Truck headlights are already on a level with sedan drivers' eyes. There are far more F-150s on the road than there are Teslas.
And don't get me started on jackasses that put LED bulbs in old halogen housings.
Seems like a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation / use case for regulation....
Unless your car's design is particularly evil (a real possibility), changing a headlight bulb is usually easy to do yourself, and approved, incandescent headlight bulbs are easy to source most places.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/blindzoneglaremi...
It doesn't help at all with head on traffic, but glare via my side mirrors has been reduced greatly since I implemented this.
Now most people are installing aftermarket LED kits. For the most part those are less blinding. I upgraded our old Impreza with some but chose the lowest lumen numbers I could find and they are also engineered to emit light in the same locations and angles that the halogen ones did. I did some tests with the garage door and standing in front of it where a car would be and it's non-blinding for oncoming traffic.
Barely perceptible flashing yet somehow gratingly and distractingly so.
The only other product analogy that comes to mind is "thicker = better" for hiking socks. When they got too thick, they applied too much pressure to the heal and also provided additional moment distance making it far easier to roll an ankle.
41% of vehicle deaths are people not even in a car[1]. Yet car safety regulation is heavily focused on the 59% that are, nothing to regulate the ridiculous gender-affirming hood heights or aftermarket lifts that turn a survivable collision into a deadly collision.
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... Table 1, paragraph above
I don’t think you meant literally “all”, but one that comes to mind that definitely is intended for pedestrian safety is around requiring that EVs make audible noises when they’re moving at slow speeds (the fake humming as they move forward, and the beeping as they reverse).
Most regular SUVs should be taken off the road.
Look at this example: a dozen kids aligned in a neat row in front of the SUV and the soccer mom drivers can see none of them!
https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...
I always have blue blockers (yellow and also dark orange lenses) in my car and wearing them totally prevents pain and fatigue for my eyes.
- cresting a hill. Normal people can see the cone of light from the approaching car and often turn classic high beams down before it blinds fellow drivers. These do it only when it detects the actual light source, giving a 0.2-0.5 (about) flash of bright light.
- Wet and snowy ground. Even when they re-align themselves somewhat properly they can be blinding due to reflections which are not part of the angle-calculation algorithm.
- Failure to detect pedestrians and cyclists. Self-evident, but when I am not in a car I am impressed by how blinding it is.
Personally I consider them to decrease safety for everyone except the car with those headlights. I also feel like it is yet another badly designed automation which adds to the ability to slightly doze off and pay a little less attention to traffic.
I drive a normal height hatchback. I live in Texas. The /vast/ majority of vehicles on the road are trucks and SUVs, and many of them have aftermarket lift kits which further exacerbates the problem. The main problem is vehicle height and improperly aimed headlights. There's no real enforcement or regulation for headlight aiming, and worse we have no effective vehicle height restrictions. Not only do these insecure little men blind you at night, their cattle guard/reinforced bumper mounted to the frame will decapitate you if they hit you because of the bumper height difference from the 6+ inch Chinese lift kit they added to their truck to stroke their ego and allow them to "bully" drivers on the road by intentionally tailgating and driving aggressively in their oversized vehicle.
The problem is epidemic in America, and it's a problem of both regulation and culture. As long as the typical American driver is somebody who enters the road ignorant of basic driving dynamics, with a selfish attitude, inattentively barreling down the road in their massive fuck-off symbol of insecurity, we are not going to fix this.
What really pisses me off? LED bulbs only available in 6000k or higher. I had to import some Osram H4 bulbs from the netherlands because they are a warmer factory 3000K temperature. We really need regulation on glare, because right now it's the wild west.
The federal government took upon itself responsibility for things like this, because it's impractical at best for cities or states to regulate these. It's too bad that politics and bloat has made governance of this particular issue more or less impossible. Self regulation is obviously a joke, the standard suite of choices mean the default options for consumers are obnoxious as hell.
It'll have to become a big enough issue to warrant attention and action by the President, either this one or whoever comes next, or nothing will ever be done.
Maybe a convention of states that runs all current politicians, judges, and bureaucrats out of their jobs (in a sane, phased way) and establishes term limits and bans on careerism and bloat. Citizens can bypass the feds and kick their asses to the curb - imagine a total reset, in which we put forth competent, responsible people.
This problem will never be fixed. Gonna have to wear adaptive sunglasses at night for driving.
I have blue eyes, it hurts to drive at night.
Regardless I keep my auto dim off and just down. I don’t usually need the headlamps in high beam mode.
What would be useful is a taller median between both sides on a highway since often the blinding is because of a difference in the direction facing due to the grade of the highway. Facing people who are looking up a hill is awful.
It is true, that many drivers drive with the high beam on. My cabin is frequently illuminated by their lamps. My lamps never illuminate the cabin of a car I follow by comparison. This strange asymmetry does annoy me and I am certain I’m in the right but it’s usually resolvable by allowing them to pass.
How do they ever find out that they're wrong if you don't turn your highbeams on after they pass?
However I think your EV examples shows an important attitude about what types of vehicles can be regulated. EVs are fair game for regulation, oversize trucks and SUVs are not. That's an attitude not based on safety, but on societal priorities.
This two-class system extends even beyond safety regulations, into emissions regulations too. Trucks and oversize SUVs get a free-ride out of everybody else in society.
The data even points to the fact that, by total vehicles vs vehicles that cause pedestrian deaths, regular passenger cars cause 19.9 pedestrian deaths per 1MM registered vehicles while trucks, as and entire category, cause 19.2 pedestrians deaths per 1MM registered vehicles.
"nothing to regulate" is also an exaggeration. Many states to regulate aftermarket lifts. 6" lifts are typically the maximum legally allowed limit for trucks like the F150. You only see them higher because there is no enforcement of the rule.
Unenforced rules effectively don't exist. Selectively enforced rules are a focal point for discrimination and corruption. I don't think you're making the argument you think you are.
mdp2021•2h ago
It should be illegal, but there you are.
There is the possibility (as said by an apologetic driver) that it sometimes may be a badly functioning automation ("Too high? Oh but it's automatic").
jmclnx•1h ago
Since the late 90s I think, no matter what setting is used, everyone is blinded when by people in back of you and people coming towards you.
torginus•1h ago
mitthrowaway2•1h ago
bradfa•1h ago
retired•22m ago
They were banned in the US, ironically.
nottorp•1h ago
Yeah, since they started to introduce super duper led headlights and 144 Hz animations on turn signals it's been more and more blinding to drive at night even across the ocean.
rconti•40m ago
retired•20m ago
retired•24m ago
There are headlights that are illegal in the US but legal in Europe. Opposite world of what we normally have.