The war against headlight brightness

We already have a mechanism for this and it's called the Department of Transportation. But as we've seen in recent decades, we can't be reliant on our administrations to do their jobs. You can see on any headlights they have a D.O.T. number but these have been faked by unregulated imports for a long time.

But aftermarket isn't even the issue here. A lot of cities have given up any kind of enforcement for illegally modified cars, let alone DOT updating regulations for new technologies. I was pulled over regularly as a teenager for having lights I purchased at AutoZone for "being too blue". I doubt that ever happens anymore.

Headlights are now entirely too bright. The base lights are brighter than the bright lights from not that long ago. If you're in a car and a truck is coming the opposite way...you can't see anything. It's incredibly dangerous. I have terrific vision and now try to limit driving at night.

> “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.’”

Can anyone find an example of what they're talking about?

I'm not an expert at all, but I thought headlight regulations defined multiple zones rather than small spots. Like this image shows: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Light-pattern-size-and-i...

Every time this comes up, someone comes in telling us how adaptive headlights will save the day now that they’re finally approved. Here’s the issue: this problem exists today, and stuffing ever more computers in newer cars is not going to fix all the jacked-up F-150s with retina-searing aftermarket replacement bulbs, and the new cars rolling off the line without adaptive headlights (which will soon become used cars on the road for many years to come).

For a while, I assumed I was just having vision troubles as I get older. Then I started thinking that the roads around here are just poorly graded so that headlights are constantly in people's faces.

That stat showing the average brightness of lights, though, certainly seems to line up all too well with what I have been experiencing. Baffling how bad it is now. Driving at night is much more annoying because of it.

Is there a war against loud exhaust? I'm affected far more by loud exhaust than by bright headlights.

What does the DOT even do?

Why do we allow stupid brake/turn signal combos that can be ambiguous for way too long when making quick decisions. (Was that a brake light? Flashing brake light? Turning?)

Previous discussion from 24 days ago (197 comments):

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42443406

when i was much younger, i had bought my first car which was well over 20 years old. a gigantic boat of an early 1970's ford. pretty much the family truckster. it had the four round headlights. outer two are low/high beams and inner two are high beams only. so when you had high beams on it was all four high-beams.

now, myself and my young wife were on a vacation and it was late, like midnight and i was trying to find a hotel for the night in a small town. i got pulled over.

the reason? i "blinded" a police officer because i had the high-beams on. i hadn't realized it. he pointed to a dim little red light on the dash (i didn't know what that was). even with 4 high-beams on and my young eyes, it was still a struggle to see in the dark night.

the officer laughed at me trying to turn them off. nope - that's the windshield wipers. that's the thing to tilt the wheel and so on. he said: "did you happen to notice that big switch thing on the floorboard?" (i had not). "push it with your foot" and then "have a good night" as he chuckled and disappeared.

that was a long time ago, but who else remembers real high-beams and floor switches? or even knows that was a thing?

If cars and drivers were more heavily regulated, it might make a difference for a whole array of problems: leaky engines, illegal modifications, poor maintenance, etc. otherwise it's pretty much the anarchic tyranny of all of against all.

Other than regular inspections and stiff fines, this is just pointless.

Gangsters with illegally tinted windows, illegally modified exhausts, carrying a silenced ghost gun AK-47, with illegally bright headlights aren't going to care much about your Reddit threads.

I've noticed this. My car has one of these bright headlights (I had no idea when I bought it). Its a lot easier to see in dark streets, I'll admit that.

But my car also has some electronics that turn headlights down if I'm using high beam when another car is coming my way. Maybe that's the solution, but for the low beam too?

I'm not sure if my lights are weak or normal lately. I'm not sure how much of the road you're supposed to illuminate without it being brights. My lights are yellow too wonder if white would make a difference.

That's pretty funny, lights so bright it can x-ray a deer.

Listen to me.

LCD film on the windscreen. Camera for driver-eye tracking, Camera for headlight tracking.

Dim just the area (a good algo would yield a small patch) that blinds the driver.

This is a good article that touches on a lot of the nuances of this issue, and I hope people take the time to read it.

I'm in the camp that "brightness" is what is people notice, but it isn't necessarily the root cause of the issue. Aiming, leveling, beam height, pattern, lens condition, compliance, etc are all significant contributors to this issue as well.

Light on the road is a good thing, the problem is when the light goes in your eyes.

Anecdotally, the condition of people's headlights that I observe on the roads in the US is atrocious. Any given evening I can go on a short drive and observe:

* overloaded cars (which will point headlights in the air because US cars generally don't have beam leveling)

* dirty or obscured lenses (and again, the US doesn't require washers, and rarely does highway patrol enforce even heavily obscured lamps)

* broken or damaged vehicles with damaged lamps pointing the wrong direction

* drivers with one working headlamp, using high beams as a workaround for fixing their car

* drivers who are oblivious to the operation mode of their lamps (either driving with DRLs or high beams on)

* aftermarket lamps that don't have a proper beam pattern

I think bright lamps would be fine if people used them correctly, and we had better regulations to ensure they put the light properly on the road, but unfortunately you really can't trust US drivers to do things correctly, and the last thing that is politically palatable in the US is to enforce/enact more road safety regulations. And it seems highway patrol is only interested in enforcing speed limits and vehicle registration these days. And in the few states that even bother to inspect vehicles at all often fail to properly inspect headlights.