The War Against Headlight Brightness
60 comments
·January 10, 2025teeray
bbstats
baby != bathwater
dgfitz
It’s funny you single out trucks. Most all new-ish cars these days have the same headlights.
Oh trucks sit higher? Is that it? Should we exclusively develop low profile cars/trucks/SUVs? I think second-order effects would prove that this line of reasoning is a disaster.
So now what? Make headlights less bright? Is that safer, when you’re driving down a wooded road at night without any other cars around?
Reasoning
>So now what? Make headlights less bright? Is that safer, when you’re driving down a wooded road at night without any other cars around?
We have a solution for that, they're called high-beams.
dgfitz
So, high beams are ok? If someone drives with their beams on all the time, then what?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Yeah I just hate trucks. Truck drivers aren't even a protected class, maybe I'll never hire one :P
There's a significant correlation between one's personality and their car. Truck drivers are selfish.
ToucanLoucan
> Oh trucks sit higher? Is that it? Should we exclusively develop low profile cars/trucks/SUVs?
For the love of god, yes. The American auto industry is simply out of fucking control with the size of trucks and SUVs, which is not JUST making them more difficult to drive safely with larger blind spots, making them MORE prone for parents to run over their own children with, take longer distances to stop and require larger brake components which cost more, more likely to kill anyone they happen to hit whether they're in a car or not, more expensive to buy, and equally shitty on fuel as trucks from the early 2000's are despite 20 fucking years of advancements in ICE technology, but is ALSO making them blind people because the headlight of a Silverado is roughly level with the ROOF of a standard sedan or compact.
Like I'm sorry, there is no fucking reason at all that an accountant from Stevesburg Ohio needs a vehicle that has worse safety characteristics than an LTL truck. If we can make SEMI'S not blind me, then we can do it for Joe who works at Walmart. Like... I don't even know why you'd call that LOW profile? My 2010 F-150 is the biggest vehicle I've ever owned, and if I park next to a modern F-150, the newer truck makes mine look like a goddamn mid-size truck. It's ridiculous how HUGE they've gotten.
dgfitz
I’ll meet you in the middle on this. Trucks have gotten big, no doubt.
I contend, knowing farmers who use their trucks for work every day, they can’t do their job without them.
So the question becomes, do we need regulation about who can buy a big truck? I contend that no, regulation just creates loopholes.
taeric
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.
nharada
Me too! I was thinking maybe my eyes had just degraded immensely from age 16 to 30
ToucanLoucan
As someone who got LASIK surgery in my mid-20's, I want to double-underline this comment. As a fun fact for anyone not in the know, at least for the procedure I had, it is normal to have stronger halo effects in your vision basically for life. Don't get me wrong, the tradeoff is amazing and I don't regret it in the slightest, but for those who may not know, stronger halo effects means you see sources of light notably brighter than they'd otherwise be. If you've ever had your pupils dilated at the doctors, it's basically that at about 60% strength if you aren't in daylight.
And this has made driving at night for me an exercise in being blinded continuously by cars in the opposing lanes. At several points in my life I have now had to start wearing fucking sunglasses when I drive at night because otherwise, while I can see the headlights, I can't see anything the hell else including, but not limited to, retroreflectors, parked cars, and PEOPLE. All because every asshole with a newer car has lights bright enough that they can spot planes when ascending a hill.
neuroelectron
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.
getcrunk
Why did they stop? Seems like a ticket quota wet dream
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
There is probably too much overlap between the people who become police officers and the people who think unsafe modifications to cars should be legal
Glyptodon
They can't even figure out how to approve a replaceable standard LED bulb after 20 years while consumers just buy them anyway.
olyjohn
There is no standard LED bulb for external vehicle lighting. Every car with LED lights has proprietary lighting. Only halogens and HIDs have standard bulbs. LEDs cannot replace halogens because they don't project light from the same location or radiate it in the same pattern. Projector and cutoffs do not solve this problem.
7thaccount
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.
leetcrew
I think the issue is more about the angle of the lights than their brightness. lowbeams are only supposed to illuminate a fairly short distance in front of the vehicle. this is a big problem with lifted trucks. the owners don’t bother to realign the lights.
kube-system
Even "properly" aligned headlights are a problem on trucks, because they're too high to begin with.
> Vehicle size is another issue that comes up regularly, since NHTSA regulations for headlights don’t include a standardized mounting height, even as cars have ballooned in size in recent years. This means a perfectly aligned headlight in a larger car can still wreak havoc on a smaller car
ToDougie
Lowbeams on sedans are blinding me in my small truck (not lifted, headlights aligned as intended). Something must be done.
genter
It's also a big problem with hills. If two cars are approaching the crest of a hill at the same time, (IE each one is pointing up hill, facing each other) then each one is going to be blasted by each others low beams.
scythe
This does nothing when the ground is curved the wrong way, which happens often enough. Hills are already dangerous enough and blinding people whenever the second derivative of altitude is negative isn't helping.
datavirtue
Same here. LED headlights are driven on a signal and it causes me migraines (seizures) sometimes. Regulation has failed us.
Aurornis
> “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...
quickthrowman
They should really do a photometric study of headlights shining at a wall at a specified distance and take the average footcandles across the area being measured instead of measuring a specific spot.
Edit, this website has a photometric plan (top down view) for some site (two-headed pole lights) lighting at the top pf the page: https://www.innodez.com/photometric-plan-and-study/
hasbot
Is there a war against loud exhaust? I'm affected far more by loud exhaust than by bright headlights.
davidw
Realistically, there isn't a war on anything because there are collective action problems and we have decided we just don't care. "Do whatever you want, I guess" is how it works.
whycome
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?)
madphilosopher
Are turn signals supposed to be red? Or orange? Or let's place them below the level of the back bumper... for reasons. Some standardization would be nice.
throw0101a
Previous discussion from 24 days ago (197 comments):
glimshe
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?
null
Cheer2171
No, fuck your automatic headlights too. By the time your car detects my car, you've already been blinding me for at least a few seconds. You're also blinding bikers and pedestrians, which that software doesn't detect.
kube-system
Yeah, I don't turn on my automatic high beams until I'm on a rural road where I would have had them on manually anyway. But around town, I switch to low-beam only operation.
Why do people buy $40,000+ cars and not read the manual at least enough to know how to operate the damn headlights?
somanyphotons
Most will be unaware of the manual existence, it might not even be printed
pavel_lishin
Because in living memory, we didn't have to operate headlights. We would turn them on, and sometimes turn on brighter ones.
culi
you have your high beams on. Just use your regular headlights. You don't need it turned up to 11
I drove a newer car and it had this feature to leave the high beams on "auto" where they detect when a car is coming and turn them off
ge96
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.
kube-system
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.
TrainedMonkey
I actually think mitigations are real, but economics of the situation is broken. Right now buying and installing really bright headlights is cheap while not blinding people with really bright headlights is expensive I don't see this changing any time soon. I don't really like the situation, but enforcing max headlight brightness is far easier than enforcing not other blinding people.
The whole situation with headlight regulations relying on smart headlights and calibration feels like plastics recycling. It is a neat idea which runs head first into unworkable economics.
kube-system
The EU generally places better mitigations on headlight glare, and their vehicles aren't any more expensive. It would be pretty easy to regulate: "if they're over [x] brightness, then you must have these mitigations"
But the other problem of maintenance will probably always be a problem because most states are reluctant to burden their driving constituency with any inspection/enforcement program worth a damn.
whatever1
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.
singleshot_
Yellow sunglasses might be a little simpler.
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).