Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright

Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road.

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.

This is also true for Germany, but your ability to see in the dark decreases at some point with increasing brightness, since you don't allow your eyes to get used to the darkness.

But for the truly dark areas, you can turn on your high beams - which you aren't allowed to have on when there's oncoming traffic. Smart / adaptive lighting is another option, lower / yellower light in well lit spaces.

All cars in the U.S. used the same headlights up until the early 80s. You could literally walk into the auto parts store and buy a headlight to replace yours, regardless of make and model

Somehow we all did ok back then with standard high/low beams from lights which are very dim and warm compared to the harsh white LED lights of today

It seems to me that this is just another example of the arms race of modern cars. You need a big SUV to feel safe on a road full of SUVs and trucks. You need an array of dazzling LEDs to compete with every other car out there. And we all lose.

I live in the woods in the northeast US, and also grew up in the 80s-90s in a very rural area and I've owned a number of cars when I was young, some with comically dim lights.

You really don't need the bright lights. You never have. Slow down, look for movement, and use your brights intelligently.

Not to be pedantic but you do need to be able to see pedestrians at night too, who can legally walk on country roads on either side, without reflectors or illumination.

It’s the car drivers responsibility to not mow pedestrians down wherever or whenever they are walking.

A lot of smaller US cities also have areas with no lighting and worn-out lines, which contrast with brightly lit areas and suddenly you're basically blind if your lights are too dim. Couple that with a wet road, which reduces visibility, and it can be hard to see where to drive.

Then we have pedestrians walking with no sidewalks or crosswalks, because city planning actively hostile to people walking.

I just realized I bet it’s sometimes a speed issue. I don’t need bright lights, maybe because I’m a slow driver.

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.

I do, and old school yellow high-beams were plenty on a 205 to do 80+mph down b-roads back in the 00's, I would happily go back to that if it meant I could avoid being blinded every ten minutes.

Well this is why headlights have dipped beam and full beam. The issue is the dipped beam is getting as bright as the full beam used to be, and is mounted higher on the car as well.

It’s not what’s meant by pedestrians but usually you’re also looking for wildlife, like deer, that you could hit.

> its worth a few seconds of extra 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.

If i may add, they won't complain because the headlights of their cars aren't the ones that are flashing directly at their own face. To them the problem will always be the other's cars having the lights too bright.

> You think kids aren't running across the street at night out in the country? Chasing a soccer ball?

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.

> Second, there's a decent sized market for cheap, unapproved HID/LED kits for older cars. They're often not aimed correctly.

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.

It would be fantastic if it were possible to dictate a headlight height for standard lights. just because your SUV is twelve feet off the ground doesn't mean the lights need to be positioned there.

My 2024 outback has no 'high beams'. My low beams are the same brightness as high beams. The only difference is the field of view. I switch on the high beams on and height of the beam increases, but intensity stays the same.

I feel awful about essentially high-beaming everyone unless the road is flat.

> Second, there's a decent sized market for cheap, unapproved HID/LED kits for older cars. They're often not aimed correctly.

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.

At least in my state, there is a law that restricts the location of headlights to between 22 and 54 inches from the ground. 54 inches is quite tall, though, I think that a lot of cars have roofs that are shorter than 4.5 feet. I'd love to see a much lower upper limit.

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.

I'd go as far as to say that the height is the issue, and it's becoming global (although, yes, US is the leader).

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.

Do we enforce it?

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.

I'm in the Netherlands and I DO find it bad. Probably also has to do with my age (early fifties) - your eyes adjust with more difficulty the older you get, it seems.

I do find it bad in Belgium, mostly on big cars like SUVs. Another reason for me to dislike them. Unfortunately they are getting more and more common.

It's like driving behind a truck or van, you can't see past the (tinted) car in front.

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.

most aftermarket tints are too dark and dont allow pedestrians to see into the car to see if they going to be hit by the driver. its illegal in most places but cops dont do anything about it.

I could talk about eye contact and how using the road only works if we cooperate but, more than anything, I just find a heavily tinted windscreen to be antisocial. It's like the ultimate form of bullying. Driving around in a killing machine without your victims even being able to see you.

> I drive a compact SUV, it has perfectly reasonable headlights

How would you know?