How Bright Headlights Escaped Regulation (autoblog.com) 153
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog: ... the problem is that the federal brightness standards for automotive headlights have not changed for decades. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 hasn't had significant updates since 1986, with an addition allowing Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlights coming only in 2022. The NHTSA last investigated (PDF) the issue of headlamp glare in 2003. The current standards include huge loopholes for auto manufacturers to emit as much light as desired, as long as the manufacturer meets the requirements of the other parts of the regulation.
LEDs can be made to focus light using lasers, and auto manufacturers use this ability to their advantage. The regulatory standard prohibits excessive light in certain areas by referencing old technologies, but manufacturers design the areas in question to be shaded so that the total light output can still be increased greatly overall. Manufacturers want as much light as possible in order to get a high score for the IIHS headlight safety ratings. [...] Although the U.S. finally approved the ADB technology in 2022, manufacturers are wary of implementing it because of conflicting regulations, with a few exceptions, such as Rivian.
To fix this problem, the first step is to update Standard 108 with a cap on the maximum allowable brightness for LED technology. Next, states should begin requiring headlight alignment inspection during vehicle inspections. Finally, NHTSA should enforce a ban against the sale of aftermarket LEDs that exceed the allowed brightness, at least for on-road use. The Soft Lights Foundation has collected over 77,000 signatures calling for federal action to limit headlight brightness. People are frustrated with being temporarily blinded while driving, and it's high time some regulation was put into place. Vehicles have become cleaner and safer through smart regulation; the same just needs to be done with headlights.
LEDs can be made to focus light using lasers, and auto manufacturers use this ability to their advantage. The regulatory standard prohibits excessive light in certain areas by referencing old technologies, but manufacturers design the areas in question to be shaded so that the total light output can still be increased greatly overall. Manufacturers want as much light as possible in order to get a high score for the IIHS headlight safety ratings. [...] Although the U.S. finally approved the ADB technology in 2022, manufacturers are wary of implementing it because of conflicting regulations, with a few exceptions, such as Rivian.
To fix this problem, the first step is to update Standard 108 with a cap on the maximum allowable brightness for LED technology. Next, states should begin requiring headlight alignment inspection during vehicle inspections. Finally, NHTSA should enforce a ban against the sale of aftermarket LEDs that exceed the allowed brightness, at least for on-road use. The Soft Lights Foundation has collected over 77,000 signatures calling for federal action to limit headlight brightness. People are frustrated with being temporarily blinded while driving, and it's high time some regulation was put into place. Vehicles have become cleaner and safer through smart regulation; the same just needs to be done with headlights.
Okay, so this is a wishlist for 2029 (Score:5, Insightful)
We are NOT going to get any new even marginally consumer-friendly regulations during the next three years.
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Where I am, the inspections and then the smog test both got cancelled in the name of austerity with a smattering of freedom. And the cops, whose budget increases faster then any other local budget, claim they don't have the resources to stop people for things like burnt out lights. Tax cuts have consequences.
As an aside, I just swapped some LED lights into my truck and quickly noticed that the daytime running lights, which use the high beam in series so run at 6 volts, now are fully on. I have to remember t
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We are NOT going to get any new even marginally consumer-friendly regulations during the next three years.
You might, but it will be despite your government rather than because of it.
If other countries (EU, UK, JP, AU) et al. introduce regulations than global manufacturers will bring those to the US by default as it doesn't make economic sense to make modifications to a global platform for a single country. The same way many American cars are now European Emissions Standards (EURO 1-7) compliant for their model year. Simply didn't make sense to use a different engine for a single market.
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CAFE if we get rid it of which we should its kinda crap will only lead to profit taking by the 3. They are doing some supid shit to get to the insane CAFE limits.
I think thought the lights are insane as our cop lights those are just really about recking your vision.
Re:Okay, so this is a wishlist for 2029 (Score:5, Interesting)
Not even remotely true if we succeed in reducing the CAFE standards that have fucked consumer choice and automotive reliability for decades now.
All of the automakers were ready, willing, and able to meet the emissions regulations well ahead of schedule, and the average vehicle is not made unreliable by the emissions systems. In fact, it is more efficient and gets better mileage because the best way to meet the targets is with more complete combustion.
The only exception, and I mean this, is DPF for diesels. This is a garbage technology which should never have been employed. Even DEF is a positive thing (it virtually eliminates NOx in diesel exhaust) though the systems are generally shit. But that's not the DEF's fault, it's the automakers' fault. DPF means finer soot and more CO2 emissions in exchange for burning up the large soot particles so the diesels don't look like they are polluting.
Ford has lost its focus (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even remotely true if we succeed in reducing the CAFE standards
All of the automakers were ready, willing, and able to meet the emissions regulations well ahead of schedule
Emissions and CAFE are separate standards. CAFE relates to fuel economy. US automakers have been making light trucks instead of cars to exploit the looser CAFE standards on trucks. It's why Ford has lost its focus since April 2018.
Re: Ford has lost its focus (Score:2)
Yeah, that's also a standard to reduce emissions, because reducing fuel consumption is the way to reduce CO2 emissions.
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DPF means finer soot and more CO2 emissions in exchange for burning up the large soot particles so the diesels don't look like they are polluting.
Interesting comment. I understand and am not too worried about the extra CO2, which seems a reasonable trade off given evidence that fine particulates cause serious health problems. It should just be accounted for in MPG ratings. The extra soot sounds bad, though. Do you have any links about this?
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The extra soot sounds bad, though. Do you have any links about this?
There's a bunch of reports on what they do. Their whole purpose is to trap large soot and burn it. In the process it turns it into a combination of CO2 and PM2.5 including a lot of PM1. And that's in the ideal case, where it's almost all highway miles. If there's a bunch of around town use too then not only does it do that but the system also injects fuel into the DPF to burn off the soot. For vehicles which do mostly around town miles, this can actually increase fuel consumption by 5% overall, and the smel
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This article does a good job detailing what actually happened:
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/... [techdirt.com]
Same problem in Europe (Score:3, Interesting)
Headlights are way too bright and now with idiotic daytime running lights (useful in the artic circle, not so much in the med in the summer) it makes it MUCh harder to see oncoming motorbikes who used to stand out with their headlights on. Being narrow they're hard to see at the best of times but frankly, if a driver can't see an oncoming car or truck in bright daylight without headlights perhaps they need an eye test.
Re:Same problem in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
DRLs aren't the "bright headlights" this article is talking about.
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Statistics [Re:Same problem in Europe] (Score:4)
So if DRLs decrease crashes by 10% in semi-gloom arctic regions but increase them by 5% in regions with more daylight, it's still a win even if it makes things worse for most of the US population.
Nope. The fraction of the US that is in semi-arctic regions is so low that it won't affect the average.
"I can't see the light" (Score:2)
People can turn on their headlights if they think visibility is poor. Such lights expend much energy, multiplied by millions of vehicles...ha
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*when using DRL
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My experience is the opposite, especially if the Sun is low and the vehicle is a drap colour with grey the worst.
It's hard to get people to turn on their headlights when the visibility is poor based on how many idiots drive around without their lights on in the rain.
Re:Same problem in Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
As for DLRs reducing accidents, there have been no studies with and without in the same conditions
Dude, that's literally what the statistics are about: the difference in rate of collisions between vehicles with and without DRL. On top of that, there are plenty of studies about human vision that support this outcome.
I do not believe your argument is founded in reason but rather emotion/belief.
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As for DLRs reducing accidents, there have been no studies with and without in the same conditions
Dude, that's literally what the statistics are about: the difference in rate of collisions between vehicles with and without DRL. On top of that, there are plenty of studies about human vision that support this outcome.
I do not believe your argument is founded in reason but rather emotion/belief.
Cars with DRL : cars without DRL :: Behemoth carbon-intensive SUVs : efficient compact cars.
Yes. SUVs are statistically safer than compact cars. ...for the people in the SUVs.
Our vision-cognition evolved in conditions where the only lights in existence were:
(A) the sun/moon/stars (too far away to be of immediate concern)
(B) fire/lightning (an immediate painful/existential threat)
Thus our vision-cognition immediately diverts attention to nearby light sources.
It should not be surprising that cars with DRL are
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It should not be surprising that cars with DRL are statistically in fewer collisions than cars without. Indeed, we ought to expect this to occur, because cars without DRLs are now less visible and lower priority to our vision-cognition process which is constantly jumping to the next light source.
The problem with your thesis is that there are still going to be other light sources that grab our attention.
The very presence of DRLs makes cars without DRLs more vulnerable.
Seems like a specious argument to me. The world doesn't operate in a purely binary fashion as there are many factors that come into play.
What would happen if all vehicles have DRLs? What is the effect on cognition/attentiveness if every driver's field of vision is fully blanketed with DRLs,
LOL! You would have fewer injuries and deaths. They have been mandated in most of Europe since the 1990s, [wikipedia.org], all of Europe in 2011, and of course closer to home there is Canada which has required it all cars since 1990. You're not going to believe it but it's caused a
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Cars that have DLR also have a lot of other safety features added too compared to older cars.
Isolating factors is the primary objective of statisticians.
It wasn't as if DLR was suddenly added And Nothing Else to a generation of vehicles.
Not a shocking revelation. However, at one point, it was.
Re:Same problem in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
Like what? Safety belts? Because that's about the only safety feature cars with DRL's have (Canada has had DRL as a requirement since the 80s). Airbags, ABS, and all sorts of other modern safety features were NOT standard at the time. About the only vehicles that don't have DRL's are motorbikes (for whatever reason - you'd think they wood to help). It's why Canada got the moniker for driving with their headlights on during the day. And many better driving schools taught that if your car is old enough to not have DRLs, to turn on your headlights anyways.
The reason DRL's work is because in a busy urban environment, a car can be hard to pick out from the environment. A DRL or low beam headlight turns into an indicator that there's something there. The human eye seeks to find bright objects, and having your lights on means your car now has to bright things to help call out amidst the visual clutter.
DRL's are not for arctic circle or anything - they aren't for night use (and arctic circle locations have 24 hours of sun during summer). They're to highlight "big dangerous moving thing" among visual noise on a city street and give you a fighting chance of properly identifying, seeing and calculating position speed and distance of them to determine if you can merge or cross.
For the same reason why cellphones in theatres are a huge problem starting in the late 90s when they became cheap and popular - your eye is drawn to bright objects. There were even campaigns to get rid of DRL controllers because a DRL has a huge problem - your taillights aren't on, so you don't have the benefit and you might not realize how close you're following until someone slams on their brakes.
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False. Europe's regulations have a different problem. The regulations cover specifically that the bright beam can't shine into people's eyes, even reflectively, but fucks up how to achieve this. Mainly that the headlights are limited by beam angle. That is perfectly fine when everyone drives a hatchback, but not so fine when you drive a hatchback and the person behind you drives an SUV. The beam angle then allows their lights to shine in your mirror.
In Europe it's not brightness that needs restriction, it'
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"Also I've never once ever been blinded by a daytime running light. Not sure what you're on about there."
Never said they were bright, but they're related issues.
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In what way do they cause problems, in your view? I’m asking an open question, I’m genuinely curious. I’ve not personally found them problematic, but YMMV.
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Read my original post - they make it much harder to distinguish motorbikes in busy traffic.
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I did read your original post, but I don’t understand *how* DRLs make it harder to see a motorbike? Do you mean that if a motorbike is driving towards you in the opposite direction, and there’s a car behind it, it’s somehow more difficult to see the motorbike because of the DRLs? Or something else? I don’t doubt that you find there’s a problem, I just don’t yet understand what causes it to occur.
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Is this a Europe only thing? At least in the US DLR are mostly useful for the people who will not turn on their headlights till they need to see as dusk occurs. Un-disablable auto low beams would do the same thing. IDK why there are so many people who insist on driving almost in the dark with their lights off, but there are a noticeable amount. They also help (and auto lights would help) with people driving in cities with overhead lights and apparently again not realizing their lights are off when they driv
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IDK why there are so many people who insist on driving almost in the dark with their lights off
People who started their trip when the sun was high and end up continuing in the dark without headlights on do so because they're absent minded - it's an example of the "boiling a frog" phenomenon. Most of the instances I see occur in the evening rather than the early morning before dawn.
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Oh I see what you mean now, misready your post.
But the reality is DRLs improved safety. This is something that you yourself acknowledge since you complain now that motorbikes no longer stand out.
if a driver can't see an oncoming car or truck in bright daylight without headlights perhaps they need an eye test.
There are plenty of cases of subtle camouflage to say nothing of sudden bad weather onset / dusk. "Didn't see" is a cause of many accidents even among people with perfect vision. This is why DRLs were mandated, and why they objectively reduced the incidence of collisions on vehicles where they were introduced.
Humans
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False. Europe's regulations have a different problem. The regulations cover specifically that the bright beam can't shine into people's eyes, even reflectively, but fucks up how to achieve this. Mainly that the headlights are limited by beam angle. That is perfectly fine when everyone drives a hatchback, but not so fine when you drive a hatchback and the person behind you drives an SUV. The beam angle then allows their lights to shine in your mirror.
In Europe it's not brightness that needs restriction, it's the beam angle needs to consider the height of the front headlight.
Also I've never once ever been blinded by a daytime running light. Not sure what you're on about there. They are incredibly dim as you can see in any car when you turn them on at night and still can't see shit.
Yes, the angle is the key. The highly focused headlamps kind of address that problem, but eventually fail big time. . You are correct about the different headlamp heights, and the fact that someone might be driving a Mini Cooper, while someone else is driving a semi truck, plus different heights relative toeach other.
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Height. As in pickup trucks and their cousins, full sized SUVs, and the upper headlights being nearly exactly at the height of the eyes of drivers in smaller coupes and sedans.
And lifted trucks, with headlights aimed directly into the rear windows of those smaller vehicles. As they must be, after all, being higher they need to be pointed down more profoundly to actually illuminate roadway in a useful fashion.
When do we get some regulation preventing this direct illumination of other drivers, to their distra
Re:Same problem in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
DRL are fine. The issue is badly adjusted super bright headlights. Most people don't know that there is a switch to angle them appropriately, and the auto ones react too slowly.
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DRL are fine. The issue is badly adjusted super bright headlights. Most people don't know that there is a switch to angle them appropriately, and the auto ones react too slowly.
This has a lot to do with the height of new cars, as headlights need to be placed near the top of the bonnet if they were adjusted properly (as not to dazzle other road users) they'd be half invisible to the driver of the Panzer IV they're attending the steering wheel of.
It's well past time that larger cars were re-classified as a different class of vehicle. (VLGV for the UK). That way it'd be easy for them to pay extra tax, higher penalties for driving infractions, bans for the really bad one, so on and
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Daytime running lights help in the early evening when the sky is darkening but people have not yet turned on their headlights because they aren't legally required to do so until sunset.
Be we really need clarity about headlight colors (too blue destroys night vision) and that annoying flicker that you can see in your peripheral vision.
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Then make them come on below a certain light threshold - which a lot of cars do anyway now with their main headlights. They don't need to be on midday in summer.
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DRL can be implemented in two different ways. Long story short, when they do it with the headlights it's good, when they don't it's bad.
Headlights aren't too bright, they're too point-sourced. Specifically, some LED lights (without a diffuser) and all projector lights have bright spots which are the real problem, not the overall brightness.
I put Beamtech LED capsules in my Versa. It has old cloudy headlights so there's no bright points, but there wouldn't be anyway because they are a classic reflector desig
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Headlights are way too bright and now with idiotic daytime running lights (useful in the artic circle, not so much in the med in the summer) it makes it MUCh harder to see oncoming motorbikes who used to stand out with their headlights on. Being narrow they're hard to see at the best of times but frankly, if a driver can't see an oncoming car or truck in bright daylight without headlights perhaps they need an eye test.
So many posts before we got to an actual on-topic non psycho-political one. Thank you for one that is relevant!
This has nothing to do with Cheeto. It has been going on for years. It is the culmination of multiple problems.
One of the biggest culprits is headlamp focusing. If Both vehicles are at the same level, no problem. If one is slightly lowe, they'll be in the area of focus. I've occasionally given someone the high beams, they return the favor, but their high beams then shoot over my head, at least u
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Daytime running lights are useless but they make vehicles stand out. Right.
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I'm in my 50's, clean driving record. Had to go to the BMV a few weeks ago to renew my license. They made me take an eye test. Explain to me again how we don't need eye tests for a license.
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TF is a BMV
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"BMV" in the US state of Indiana means "Bureau of Motor Vehicles". I don't know whether any other jurisdictions use that term.
you guys are morons (Score:2)
The total light emission isn't the most significant factor regarding what makes headlights glaring. It's the size/area of the light source. When the Sun is behind a cloud, you can look at it directly .. and yet the surroundings/day isn't really any darker. Why? Because the brightness is spread out and no longer a point-source. If a car's entire front bumper was a diffusion sheet .. a car could emit a large amount of light and still not blind anyone.
Re:you guys are morons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: you guys are morons (Score:3)
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Angle matters. It doesn't matter if your headlight is a high powered laser, it only blinds the people if its pointed at them. The problem is universally where the lights are pointed. For most cars of the same size that doesn't matter. The problem is when you have a hatchback followed by an American abomination of an idiotic monstertruck (more colloquially known as an SUV, or a small penis compensation machine), the headlights are mounted too high in the first place and as such aren't angled down far enough
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When the sun is behind a cloud the surroundings are quite a bit darker. Many times. Overcast skies reduce illumination by 50-100x.
Under-regulation. (Score:2)
Manufacturers want as much light as possible in order to get a high score for the IIHS headlight safety ratings
Why does the entire problem of bright headlights, appear to boil down to this nonsense?
Ever thought about changing the IIHS safety ratings instead of blaming manufacturers who are literally chasing IIHS ratings? Why do the safety ratings, not have defined limits long before we’re fighting for defined limits?
IIHS, what exactly do you DO here.
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You're proposing regulation of pure speech. You sound European.
You are confusing speech with headlights. Headlights are the bright things on the front of cars. Speech is the nonsense that comes out of your mouth.
Alignment Inspections? (Score:2)
Next, states should begin requiring headlight alignment inspection during vehicle inspections.
You don't have this already??? Here in the UK, headlight alignment has been part of the mandatory annual inspection (MOT) for as long as I can remember and certainly from way before the invention of LED headlamps.
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You don't have this already???
The US is quite like the EU in this regard: each state has its own independent driver and vehicle licensing authority, so they all do it differently, subject to some over arching rules.
With that said, un the US the over arching rules are very weak.
In NM, for example there's the annual inspection to make sure the emergency spare is installed on one of your wheels rather than stashed uselessly in the trunk, that the treads aren't too deep and to make sure your windscreen is adequ
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No. In the USA even the very strictest inspection regimes are basically "is anything falling off" and they don't do real stuff like test your headlight aim or brake fluid boiling point. MOST people don't have any inspection requirements except emissions testing, and some states don't even do that.
Here in California for example we have no safety testing, and a number of remote counties don't have to do regular emissions testing — only on transfer to a non-family-member, except for heavy diesel RVs whic
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I really never thought NY would have worse inspections than CA, but yea - we have emissions testing, all sorts of physical inspections - you can fail on torn wiper blades. In fact, I think it's a bit of a scam of the inspection garages to force you to buy cheap wiper blades at jacked up prices to pass you. Oh, and no CEL for any reason I think.
The emissions testing is the worst though - we're way out in a rural area, and I think the number of cars junked cause fixing emissions (otherwise run fine) may well
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How much annoyance is worth a death? (Score:2)
It's possible that more glare causes less fatalaties than more glare prevents (not exactly the IIHS argument, but what it would be if they were honest). But shouldn't some weight be given to comfort?
If I had a button to kill a decision maker in the car industry for this during a walk after dark, the fatality rate for modern headlights would skyrocket.
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It's possible that more glare causes less fatalaties than more glare prevents (not exactly the IIHS argument, but what it would be if they were honest)
IIHS-HLDI is a non-profit that is focused on reducing injuries, so saying if "if they were honest" doesn't make it true. Also, they examine the efficacy of safety related improvements, which means that the stats should indicate diminishing returns IF it were causing more injurious collisions than it was preventing.
But shouldn't some weight be given to comfort?
No. IIHS-HLDI is all about safety but if something were too uncomfortable then it would likely impact safety. Like I wrote above, they examine the efficacy of safety related improvements. However,
Driving habits vis a vis bright headlights (Score:2)
It's funny how driving habits vary per region vis a vis bright headlights. Up in the Northeast, when I drive my vehicle the oncoming traffic often flashes their high-beams thinking my high-beams are on and/or my lamps are misaligned (they are not).
Here in the Mid Atlantic, nobody does anything.
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Stop blinding people.
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Hahah, no, my headlights are perfectly aligned and are 100% in compliance.
It's been over two decades like this.
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Have you been driving the same car for 20 years? You must be way better at auto-maintenance than I.
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Hahah, no, my headlights are perfectly aligned and are 100% in compliance.
Fight me.
No requirement for self-leveling is the issue (Score:2)
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also (Score:2, Interesting)
children shouldn't be allowed to drive monster trucks
No one would put off-road equipment on a car (Score:3)
Can I take care of this problem on my car today? (Score:2)
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I don't usually want more regulations, but (Score:2)
Sorry what? (Score:2)
"LEDs can be made to focus light using lasers"
What on earth are they talking about? Is this nonsense like I suspect, or does anyone know something about this?
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In this context I have no idea, but there are a lot of hobby laser engravers / cutters that use diodes (which I think are LEDs) in a certain system to generate a laser beam. I wonder if AI got confused writing that part of the article or something?
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It sounded like nonsense but I think they're talking about projection headlights that use mirrors and/or lenses to produce a particular illumination pattern. It has nothing to do with LEDs but LEDs are as magic as magnets to most people, including half of this comment section.
Everyone has an agenda (Score:2)
"Manufacturers want as much light as possible in order to get a high score for the IIHS headlight safety ratings. "
At least be honest. The problem is people wanting super bright lights while concurrently not wanting to be blinded by other peoples super bright lights. You can usually sort out who has obnoxious lights and who doesn't just by color temperature alone.
All of this nonsense about misalignment or the need for fancy technology to steer light everywhere but other drivers eyeballs ignores the plain
Death by rearview mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Reduce glare? (Score:3)
And there are lots of people driving around with them on at all times. They're obviously in a mental fog.
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Thanks! (Score:3)
Re:Thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
don't forget taillights! (Score:3)
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Many Vehicles Don't Have Enought Brake Light Area (Score:2)
Orange Rear Signal Lights Were Safer (Score:3)
on this topic... (Score:2)
High beams and Car accidents -- A Perspective (Score:3)
In my area where we have a lot of ride share drivers and recent immigrants working in tech, I've asked a fair amount of them:
* during the summer months when folks have their windows open when we're side by side at a light
* waiting at the cellphone waiting area at airports
* my own uber or lyft driver when I noticed their highbeams were on (7 out of the last 11 rides to and from the airport have had their high beams on)
During the 30 seconds to few minutes of conversation of the folks I've talked to, a large majority say they use high beams because it's brighter on the road.
They're all only looking at it from their own perspective and dgaf about anyone else since they're just trying to get through the day. Literally working w/ blinders on.
Also, none of them were aware that it was considered bad behavior on the road.
A very small percentage are folks with either old headlights where it's fogged over the front so it scatters light everywhere or misaligned headlights after a car accident when it wasn't repaired to a professional level.
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If you shift things back a couple decades to the late 90s and early 2000s, the common excuse then (so sue me, i'm a chatter box) was that they have a headlight out and they're just trying to get home before they get to it the next day (for a year).
My main point being is that maybe it's not the headlights themselves being the issue, but it's people are using high beams when they shouldn't be. For a lot of readers, and even people in general, it's a difference people don't care to distinguish they just want to blame someone or something. Headlight manufacturers using projector and LED matrix technology give really good cutoffs to prevent from deliberately blinding people, and they work well. The only thing people think is "I'm blind". Also complainers that answer these surveys where market research specialists get their data are typically older with poorer night vision and really bad cataracts so light scattering is at an order of magnitude greater than what young people see.
Younger people don't have time to answer surveys. lmfao. They really just have better things to do.
brighter for you not me (Score:2)
I find the modern headlights to be really bright if they're coming at you, but you can barely tell they're on if you're the driver. Maybe because as a driver everyone else's headlights are ruining my night vision. So aside from not having to replace sealed beams/halogen bulbs all the time, i don't see the benefit. Someone tell me they improve vision at night. My old sealed-beam pickup truck lights up the road in front of me better without blinding anyone.
Re:Can't Fix Headlights But AI Wizards! (Score:4, Funny)
Concur, but I'm not convinced bright headlights are a major contributor to this.
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America is poison and is eating itself from the inside. Concur, but I'm not convinced bright headlights are a major contributor to this.
If headlight brightness was representing intelligence instead of actual intelligence.
Some cars appear very bright. Until you talk to the driver who melted their headlight lens clean off by boosting them with Temu-grade laser light turbos putting out 376 million candlepower (gotta love how we still count candles) in order to drive safely at high noon.
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The way out(tm) is to make particular equipment parts of a biannual inspection requirement list. No certification and documentation, no registration. This is similar to how emissions testing and other state inspection requirements work.
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False. LEDs are blinding anyone any more than any other light that is misaligned. And they don't have levelling washers are they are factory levelled. Aftermarket retrofits absolutely have levelling washers which were required back in the day where the angle of light was dependent on the bulb you inserted into the fitting (where the filament glow starts compared to the reflector).
The problem we have in the EU is the laws are based on angle of light and don't take into account idiots driving American sized a
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And why can you no longer see when backing up? The backup lights are now super dim.