Also, I've had adaptive headlights on my subaru forever.
jesus christ you don't need to jail people because they used bright lights.
> because they used bright lights.
Why are people doing this in the first place. I don't understand.
There are wishes for gross authoritarianism because US has problems with lesser, appropriate regulations. The way other countries handle this is periodic vehicle inspections - just like smog checks but with more points - which also measure from the lumens and angle of your headlights to whether your wipers work properly, failure of which bars your car off the public roads. If this was suggested in the US eyes would roll, heads would turn, nanny state arguments would be invoked. In the absence of reifying such moderate measures, people let go of their pent up frustrations of failing to be a cooperating society in the form of wishing imprisonment or worse onto each other.
Yet several states do this, including Texas of all places.
How can you possibly not know that. You are literally making them bighter so it would obviously be brighter for the drivers too. why do you think its illegal in the first place.
You're likely not thinking about if this is going to bother someone else or not. And most US law isn't even clear on whats street legal and whats not.
It is not and should not be used as a punishment. This is ridiculous.
I don't think people are especially concerned about the exact punishment schedule here, they just want consequences that result in safe cars, much like with drunk driving laws.
Someone mentioning jail doesn't mean they want it as an immediate first-line consequence. It's a simplification, so please recognize that before crying 'ridiculous'.
I'm not going to take a hard position on it, but I'm at least mildly skeptical that jail would ever be appropriate for something that can be just as easily solved by progressive fines and revoking a license. Jails in the US are really awful, so they'd need to produce great results for me to prefer putting someone into one of them. And it's not clear to me that they even reduce recidivism rates for crimes of this nature any more than other alternatives.
We should be pretty hesitant to send people to prison. Particularly with the knowledge of how calls for increased "tough on crime" policing typically go in America -- well meaning people should keep in mind that advocating for the expansion of carceral laws often results in unintended consequences.
Also, have a choice of getting your car booted with some electronic boot that you can unlock after sunrise, or getting your car towed. You'll have to show up for the checkup anyways, so that's when you can drop the boot off.
Either way, imprisonment won't fix the problem, which is a faulty vehicle. The inconvenience of not being able to drive the car until after sunrise, along with a typical towing/booting fee, should be sufficient incentive to not drive with faulty lights, given how easy they would be for police cars to measure/detect with an inexpensive, small camera unit at a proper location on the police car, which then signals the driver about a suspected violation.
Passing a police car that doesn't have anything better to do, while you have your faulty lights on, should be common enough to make driving like that a risk too high.
Okay, so now we're talking about a completely different scenario that isn't confiscation.
Why am I getting downvoted for that? Jeez.
Since you don’t seem to have any statistics to go with your assertion that most of the bright lights are because of aftermarket installations, I have no reason to believe it over any of the alternatives such as:
- Lights being too bright from the factory (because some regulations don’t specific peak lumens). - Lights being misaligned from the factory (a small amount makes a big difference).
Or the most likely to me:
- People carrying a significant amount of weight in the back of the vehicle. This would be most commonly seen on trucks and SUVs, but could also be a smaller car with something heavy in the trunk.
Not sure on the authority of this resource, but they list the most common reason headlights would need to be adjusted as:
https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/how-to-adjust-your-head...
> In most cases, headlights simply slip out of adjustment over time. In fact, most headlights will need to be adjusted every few years. Here are a couple of reasons your headlights may be pointed at the sky: > > Reason 1: Too much weight. One of the most common reasons that headlights are not shining on the road or are blinding oncoming drivers is due to excess weight in the trunk or cargo area. This will push down the rear of the vehicle enough to tilt the front of it up, along with the light beams.
In a case like this a ticket or warning from a traffic cop would likely be sufficient for someone to adjust their headlamps, but you instead jump to jailing someone? That’s a bit extreme.