Modern vehicle headlights temporarily 'blinding drivers'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
then people just slap them onto their bikes without giving it any thought or even being like 'yeah I'm gonna make it shine really high so i can see even further'.
also bonus points to people who set them to blink because it saves 2$ a year in batteries but is even more irritating in the dark as it's much harder to extrapolate the path of movement.
I'm sure a few are, but there's probably also a lot of selective perception going on. They're hyper-aware of others causing problems, maybe they even stop to look at their own lights but don't even realize that this alignment could cause that problem they saw. Also, a lot of the worst offenders are bike commuters, who are all going the same way at the same times, so they're not even likely to notice very many goofballs shining light in their faces.
The solution are properly beam-shaped lights like the Axendo series from Spanninga, but they are a tough sell even in countries where beam shaping is mandatory.
And ofc bike-red lights dont look anything like car red lights, so the association doesnt really matter outside of teaching, and presumably quickly picked up even on first-time encounter on the road
The best solution safety-wise would be for the path itself to be lit, but of course there are cost and environment issues with that. So we're left with better lamp design. As others have pointed out, multiple LEDs would be better than just one. Reflectors and lenses to keep the light more focused forward and down would be even better.
Unfortunately, better lights are likely to cost more, so nobody would buy them. As with the SUV drivers and their super-bright blue/purple lights shining straight into car drivers' faces, danger to others is an externality the purchasers don't care about. People will buy the lights that give them the most lumens on the path/road per dollar, even if half the output is not helping them but is increasing danger for others.
Can't really blame people for not being willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a glorified flashlight. (In my case, I was in grad school at the time. The bike itself had only cost $400!)
I’m in the same boat, the flashing cyclist lights hurt my eyes and give me headaches. Sometimes I need to hold up my hand like the sun visor, to cover the flashing light. Other times I’m tempted to turn on my brights to ensure I’m not too close when passing.
The cyclists choose these flashing lights for safety but above some critical brightness it makes things less safe
I’m surprised there’s no regulation of brightness or “flashiness” for bicycle lights.
There is, at least in the UK, though perhaps not the regulation you may want:
> The lamps may be steady or flashing [...] but the flash rate must be between 60 and 240 equal flashes per minute (14 per second) and the luminous intensity must be at least 4 candela.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
A more aggressive approach, when I'm on a bike myself, is to briefly turn on my own bright headlight, pointed onto the oncoming cyclist's face; I don't do this particularly often nowadays, but would be curious to see which is more effective at behaviour change.
If you have dim headlights and are the only driver on the road, your eyes will adjust and you'll see pretty well. If you pass a driver traveling in the opposite direction with dim headlights you'll lose a bit of vision for a little while.
Blindingly bright headlights won't necessarily let you see a lot more than dimmer headlights and fully adjusted eyes would. However, if you run into another driver with dim headlights, your eyes won't have to adjust nearly as much and your vision will recover more quickly. The guy with dim lights is going to be blind for a while though.
If you want to minimize the time you spend readjusting to your own headlights after passing oncoming traffic, you want brighter lights than anyone else on the road. Not just bright, but brighter. Thus, there's an incentive for headlights to just keep getting brighter and brighter as technology enables this.
Solution? Regulate maximum headlight brightness.
To make matters worse, due to the way the rules are written advanced systems that dim LED headlights specifically in the path of oncoming cars are not legal in the US. It's becoming common on high end European cars to not just auto dim but isolate oncoming vehicles from illumination while maintaining brightness elsewhere.
The key to good regulation here is to write rules about how much light can be experienced by oncoming vehicles of various height and driver positions and let engineers figure out how to meet it.
Seeing as we're talking about lights on vehicles though, why in the world isn't the use of PWM dimming on a vehicle illegal?
The first thing you teach kids when programming arduinos is to dim an LED using PWM and then move the LED through space; oh look, it's not a dim light, it's a strobing light!
Why in the world it's acceptable to put a strobe light onto a vehicle which by definition moves though space, is entirely beyond me. If you're stuck either behind, or worse, watching one go laterally in your peripheral then it's massively distracting :(
If it's 8bit PWM at lowest output (1/256 on-rate) you need about 3(m) x 3.14(pi) / 0.1(s) / 0.001(m) x 256 so you don't see gaps between dots, 24mhz PWM. That does seem high...
Some of the really good LED dimming solutions I've seen that employ PWM are in the 30+ kHz range.
Of course, constant current dimming is the best, but it tends to be expensive.
It might be more of a problem in automotive applications, where for a headlight you use only a few high-power LEDs.
I nearly always get blinded through my rear mirror when an SUV drives behind me at night. I can't imagine I'm the only one with this problem and it's hard to believe that there are no regulations to fix the problem.
Rear view mirrors actually contain 2 mirrors, so when you flick it you get the same image at the same angle, but only with 10% or so of the light actually being reflected towards your eyes.
Every decade, the cost per lumen (unit of useful light emitted) falls by a factor of 10, and the amount of light generated per LED package increases by a factor of 20, for a given wavelength (color) of light.
When it's that dark, you lose your spatial sense. A single light approached me, and I realized a motorcycle was driving at me head on. I swerved to avoid it, and the motorcycle changed direction to continue heading for me. When I swerved again, it was too much, and the truck began fishtailing and rocking back and forth laterally. I was sure I was going to tip it. It would have been an utter disaster, especially since I had no cell service out in the middle of nowhere.
As I brought it to a stop, it teetered one last time and almost tipped—then finally, dramatically, landed safely on all wheels.
There was no motorcycle. The lights from the occasional car way off in the distance had merged together into a single light that appeared brighter, and therefore closer. The cars weren't even on the same road; as they rode around a bend the headlights had, in the utter void that I found myself in on these Colorado backroads, created an optical illusion.
After that night I resolved never to drive in darkness like that again.
That, and it's getting hard to differentiate between high beams and regular lights on trucks and SUVs. On a dark rural road it can be downright dangerous.
On a dark night road, you can already get dangerously blinded even from an overtaking car with the high beam on (please don't do that, always use the low beam when approaching humans, from any side), without ever having a direct sight line to the lights. The technology you are referring to could be awesome if used with caution, but it will inevitably be used for dazzling regulators into allowing even brighter headlights, and as an excuse to recklessly running the high beam all the time.
This affects me so it should be regulated. If it doesn't affect me it shouldn't be regulated.
Some of the stuff the pro-regulation types want regulated is nonsensically stupid: in the EU, the shape of cucumbers, the brand names of cheese, the power output of a tea kettle, the strength of hair dryers — none of those things have any life or death consequences. People want to regulate internet content, the height of fences, the width of doorways, the capacity of private toilets — even if those toilets connect to a septic system and don’t connect to the sewer mains. Even fucking lightbulbs are subject to the agenda of unelected officials in Brussels.
People, especially left wing people, just LOVE regulation. They like forcing by people to abide their opinions on how things ought to be. Considering most regulation is by executive agencies and not actually written by accountable elected officials, excessive regulation could be argued as being contrary to the ideas of a representative republic.
We need less overall regulation, but that doesn’t mean NO regulation.
If the price of a product included all externalities, then yes regulation isn't needed, however it doesn't and can't, and this is where the usual anarcho-libertarian views fall down.
Hair dryers become a fire hazard above certain temps, same with the tea kettle. Septic toilets can overflow if not properly sized and done on the cheap in neighborhoods. Fences fall over, trash in your yard impacts house values of your neighbors that you can't recoup, width of doorways affects handicapped access as well as impedes egress during fires. I used to service homes affected by disasters so I've seen a lot of these first hand because we're in an area with a lot of houses built before the regulations. Regulations clearly provide value, especially when protecting property and safety rights that either are unlikely to be recouped or aren't able to be effectively proven otherwise.
I absolutely HATE neighborhood associations though. What you're growing in your front yard, who you have over for guests, what outrageous color you paint your house, none of that impacts other people nor contributes to overall safety of others.
You gotta admit there is a lot of dumb regulation as well that is frequently brought up by lobbying. Why can't the government just send me a tax form instead of me needing to file my taxes manually or use TurboTax? There's a lot of stuff like that too.
As a result we not only have brighter lights, but also bigger light cones.
Engineers and businessmen are just doing their jobs. This will only be corrected by regulatory action.
A constant light appears to be something people compensate for easily. The spackle of dots left in vision during night traffic, not so much.
Car rear lights.
You can see my confusion
(low duty) (cycle rear light LEDS)
(low duty cycle) (rear light LEDS)
:D
At night this can be pretty dangerous, and you can easily be blinded, as many people run with the brights on and don't notice an oncoming car is there until too late.
My personal technique for not getting blinded is to watch the yellow line on the right, lowering my vision and turning it away from the bright headlights of the oncoming vehicle, while still giving myself enough visual reference to hold my lane. Once the car passes in a couple of seconds, I can go back to looking at the road normally. Not looking directly at the headlights helps return my night vision much more quickly.
Brighter or better positioned street lights would solve a lot of these issues.
If this became commoditized, we could even standardize on invisible markers on cars to make the problem of identifying where the driver is even easier.
I am so excited about tech that can make driving safer.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/6/17086792/mercedes-smart-di...
So there's the brightness wars, and also an arms race in the height of the beams.
Little pinpoints of light will interact badly with optical flaws in the eye, particularly for those who have had eye surgery. They also obviously need to be brighter per area to reach a given level of total brightness.
Large flat panels are best. Note that this does not mean unfocused. A panel can be an array of tightly packed LEDs that are individually focused, and from a distance you couldn't tell that there were individual elements. Panels 24x18 inches would greatly reduce the problem of pinpoint brightness.
Depending on the situation, I wear polarized sun glasses or yellow tinted glasses at night while driving. The yellow tinted ones work really well to cut down on the ultra intense and blinding LED lights of police (blue) or work vehicles (yellow).
I have been seeing this type of headlights more and more often, and it can't be good.
the last ~200m of my commute is at the "wrong" side of the road, so the cars are driving into my direction. I generally drive especially slow there. The sidewalk is pretty broad and its incredibly rare that even a single person walks there, but it just want to be careful.
when it rains, i need to dismount from my bike, as i'm unable to see anything on the sidewalk/cycle lane. seriously dangerous.