuminate far enough to stop in time at 40 or 50 miles an hour, let alone at highway speeds. Snarky view is you may wreck your car, but at least you'll have a year's worth of venison.
This is the same kind of useful advice as the one to brake check those whose driving style you don't like very much, fight (real or perceived) road hazard with deliberately creating more hazard.
Additionally, car designers should leave headlights and indicators alone, unless they are making the vehicles safer. The first time I encountered an oncoming car with a horizontal LED strip between the lights, I had no idea what style of vehicle was oncoming.
Even if the dip angle is the same (1% gradient or so), this can still dazzle most people nearby.
Then there's the height of the hood, headlights are so much higher than they used to on average. Amplifies that pain.
I don't drive much here in Switzerland but I haven't noticed a problem when I do drive, but in the USA when I drive, especially in rural areas it's a pain.
[0] https://mattersoftesting.blog.gov.uk/the-mot-headlamp-aim-te...
LED white lights are the actually the problem
"Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 (FMVSS 108) regulates all automotive lighting, signalling and reflective devices in the United States.
In February 2022, FMVSS 108 was amended to allow automakers to install adaptive driver beam (ADB) headlamps on new vehicles. However, carmakers have not implemented ADB because of contradictions in the rule.
As of December 2024, FMVSS 108 has not been updated to adapt to widespread use of LED headlamps, which are criticized for being too bright and blinding other drivers. Some manufacturers have reportedly engineered headlamps to have a dark spot where they are measured according to the regulation while being over-illuminated in the rest of the field."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S...
"Adaptive Highbeam Assist is Mercedes-Benz's marketing name for a headlight control strategy that continuously automatically tailors the headlamp range so the beam just reaches other vehicles ahead, thus always ensuring maximum possible seeing range without glaring other road users.
This technology is also known as Adaptive Driving Beams (ADB).
Until February 2022, this technology had been illegal in the US, as FMVSS 108 specifically stated that headlamps must have dedicated high and low beams to be deemed road-legal. An infrastructure bill enacted in November 2021 included language that directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to amend FMVSS 108 to allow the use of this technology, and set a two-year deadline for implementing this change. In February 2022, the NHTSA amended FMVSS 108 allowing adaptive headlights for use in the US. However, the new regulations are quite different from the ones in effect in Europe and Asia and prevent car manufacturers from easily adapting their systems to the US market."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp?wprov=sfti1#Adaptive_...
Public roads are not race tracks; they are for people.
The solution would be to overtake people with tinted windows. Unfortunately, the type of people with tinted windows are exactly the type you shouldn't overtake.
So every soccer mom SUV?
Aftermarket tints are dark and people get both the rear window and windshield tinted.
I too wonder why these are legal.
I believe flashing lights are actually less safe as it encourages the driver to look AWAY from you. I certainly don't keep staring at a flashing light.
The old halogen-warm colors were better, too. You don't want "area denial" lighting on your everyday ride.
- In many new cars the headlights do indeed appear as very bright. In the Xenon era the headlight height adjustment per occupancy was done automatically but at least in a few new cars I've been in with LED headlights this is not the case and the driver needs to adjust it by hand and I'm pretty sure the vast majority doesn't do that.
- Many new cars offer automated switching of high beam lights and the results vary to say the least.
- Small experience from UK highways gave me the same impression, the middle strip is not a solid one which is a huge issue when the lights from the other side blind you and I'm talking about normal headlights just because of road curvature or height difference of the opposing lanes while there are no overhead road lights.
EDIT:format
The number of people who don't use their lights judiciously is surprisingly large. Besides high beam issues, I've also observed people who think that their daytime running lights are headlights. This is especially obvious because their taillights will be off.
I'm pretty sure that, like "taking control of [their] borders by leaving the EU", this is a course of action that will make everyone happy.
Granted, my Yaris with full LED lights and their atrocious cool white light is a part of the problem, so I'm in no position to complain, but at least my lights are aimed correctly, so there's that.
The old light regulation actually had a limit on how bright the running lights could be.
The new LED light regulation says you can have it as bright as the manufacturer wants it to be.
So now there is the problem of misaligned headlights that don't point at the road but instead point at cars, and are as bright or brighter than the old incandescent high beams.
I have to have my rear-view mirror permanently flipped at night now. I never needed to do that in the past except when some idiot actually was using their high beams.
There’s someone in my neighborhood who has an imported Toyota Sequoia. Magnificent machine. His car could be mistaken for a small bus. When he vacates the spot, two normal sized cars can park in it. Our actual buses and semis often have lower headlights than that thing.
In recent years I've started being unable to tell who's intentionally blinding traffic and who's just got misconfigured lamps (shining at eye level instead of angled down at the road). It used to be feasible to also let people know when their lights are misconfigured, I'd probably decide 1 warrants a signal across several hours of driving (also because of avoiding collateral targets), but the most recent time I drove, I think there was always at least one car in sight that had the issue. It's completely constant. It was worsening a few years ago but it's really getting out of hand now, in Germany and the Netherlands at least. Some people's lights are even piercing by day! Thankfully that is quite rare yet
(I'll say it looked cool even if we didn't need the gimmick, other drivers did occasionally flash us when they were at the edge of its detection range, and I can't imagine it improves the wildlife situation that's already not exactly thriving with habitat areas cut up by roads and light pollution from towns and cars everywhere around it)
I haven't seen this type of headlight as a third party yet. I've been on the lookout for where another car might light up areas around me but never noticed it. Not sure it's that common in Germany or the Netherlands
I also assume that few people complain to the manufacturer so they're probably not even aware that people find it a nuisance. While one complaint won't do anything, it could be doing anyway just in case you're not the only one who does
With what? Another set that has the exact same problem? Short of replacing the whole car, there's no good solution for the consumer, given that the problem is part of the design.
It's really up to regulators to put something in place though, I don't understand why it is taking so long. It's not like they want those super-bright headlights, they just come with the car...
Still, obviously, nothing you can do, or the driver in general. And I guess the manufacturers aren't incentivised. Regulation is the only thing that I can think of that will work.
I helped a friend with aligning the headlight after changing the bulb some years ago, I hear newer cars don't let you change the bulb yourself necessarily but then surely the mechanics can be asked to do this when they change it anyway, or upon the next inspection or so?
For the cars I owned, only one set of official lights existed. Aftermarket would be nearly guaranteed to be worse quality and poorer alignment. And no changing them in the warranty period either.
Car parts are not like PC parts, where you can buy your own and mix-and-match.
No, things with car lights are not as you think. In many modern cars there are no bulbs, but laser diodes and complex lenses and god knows what else. I wouldn't trust anyone to fiddle with mine and do a good job, including the dealership.
They then proceed to adjust them to spec, which is what it was already at, thus not fixing the problem.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fRjMHtnShs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZJoPbk53ug
(all his videos are good)
As a long-time walker in the US, anecdotally, I've noticed some especially blinding car headlights, and they seem to be among the whiter ones. "Hey, thanks for ruining my night vision and my sleep cycle." But I usually can't tell whether the cause of the problem is the the aiming, brightness, or temperature. I thought headlights were carefully regulated.
(There's something about LED lights that brings out oblivious or indifferent behavior. Maybe involving efficiency improvements, and people not reassessing requirements (e.g., when you couldn't get a too-bright light, or it would be too expensive to operate, you didn't have to think about other not-too-bright requirements). In recent years, we got municipalities installing miserable bright white street lamps, prompting complaints from walkers and people who don't have blackout curtains anywhere that shines in at night. And the last couple years, some individual residential properties in my very dense neighborhood are installing crazy-bright white LED floodlights outdoors, shining at sidewalks and adjacent property windows, brighter than even the new street lamps. I'm starting to see walkers at night going out into the street (which isn't very safe), just to avoid the blast. The first too-bright property lights to appear on a block's street are very easy to spot, because they're obviously the brightest thing there.)
1% said they were sometimes distracted by incoming vehicles, and that was fine.
Instead, they are too high, because the idiots with new cars rely on the automatic beam positioning which is always too slow.
Or they are fitting led bulbs in an halogen fixture and never bother to make the adjustments
But I don't necessarily have a problem with the headlights just because they're too powerful.
I'm happy my Tesla does a decent job of having the screen be quite dark at night but the headlights are quite bad with the horizontal cutoff style that only lights the first few feet of horizontal ahead of the car. I need to see those deer and elk on the side of the road, damn it.
Steering them away automagically from oncoming traffic is a better solution than abandoning them altogether.
(And yes, I do have cataracts. So oncoming lights _are_ a problem for me.)
only recently did i realize, it was the regular headlight LEDs being shined directly at me as they went over a speedbump
I'm thinking a mandatory recall order / fix-it ticket for all offending makes/models. The sticker shock alone might get manufacturers attention.
That and contributory liability in any associated accidents.
(Insurance costs / liability is a highly under-appreciated regulatory mechanism.)
My local sunglass shop had some yellow fit-over safety glasses. I found they cut out enough of the blue from the bad headlights to take the shock out of the experience of driving at night. https://cocoons.com/shop/safety/lightguard-medium-fitovers-l...
Harbor Freight's $2 yellow safety glasses are almost as good. I intend to stock up the next time I notice they're on sale for $1: https://www.harborfreight.com/yellow-lens-safety-glasses-668...
4 years ago I asked HN why the automotive industry wasn't using safe LEDs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405
The activists at /r/fuckyourheadlights figured out that the weaponized headlights put a little dim spot at the center of their headlight beams, exactly where the regulators measure the light intensity.
2nd picture clearly shows the dim spot: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1hefn86...
Summary of research: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/18lrf3d...
My car has 3 headlight settings, low, mid, hi.
Hi is when you are alone at night and want to see farther.
I used to use low in the daytime (to signal other drivers the car is on), and mid at night (to signal other drivers and gain some visibility.
But maybe the opposite is sensible, using mid lights in daytime (so they are more discernible from the daylight), and using low lights in nighttime (if you are in an already illuminated city, you don't need to light up the road, and since it's night, any small headlight will have enough contrast with the darkness)
One thing doesn't need to exclude the other, especially as you begin to go above 50 and your eye sight isn't as good as it was when you were twenty-five.
Strong headlight that makes night go day saves lives, just remember to shut when meeting another vehicle or pedestrian.
2. The color temperature of modern headlights is worse for the eye than previous generations'.
3. Automatic high beams still blind the oncoming traffic for the first 1-2 seconds or so, before the vision algorithm realizes that maybe it's time to turn them off.
Taek•1h ago
jghn•1h ago
[1] https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightne...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42443406
nikanj•1h ago
jonasdegendt•1h ago
I'm in Belgium and headlights don't generally bother me too much, but a month in California recently had me going "no wonder everyone has tints here."
englishrookie•1h ago
phito•59m ago
JonKF•1h ago
Lalabadie•1h ago
JohnFen•54m ago
I don't think there's a limit to how bright they can be. The law limits the lights to "70 watts", which I believe is intended to limit brightness but misses the mark. I bet the law was passed back when headlights were incandescent.
kubanczyk•12m ago
It's ridiculous that an average SUV has headlights higher than an average semi (my own experience) given the latter's breaking distance is much greater.
alistairSH•1h ago
First, SUVs are really tall... If you're in a sedan (or worse, a Miata) and get close enough to an oncoming SUV, even well-aimed, legal lights are going to feel bright because they're pointed down at you.
Second, there's a decent sized market for cheap, unapproved HID/LED kits for older cars. They're often not aimed correctly.
pyr0hu•1h ago
This, so much this. I'm having no issue with new cars and their LEDs. The aftermarket kits that are installed on 1994 Swifts and Passat B5s are not at all configured properly. They just throw it on the car and "yay i can see more" and sometimes I even think that they are using their high beams. But no, it's just their incorrectly set up lights.
MSFT_Edging•39m ago
funny, its the opposite for me. brand new SUVs are by far the worst offenders,
knome•36m ago
fusslo•18m ago
I feel awful about essentially high-beaming everyone unless the road is flat.
Aurornis•12m ago
This is the biggest problem. Even talk SUV headlights from the factory must meet standards for masking off light and the angles at which they can illuminate.
But when people buy LED retrofit kits and jam them into reflectors not designed for those bulbs, the reflectors don’t mask properly. Light spills everywhere.
I would bet that nearly all of the “headlights are too bright” complaints are coming from people seeing LED retrofit kits.
kubanczyk•5m ago
In EU most DMV equivalents check headlights yearly to catch illegal illumination envelopes (along with other safety-related aspects, brakes and whatnot).
bayindirh•1h ago
Some car manufacturer (Ford?) recalled their cars to fix their cars' headlight settings to match US regulations in the last 6-8 months IIRC.
Also, light temperature has limits. I believe >4000K lights are already road illegal in UK and EU. They are also recently outlawed in my country, but there are many cars with after market 5000K+ bulbs installed. They also don't conform to the geometry of the bulbs these headlights designed to accommodate. They are painful to look at.
What needs to be done is a) Stricter regulation in retrofitting older headlights with newer bulbs b) Regulating the amount of light hitting the oncoming driver somehow. c) Stricter CRI and light temperature regulations for the LED headlights.
I don't want to be blinded from light coming from behind and front constantly at night, too.
mapt•52m ago
At all?
It isn't just retrofits that are a problem, it's brand new cars.
It's not just about not wanting to be uncomfortably blinded by lasers shooting into your eyes at night. (Lasers well under 3000 lumens!). It's that this kills people. Frequently. It's a form of assault with hundreds of dead victims and thousands of injured victims a year.
bayindirh•48m ago
> It's not just about not wanting to be uncomfortably blinded by lasers shooting into your eyes at night.
I mean, being uncomfortably blinded creates the risk of being dead already. I believe I made it clear that it's dangerous.
mapt•42m ago
From a previous post on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42449068
> They measure at a certain point. Jason Cammisa points it out pretty clearly in an episode of Carmudgeon, with the money quote either here[0] or in the link direct to YouTube here[1]:
> On a recent episode of the Carmudgeon Show podcast, auto journalist Jason Cammisa described a phenomenon occurring with some LED headlights in which there are observable minor spots of dimness among an otherwise bright field of light. “With complex arrays of LEDs and of optics,” he said, “car companies realized they can engineer in a dark spot where it’s being measured, but the rest of the field is vastly over-illuminated. And I’ve had now two car companies’ engineers, when I played stupid and said, ‘What’s the dark spot?’ … And the lighting engineers are all fucking proud of themselves: ‘That’s where they measure the fucking thing!’ And I’m like, ‘You assholes, you’re the reason that every fucking new car is blinding the shit out of everyone.’”
bayindirh•38m ago
Aurornis•10m ago
LED retrofit regulations are not enforced. We should equip safety inspection stations with ways to measure this, but it’s an expensive change to demand they do safety inspections in a dark room when most safety inspection businesses are small shops that don’t have the room or buildings to do it.
mnw21cam•6m ago