American drivers have a blinding headlight problem
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) is a technique where the power to the output (bulb) is turned on and off at high frequencies in order to increase efficiency, power handling, and control of the output.
If this on/off switching is done fast enough, your eyes/brain will interpret it as a normal always on light source.
PWM is significantly cheaper and easier to implement vs current source LEDs, so it of course has become dominant in the industry.
When the PWM frequency drops below 120-240hz (cycles a second), some people can start to pick up a strobe like effect from the bulb. This flicker is known to cause additional eye fatigue and can trigger headaches in many.
What's worse is that many aftermarket LED headlights are now using PWM at 60hz. These cheap headlights are often bright blue in order to look modern and impressive. When a car with these installed is behind me at night I have to move my mirror away because the flicker is incredibly distracting and fatiguing.
What % of people are sensitive to this? Any medical documentation? Is NHTSA aware?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. The idea is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
Does it specify minimum LED refresh rate somewhere? Or is it lacking that today?
If you're old enough, you may have seen the science fiction children's show "Captain Power." The LED tail lights remind me of the target strobe meant to trigger the accompanying toys.
Of course if you're old like me, you probably only watched an episode to see what Lightwave3d was capable of, but ..
See saccade:
All on the basis that “lol humans don’t notice the flicker”? Uh, okay, but animals? The 99th percentile humans? Subconscious effects on fatigue (that you mention)?
Seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.
It's more about economizing the power supply package and heatsink integrated within the bulb or lamp assembly.
That’s not how it works. When charging, the alternator will put more load on the engine and that will increase fuel input to keep rpm up enough to keep the engine from stalling.
Overall, every vehicle designer will seek to minimize any and all loads (even small ones).
Worst is when they remove the spare tire, grrrrrr.
Mass produced cars have reached the point that a $0.50 saving per vehicle is worth designing and building for. When you reduce the current draw from something that is always-on (like headlights) you increase the life of the LED, you can reduce the gauge (size) of the wires to the lights, you can reduce the size of the alternator, you can load the alternator less, which means increase the service life of the alternator belt and idlers, and (in theory, at least) decrease fuel consumption.
All of these are tiny, tiny efficiencies, but they do add up.
While it might seem penny-wise and pound-foolish, imagine following this same logic for all systems in a modern vehicle. This is why even such a "rugged offroad" vehicle as a Jeep Wrangler has a plastic clutch slave cylinder (weight and cost savings) and why the headlights will dim in virtually all vehicles if you turn on every single electrical device that draws current (the wires are not sufficient gauge for everything to draw max current at the same time).
They're saving actual money on every vehicle built, which is what they care about.
LEDs can be done similarly, but an LED matrix headlight just controls which rows of LEDs are lit up (e.g. the Samsung PixCell light that Tesla uses on the Model 3/Y). This is where we'll maybe see adaptive headlights, too, though in the case of Tesla I don't believe they've ever been used anywhere in the world, legal or not. Just to write "TESLA" on the wall when you do the Light Show.
They are all "for offroad use only", which is the biggest scam
https://lumileds.com/austrian-drivers-can-enjoy-road-legal-p...
A few years ago the EPA clarified that when they said “off road use only”, they meant in machines that were never intended to be on a road. So, aftermarket shit designed for a lawnmower, cool. But if you’re designing for a vehicle that was originally designed for the road, you have to stick to EPA regs. This killed a lot of those “off-road use only” disclaimers, but it also panicked the amateur racing community because they tend to use modified road cars. I’m not sure how they worked it out with the EPA, but I don’t hear them complaining any more, so I assume they did.
But that practically singular investment in automotive optical engineering and innovation is let down by the low frequency PWM driver baling wired into the final design to cut cost by perhaps a dollar or two.
And one reseller told me - "Well, they should be shielded". Practice far from granted if even the problem is not known.
The PWM I use at home on an ESP32 is supposed to be in the 1-10 kHz range and I don't see flicker when moving my eyes.
I associate flickering headlights with aftermarket because cars with halogen headlights use low-frequency PWM to regulate down high system voltages to 12V. So if you install aftermarket LED kits on those cars you are going to see a PWM of ~90Hz which is awful.
That can't be right. Cars are primarily 12VDC.
Here's a random video I found demonstrating the phenomenon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82tFav8oGFI
Not really on headlights I guess so I might be off-topic. And although I understand how some people can find it annoying, I don't really mind them. But I can definitely see the flicker and can compare the duty cycle between different cars.
The usual ~200kHz PWM is cheaper, more reliable, smaller, and usually more powerful than anything you can build on the ~100Hz. Besides everybody sells chips for ~200kHz, but finding anything that can operate at ~100Hz is a challenge.
I can understand cheap household ones using the mains frequency to avoid an AC/DC conversion. But AFAIK, using them on a car is stupid from every conceivable point of view.
Newer construction doesn't install proper fixtures anymore. No more user-replaceable bulbs. Everything is screwed directly into the box and you have to do a minor electrical job on every unit you want to replace.
Surely someone can devise an internal circuit to disable some combination of the LEDs to do proper dimming without relying on PWM.
The luxury days of installing an incandescent bulb that lasts for ten years are gone, lucky to get six months out of "contractor grade" LED products and consumer devices usually don't make it much over a year.
Sure, burns a little less coal, but its not like LED manufacture and shipping is as environmentally friendly as beewax candle production LOL. Overall we're probably worse off as a civilization with LED lighting.
I'm always surprised to read such comments, incandescent bulbs definitely burned out regularly, and the LEDs we have now are more or less as durable in my experience.
I still have a few CFL bulbs that are more than 10 years old (that I keep because their slow warm-up is actually desirable in some cases) and my Ikea LED bulbs are all between five and three years old. One of them (out of 12 I think?) did fail last year, it was four years old.
I think I solved this in my old house. BR40 bulbs. I don't recall the specific vendor but they were very expensive.
The amount of work it takes to get up to the fixture is most of the effort, so I can lean both ways on this one.
I too strongly dislike the lack of replaceable bulbs in newer LED fixtures. It's outrageous how many things in modern construction shave a few cents here and there to get the initial cost down, and the long term costs are enormous. Once the house is sold it's someone else's problem and that mentality is disgusting.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the majority of the population doesn't seem to notice this crap, at least not in a way that affects their day-to-day happiness.
Why not vote for something that sounds good at surface level if you've never perceived that annoying sound or flicker? Why would you even think about it?
But they can switch on and off very fast, so if 50Hz is flickery, you can use 500Hz, or 5000Hz. Most microcontrollers have circuitry for this built in, so you just literally write a different constant into the controller.
I once made an LED dashboard for use in police cars. After it was rolled out, it was discovered that the flicker frequency was interfering with the radio (the only bug ever found in my code!)
My client called me back in to fix it, so I added a zero in the relevant place, and recompiled the code.
£400 for about twenty minutes work.
This is factually incorrect.
LEDs shine at a range of brightnesses. The amount of light emitted is related to the amount of current flowing through the LED, which you are free to control however you want. The cheapest way to do this is to use something like PWM and monitor the average current flowing through the LEDs. However, you can also just use a constant current source, and adjust it to provide the amount of current that you want.
I don't know where the idea comes from that LEDs are only on or off. There's no basis in fact here, as far as I can tell.
1. I'm not sure if there's a better name, but the system where the rear view mirror is a display linked to a camera at the rear of the vehicle in some higher end cars and as an aftermarket addon.
However, poor (or nonexistent) light source shrouding is also a common factor. Bicycle headlights make a great lower-powered example. Cheap bicycle headlights throw much less light than a car headlight but are painfully blinding due to the exposed light source point. Bicycle headlights that meet StVZO regulations shroud the light source, have decent optical design, are far more effective as headlights, and don't make anyones eyes bleed even when they're flashing.
Early composite car headlights (post sealed beam) received significant design investment involving established headlight manufacturers and worked extremely well. Auto manufacturers brought headlight design in-house by the time xenon and HID headlights showed up in general use; inexperience and cost avoidance gave those lights an undeserved reputation. A lack of regulatory outcomes rewarded that strategy, leading even established composite headlight quality to decline. Light source shrouds disappeared or became ineffective due to poor reflector design.
Headlights on new cars in the US market have declined to the point that they're effectively overpowered cheap bicycle headlights plus extra PWM induced stabbiness, while costing orders of magnitude more as a result of cost cutting. The worst have returned to sealed beam levels of utility, but at least there were aftermarket options to improve sealed beams. Modern aftermarket lights are so bad that it's normal for drivers to install them for malice against other drivers with blinding stock headlights. There really aren't any optically well designed headlights on the US market any more, except for bicycles.
The amount of ink spilled over LEDs is incredible when you consider how simple the situation really is. For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't. Regulators need to sort it out.
that and more:
> Regulators
since forever we have had cars that did not need to beep when in reverse gear. Now, some mental damaged people think it is acceptable to live in an experimental industrial electronic concert. And there is now a market for "ringtones for cars". So the issue is, regulators must be sound minded and present and active... And be able to respond to instances of common sense...
Just use a nice sounding V8 recording I say. I'd prefer that any day of the week, and it's immediately identifiable as a car noise.
To be fair, I've noticed that I have to be a lot more careful in parking lots when driving the Tesla. People just don't hear it, and will happily walk right down the middle of the lot not realizing they're blocking a car. I can't blame them either.
I get to see a totally different kind of behavior when I drove my built-for-track-day STI. At low RPMs, its 430hp engine has you feeling the presence of the vehicle as much it has you hearing it. People are so obviously more aware of it than the Tesla when walking in parking lots.
I dislike bright LEDs at night, but not nearly as much as when people use terms like this as an insult. I'm sure you'll agree that people making poor choices isn't a sign of mental illness, and that by suggesting as such does harm to those who struggle with mental illness.
Seriously, what's the logic there? Someone has a problem with me taking issue with someone using "mental damaged people" as a way of describing people who make poor decisions? Try replacing "mental damaged people" with "gay people" or "brown people" or "millennials" or "old people" and see how you feel. Maybe it'll help make sense as to why "mental damaged people" is equally unacceptable.
Imagine if I'd suggested that the parent commenter was "mental damaged"? I think most people would agree that would be out of line, and it absolutely would be, yet do we feel the same way when the parent commenter calls other people the same thing? Is it more acceptable because they're some ambiguous and faceless group of people with terrible headlight etiquette?
People don't need to have a mental illness to make poor decisions. People do just fine without help.
Suggesting that people with disruptive high beams are "mental damaged people" is harmful because it reinforces views that people with mental illnesses are "less than", or are stupid or not trustworthy, or scary. They're not. They're people we know and love, and they're often struggling to even admit that they need help. It's hard enough without also feeling like society will look down on you for something you didn't ask for and have little control over.
It's also just incorrect. People who are not "mental damaged people" have headlights that are too bright and adjusted poorly.
Note the first HN guideline for commenting says "Be kind,", and I think calling out harmful behavior counts. My motivation isn't to fire of zingers and get points and show how virtuous I am. It's because I love, live with, am related to, work with, and care for people in my life who struggle with mental illness. Odds are the parent commenter does too. Odds are that other readers do too. Calling out bad behavior that harms marginalized people and people with similar challenges might not be fun to be called out on, especially if it wasn't the intention, but might change how you communicate on the internet.
That said, by calling out downvotes, I'm equally as guilty of not honoring the HN guidelines as the parent commenter. If readers choose to focus on that single violation, that's a choice they're free to make, though I'd encourage you to consider my arguments before making that choice.
Last time somebody mentioned to me the "good times of the boundaries of good, common sense, largely represented in the Administration" - just nine hours ago.
These days, everyone is driving around in a gigantic off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility, though again the back-up cameras mitigate this.
As for common sense and regulators, decades ago it was considered perfectly fine and normal for people to not wear seatbelts, and to be regularly impaled on the steering column in a crash. Regulators eventually decided this wasn't good enough, but it took them a very long time. Seat belts were offered back in the early 60s I think, maybe 50s, but people didn't use them. Any idiot can tell that a seat belt keeps you from being impaled on the steering column, but obviously much of the population didn't have much common sense.
According to the weighs of some perspective, very little can be an excuse to turn all areas of anthropic presence into a gigantic constructions site. Because it makes it unlivable.
> off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility
Save for the actually changed proportions, I know off-road vehicles with outstanding visibility, "normal roaders" with almost no rear visibility, and many vans have no rear windows at all (they only use side mirrors) since forever and still not having posed a problem. Is it possible that some measures follow the trend of "do something stupid to justify your salary by showing you have done something", in the intersection with "preserve life at all cost irregardless of the destruction of its quality"?
> Any idiot can tell
Although, an analysis cannot stop at "Points: pro" of the branch "case A", and a decisor (but not regulator) will only take guesses on the details unknown in the Cost/Risk/Benefit - he would be an idiot if he thought that from "A shows advantages" followed that A would be preferable. And the Issue is that there is an epidemic of unrestrained lack of good sense.
But I think a lot of the blinding you see day to day is actually illegal HID/LED retrofits in reflector housings. Factory LEDs are not nearly as bad as those Amazon LEDs in reflectors.
Unfortunately, perfectly flat roads are like spherical cows, so everyone is getting blinded by these newer, brighter headlights.
And now that active control is in play they're going to get even brighter and more blinding. YAY!
No one says headlights have to be just under the top of the hood. On a giant truck, drop the headlights to the level of the bumper.
...though, come to think of it, maybe the fact that manufacturers keep inventing new ways to combat extra bright lights is a sign that the problem is worsening.
:)
(for the record, my headlights are so dim even I can barely see them. and not a single person in the whole world will read my comment and proceed to buy super bright headlights. it's literally just a cute picute of a baby in sunglasses. just wow.)
That's some serious rose tinted glasses you're wearing there. This has been a problem for decades, regardless of the type of lightbulb. The number of cars with badly adjusted incandescent lightbulb fixtures is insane.
I found things to be better in the UK, where alignment was part of the annual MOT, but even there it was still a regular thing to find someone with lighbulbs adjusted so badly that the beam was shining on the inside roof of my car.
No one is forgetting that there were badly adjusted halogen headlights or misused high beams. The point is that despite this we didn't have anything close to the blinding landscape of the modern road.
It wasn't until I left the US that I realised that I drive blind most nights, either because oncoming traffic is blinding, or, the roads have so little reflection (or the opposite, when wet, it's 100% reflection), and cannot see the yellow/white lines, even US cats eyes aren't that helpful/bright.
[0]http://www.motoring-into-europe.co.uk/product-eurolites.html
I also recently rented that MG SUV in the UK, although I didn't like how it drove. The steering wheel felt loose like it wasn't connected to the wheels enough (I know nothing about cars and can't describe this better). Agree the UI sucked. Couldn't figure out how to turn the radio off??!
Driving in the US at night SUCKS. No cats' eyes on the highways, poor lane markings, I might as well cross my fingers and close my eyes driving at night. And the bright headlights are beyond ridiculous.
However when you do get on a stretch of recently resurfaced road with new cats eyes, it's bliss.
Some neighborhoods around me will have a cats’ eye marking where a fire hydrant is located.
I feel the same way! Especially in a big city when it's raining at night, beautiful visuals as a passenger, but the worst thing as the driver.
Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
Edit: Video of said knob: https://youtu.be/t7XqQoit0EU?t=104
It is and has been for 30 years (76/756/EEC).
> Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
Usually you can't adjust it high, because the purpose is to lower the beams when the boot is loaded (and thus the car is not sitting level). "0" should be the standard / reg level for a level car.
IIRC, Xenon headlights are required to dynamically auto-level because mis-adjusted ones were considered too dangerous. I'm a bit surprised that's not the case for LED headlights. The issue with manual adjustment (or even semi-automatic) is an uphill or a bump in the road will flash whoever's driving the other way.
I think a few luxury models have a local dimming feature, so they automatically dim the section facing other cars when detecting them.
If you drive a BMW and have Adaptive LEDs and the right camera you can unlock that feature. When I drive with the high beams on and it detects oncoming traffic it turns of the left beam.
And LEDs and Xenons are auto-leveling. Fun fact, Xenons required washers, but LEDs don't.
I'm not sure how cats' eyes are supposed to be related to driving cars, nor why US cats would be different biologically than cats in other countries. I hope you're not doing any weird scientific experiments with cat eyeballs.
(Edited 'Most States' to 'Many States' since the exact number is a distraction, but in either case, millions of cars will never see an inspection)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
More to the point, it’s just an emissions test. It usually doesn’t test every car and (at least in the states I’ve done it) it’s just a computer checking that the cars computer is giving a normal report. There’s no safety inspection in most states and there’s no way to fail emissions for a safety issue if they did see something
I haven't really looked into this for other states, but I suspect we're not alone.
If your vehicle doesn't meet obvious road standards, you'll simply be pulled over and ticketed.
British cars need to pass a yearly inspection (called the MOT) to be legally allowed on the road, and if you drive around with a failed or expired MOT then you WILL get caught and the punishment will hurt.
It's quick and easy to get the test done yearly and it's not a big deal; the system works well. You can even go online and look up the MOT history of any car, which is handy if you're about to buy the car as it'll let you know about any historical faults.
I assume there's something similar in most developed countries... why does America not do this?
Many states do require similar annual inspections. The standards of those inspections vary widely, however.
I got burned by this by moving to one of the two counties with an otherwise innocuous check engine light that would have failed the emissions test so I had to get it fixed.
There's no federal requirement for safety inspections so that varies state to state.
You answered your own question. Snark aside, in the US, the idea of restricting yourself for the purpose of vague benefits to others is known as "Socialism" to at a minimum 60 million people.
It is worth noting that mechanical failure is not a leading cause of crashes, even in places without inspections.
Maybe poor people paying for an annual inspection is the affordability argument. But I cannot see it as anything other than typical myopia as I see many automobiles in Florida that should not be on the road.
(I vividly remember that we had to take a work truck to be inspected. It was a truck that rarely left the fish house where my father kept his commercial fishing boat. It mostly moved nets around the property. It had to be inspected and was going to fail because there was a crack in the windshield. As there was no requirement that a truck have a windshield, my father removed the windshield right there and allowed the truck to pass.)
The affordability argument is that shops have an incentive to sell work and they have an incentive to not draw the ire of some capricious regulator by passing questionable cars so they sell all sorts of work that doesn't strictly need to be done and over the life of a car this amounts to thousands mostly concentrated toward end of life at which point the car will be owned by someone least able to afford it.
Time off of work is a big opportunity and/or monetary cost for low income hourly employees.
My state, Colorado, requires a annual or bi-annual emissions test. No inspection for safety/operability is required though there are a lot of laws on the books for things like good tires and functioning headlights.
By now I'd have expected most people on HN to understand the relative roles of the US federal and state governments, and not make gross generalizations that are easily disproven. But, you're a green account, maybe you really are new.
You probably didn’t mean it that way, but man, that’s some ‘Murica fuck yeah material.
I know that different US states have some degree of autonomy, and I think they have a similar system in Brazil, and I’m pretty sure Switzerland also does it. Why exactly do you expect me to know anything but the bare minimum about the different levels of government in a country seven thousand kilometers away?
Call me cynical but given the entrenched and moneyed interests in that state I think you'd be a fool to expect otherwise.
They're obviously not going to stand for Tesla doing what they're banned from doing. Even if they'd rather be doing it themselves.
In my state the emissions and safety inspections are combined under the same license. As recently as the 2010s the 3rd party that the training was contracted out to would straight up tell you in the PowerPoint slides that the state's #1 priority is emissions and that the point of the safety inspection was to make holding the license lucrative to remove incentive to circumvent emissions inspection process. At least they're honest...<sigh>
But yeah, that needs proper regulation and oversight.
Its mind boggling to me that the place the does the inspections, is also the same place that can sell you the repairs - repairs that you may or may not actually need.
It works really really well. I've been very buddy buddy with shops and they will still give me a thorough inspection. It's also a pretty basic inspection, meaning if you fail it you should probably not be on the road.
There is a balance. I’ve lived all over the US and I appreciate the fact that MI is less user hostile than other states in this regard. We still have regulations. California and Virginia are oppressive.
As a car enthusiast myself, I'm glad Mass has safety regulations and I don't have to jeopardize my safety or breathe pollution from cars rolling coal. Safety and car hobbies can go hand in hand.
In SV as soon as it rain google maps becomes a Christmas tree because there are hundreds of red icons signalling accident, 10%+ of cars over there have diy slick tires
Common issues are bulbs, tire inflation, tire wear, shock performance, and alignment.
Personally, with an old (2006, 200-300K km) car that we had to NCT every year, we would pass about half the time on the first time, and half of the failures were for BS reasons (e.g., one of the removable seats wasn't installed, it was in storage, or a tent peg dropped into one of the 3rd row seats when they opened it, and couldn't close it again).
Even with that NCT, when winter rolls around, 5-10% of cars have obviously broken headlights on any given dog walk.
There's no reason a guy with a rifle in the trunk and a bullet proof vest needs to spend most of their day dealing with minor traffic code things on the highway.
I would much rather armed cops be much better trained, and much fewer in number, and only activated on the rare occasion that there is a need for them. Traffic cops should be better trained on things like headlight aiming, illegal lift kits and tire modifications, exhaust rules etc...
Most places already have plenty of laws around these things (many of them federal) but cops will never go after someone for having a dangerously lifted truck with illegal exhaust for some reason, even though they are happy to cite someone for a burnt out license plate bulb.
I fear adding yet more rules they don't enforce just adds tools to a questionable toolbag.
I'd love for things like this to be enforced, though. Often feels like the roadways are a warzone heh.
But I agree to some extent that adaptive headlights are a band-aid. The real problem is the American auto market's fetish for ever-larger vehicles with ever-brighter headlights. We are a nation of adult children bereft of restraint, unable to grasp (or, alternately, unconcerned by) the fact that these vain indulgences are killing people.
That is the pain of driving a Miata :). For a regular car, for example a Toyota Camry, even the topmost headlight on a Super Duty FX4 is close to a foot below the roofline of the car.
Which is good for me, because nobody ever flashes me when I'm driving my pickup, but I do occasionally get flashed in my Model 3.
I don't think being poor makes you a minority in this country, except in the offices where the laws are being made.
Now, I don't know if California makes or loses money on smog testing (does the state get a cut?), but I'm still guessing it's going to go away at some point before too long.
And a hell of a lot of people as well as the entire insurance industry want to economically incentivize those people to stop driving (for both good and bad reasons) so they're on the same side. Every dealer and manufacturer wants to sell cars so they'll also be on that side.
What we need is real safety inspections in this country that actually look at safety critical items, rather than either phoning it in or obsessively trying to gum up people who modify their cars safely (looking at you California). The types of shit I see these days on American roadways is appalling, and significantly different than how things were 20ish years ago. I now see cars regularly that are on unsafe tires, either for the conditions or the tires themselves being bald or aged out, I see cars driving on 4 spares, I see cars with hanging partially detached body pieces, I see cars with improperly aimed or installed head lights, I see cars with massively incorrect alignment, I see cars with /obvious/ failed wheel bearings or ball joints just waiting for their wheel to fly off.
All of this is a massively worse situation than it was just 20 years ago. I don't know if it is primarily economic, or if it's that people these days don't know fuck all about how cars work or even have any clue as to what types of things they should be aware of on their own vehicle for basic maintenance, or a combination of things. I just know the situation is massively massively worse, and it's terribly unsafe. The American roadway has become a death wish, and it wasn't this way in the past.
With prices for everything rising, I suspect vehicle costs are the easiest for most households to cut (in the short term). Much easier than food, or housing, or heat, or the marginal cost of media subscriptions.
In the long term? I know a LOT of young people with cars that are basically falling apart. Bald tires, poor alignment, cracked windshields, broken climate control, overheating engines, faulty wipers, dangerous rusting, significant panel damage, 10s of thousands of miles between oil changes, and more. All to make up the cost of expensive housing, which of course is still too far away from work to get there in anything but a car. Many have stopped maintaining their cars entirely.
As someone who thinks the US is overdependent on cars: maybe this is a good thing long-term? I see a lot of people waking up to just how expensive car infrastructure is for everyone involved. In the short term, it's probably a serious issue for road safety and America's ability to travel anywhere -- even work.
I religiously maintain my vehicles, and I do it myself, and that is not something that comes out of privilege, it comes out of a rural blue-collar upbringing where people did this /for economic reasons/ because we could not afford to take a car to a mechanic or dealership. The price of 6 quarts of oil has not materially changed in the last 5 years, even though everything else has increased in price significantly. The cost of tires hasn't significantly changed in the last 5 years. Tires /are/ expensive, especially good tires, but it's always been so and any set of tires should last 4-5 years under normal driving conditions (tires age out after 5 years, regardless of tread depth). If anything, tires have gotten massively better, so while their price is still high and not going down, you get much more value for money today than 10 or 20 years ago.
When I see 90s era Japanese cars still on the road, /these are the easiest and cheapest to maintain/, which means that the folks who own them should be able to keep up with maintenance no problem. Even newer (but still old) Japanese cars are cheap and easy to mantain. I have a 2012 Honda Fit as a daily that's a bit beat up from various fender benders my wife has been in, but mechanically is in fantastic condition. Every single part or fluid I've ever needed has been available very inexpensively from any parts shop, because 2012 Hondas are exceptionally common and have a high number of shared parts between models. There's very little excuse in my book for folks letting their cars literally rot into the ground as they drive the wheels off (sometimes literally, as the marks on the highway can attest).
Is the claim that /other/ costs have risen enough people are sacrificing vehicle maintenance? I think that /might/ be a fair argument, but I feel like ignorance is a much bigger issue. We have effectively no standards for issuing drivers licenses in this country, and most people are terrible drivers (just watch them, seriously) that put little attention or thought into their behavior on the roadway, and even less into the maintenance of their cars. Based on informal surveys, I find most people have never even read the owners manual that comes with their car, much less done basic maintenance themselves.
To be clear, I agree cars are expensive, and in many ways are the primary asset for most people because many Americans don't own their home, they rent. That car is what gets them to work, so it's essential for their economic survival. This means it's something worth investing in, ensuring it's maintained well, so it lasts a long time and performs well. But I feel like most people simply don't know anything at all about cars, and really have no interest in learning. It's very disappointing.
Cars are complicated. DIY requires time to learn, basic skills that not everyone has, and a number of tools that even I don't own, like blocks to lift your front end when you change your oil and the correct wrenches to swap out various components. If you've been raised in an environment that familiarizes you with those things, or teaches you those things, or even gives you access to some of those tools, you have a big leg up. The whole space is complicated and fucking up some small component could cost you thousands of dollars and weeks getting something repaired. It's scary!
I've gotten into bicycle maintenance, an order of magnitude simpler, in the last couple of years. I'm confident about most of the small stuff, and I've built a bit of a foundation of knowledge. But with so many confusing standards and tools an opinions, even that can be confusing. Cars up the ante even more.
I guess I'm just saying we should remember our privilege in this space. A lot of people don't have the time, money, or foundational knowledge to do this stuff. I really hope adult learning can expand in the USA eventually to make it easier to fill these gaps, because as you say, if you're forced to go to the dealer you're likely getting screwed on price.
Now, more than ever, it is accessible to learn these things. YouTube, in particular, is an amazing resource. There are numerous channels posting car repair tutorials to the point you can pretty much search <year> <make> <model> <thing> and get a step-by-step video walkthrough narrated by either a professional mechanic or a seasoned amateur on how to do that repair. I do the exact same thing myself, even though I'm well acquainted with working on cars, just to ensure I am not missing anything and to help plan what I need to bring with me in advance.
From a tools perspective, that I will grant, (good) tools are expensive. That said, for better or worse, Harbor Freight exists, and a set of basic hand tools will set someone back less than $100 and last most of their life (if not longer) and is sufficient for 70% or more of common car repairs.
For the price of two corner-shop oil changes, you can get everything needed to do it yourself the first time and then cut the ongoing cost of oil changes by 50% for the remainder of your life. That same initial investment then cuts the cost 30-60% for every other vehicle repair that doesn't require powertrain disassembly (which is now a pretty rare requirement under 300k miles). It's a huge economic incentive to learn, especially when the knowledge is available on the platform of your choice effectively for free. No more digging through a Chilton or Haynes manual and paying the retired neighbor in beer to show you how to do something.
When you combine this with the fact many budget vehicles now include 100k mile or more warranties that are transferable, there's very little excuse for folks not investing the effort to learn. I feel this way about a lot of things, and perhaps not coincidentally, I am much better off economically when problems come my way. There is so much anxiety and fear in our society, that people seem comfortable with a sort of intellectual laziness and general malaise where they stay inside and doom scroll when they're not at work and outsource all other forms of knowledge and labor to others, or just neglect it altogether if it's unaffordable, instead of learning to do it themselves. I'm doing very well for myself these days financially, but it's compounded by the fact I don't pay people a high cost to do simple things for me I can do myself, like cook at home, change my oil and other basic car maintenance, or do small home repairs, all of which you can get free instructional materials online on how to do.
Don't they teach in the driving school that you should turn off the high beams when you see a car?
I remember I was taught to turn off the high beams when the car (doesn't matter if you are behind the card or it's coming from opposite direction) is approximately 300m away, or when our lights start to cross each other.
Also, forgetting to turn the beams on and off at night is a good indicator that you are slowly falling asleep behind the wheel.
Most Americans don't go to driving school. There are generally deeply lax requirements to be licensed to drive in the US. In Colorado, people are concerned with animal strikes on highways, so run high beams at night to see farther ahead rather than slowing down. It's dumb, but it is what happens.
They do. They also teach you to not speed, to keep a safe distance, to signal lane changes, to stop at a red light, not to run a STOP sign, to yield at a YIELD sign, and generally speaking, to avoid dangerous things.
Sometimes people forget, sometimes people don't pay attention. and sometimes, people just don't care.
Anyone else in a similar boat that's found relief? I haven't tried night driving glasses.
Please share some walkable, bikeable places in the USA here. I really want to live in one but my research reveals very few options where you aren't extremely likely to be run over by a vehicle if you dare to walk or bike exclusively, especially at night.
My criteria requires a grocery store, a coffee shop, and some kind of watering hole with food (brewery or pub) an easy walk from my door. It's amazing how few of those places exist in the USA, and how expensive they can be when you find one.
But sometimes, you just can't do anything about taking 10_000 lumens to the retina except slow down and pull over.
I don't really have the option of not driving in the dark - for most of winter it's dark well past when I need to drive to the office, and too cold for me to want to take public transit (which would also require me to wake up an hour earlier).
I think it needs to be well regulated and well enforced by police. Nothing else will work.
I had a friend who was considering LASIK by doing one eye at a time to reduce the possible downside.
I've often thought of how cool it'd be to have a transparent LCD windshield that could use an eye tracking camera and a forward facing camera to calculate where to best draw an opaque circle in your line of sight so that'd it block the most intense points of light.
Sort of like holding your thumb up to block the light, just automatically and for multiple points of light.
In the other thread someone mentioned that normal "blue light" glasses do not work which is too bad, so maybe just grab some cheap plastic yellow glasses and see if they help. If they don't I'd like to hear so I can update my recommendation and try to figure out why mine work so well.
Another thing to try is the various kinds of night glasses, My mom swears by those. As a last resort you can try untinted polarized sunglasses. While those do make your view less bright they also make it lower contrast which might help.
Local issue; Carolina squat. Trucks lifted in the front only, back end winds up way lower than the front. Looks absolutely stupid to me but there's a lot of them out here and that puts them way out of the correctible range for headlight aiming. Seems NC is doing something about that legally, SC following soon?
On the other hand, I was driving at dusk last night to church and someone had his high beams on (still fairly light outside as the sun had only just set) and it was an older vehicle. So, I'm sure there's some laziness/ignorance to the high beam problem.
You're definitely not the only one noticing this!
(Don't get me started on squatted trucks...)
I had to look this up. Why would anyone do that? Not only does it look idiotic, but it probably messes with the crash safety technology of the car (in addition to the headlight problem).
Example: https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Nissan-...
People who are into stance consider it an accolade if you can drive your car for some time and leave the stickers on the tires on (which are supposed to be removed during installation) and not have them rub off, because the contact patch is so narrow.
It's stupid, it's dangerous, and therefore it gets a lot of hate. Hate is attention, so insecure people who are afraid to actually get good at modifying and driving cars will do stance instead because it's formulaic and obvious what will get you accepted into the subcommunity and it gets lots of negative attention (which is still attention) everywhere else.
I'd hate to have one of those driving around near kids or animals.
No problem! Just take up two spaces, or park in the way, if that what it takes.
On the one hand, parking is not a big issue in most places where this is a thing (though injuries resulting from vehicle collisions are.) On the other hand, this is the reaction of a culture that suspects it is being screwed out of something it thinks it is entitled to, but has no understanding of how or why it is happening, and responds through meaningless acts of somewhat aggressive defiance against responsible civil behavior. Yes, it is juvenile - welcome to the second millennium!
I got told since I'm being blinded by jackasses shining their brights in my mirror, I'm probably too old to drive and the apparently the number of people on HN who are driving in deer-infested wilderness is through the fucking roof.
But no, HN is the bastion of rationality and logic and there is no completely fucking stupid faction that dang just ignores.
In the 24x7x365 case, it's basically "I want more light, so fuck you". It's the same principle for those who sit in the passing lane all the time and like to ride on the quarter of a car going at the same speed as they are, and I often meet people doing both.
There need to be fines/inspection for headlights, as they are safety-critical. Headlights that negate visibility of other drivers should be illegal.
Since COVID, I nearly eliminated my night-time driving for this reason. It is literally unsafe for me to drive on high-traffic roads, because I'm guessing where to go since I am blinded constantly by oncoming traffic. I can wear sunglasses, but they reduce peripheral vision, making it unsafe still, just in other aspects.
I can't help thinking repair parts should be (morally speaking) offered at a regulated cost+plus price. I really can't imagine that headlights are 5-10% of the value in a new car, and so this seems abusive.
I think I'd enjoy a world where the manufacturer needs to provide an accounting of new product value and justify the cost of replacement parts. The total cost of all parts of a complete product should not be more than 100% of the material value of the new car, as offered. And by material value, I mean a value less than the total sale price, after already subtracting logistics/labor value adds.
And, in my perfect world, I would mandate an open logistics chain. If Amazon can provide better worldwide logistics to deliver a genuine part from the OEM to me, then I should have that choice rather than being captive to some manufacturer/dealer network.
To help solve this, I recently installed a relay kit to run them direct from the battery (for better brightness, bypassing 35 year old wiring) and it turns them ALL on all the time, which was unintended, and I'm too lazy to go fix it. So instead I just pointed them all down more, and now I can actually see the road. And, I'm not blinding anybody.
The point? Aiming is everything. If your car's head lamps are out of alignment, not only will they be far less effective, they'll blind other drivers. Youtube it. Easy fix.
I'm all for freedom, but if you start doing something that potentially puts me at harms way on the road, it should be regulated.
Everyone knows that the vehicles in MA, (the northeast in general) despite your inspection program, are much rougher on average than in GA (the south in general) because you guys salt the roads.
Some vehicles turn the low beams off when engaging the high beams, in which case you'd be correct.
Unless you've replaced them, I doubt that's true. Looking up headlamps on RockAuto shows 35w low beams and 50w high beams, with very different fluting patterns.
So instead I just pointed them all down more, and now I can actually see the road. And, I'm not blinding anybody.
You're blinding anyone who has to misfortune to be looking your way as you crest a hill. It's probably just noise, though, compared to the same experience with modern projector lamps.
Honestly, your vehicle sounds ridiculously messed up. You should take some responsibility for setting it up correctly, particularly if you're going to do modifications. Headlight harnesses and relays aren't difficult.
> - Speeding in neighborhood streets
These also make everyone else who isn't driving miserable
> all of which combined make driving a misery
I take that as a sign from the universe to drive less often (if at all)
Other countries have already allowed novel technologies for LED headlights. Audi has some cool demos from years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJdBqhVMgCA
On the flip side: City driving isn't as bad since the ambient light is already bight enough for your eyes to adjust.
That model year of the STI (and maybe others) had a little dial on the dash that would allow you to change the angle of the headlights up or down. The user manual doesn't describe the purpose of this feature, but my best guess is that it's for when you're driving on a lot of hills. Aiming down gives you better visibility and prevents blinding people.
Every other car I've owned hasn't had this feature. It's puzzling they don't, but also almost as puzzling that the STI does.
I often think about how it might be a fun project to introduce a micro controller and an IMU or similar so the headlights can automatically adjust themselves based on the angle of the car, but then I worry I'll be over working the existing components.
It’s for when you have people or stuff in the back, so the car squats a little. I think it’s mandatory over here in Europe, at least I’ve never seen a car without it.
Auto leveling is also mandatory for headlights above a certain limit, at least in my country (not sure about LEDs, but e.g. my car has xenon headlights that are weaker on purpose, because if they were any brighter, they’d have to be able to auto-level and have a cleaning system).
In the US, most interstate highways, and often roads, will have a white line painted down the right side of the lane. Or you'll have barriers, or some other consistent delineator between road and not-road.
You can often focus on that line when headlights approach and not lose your bearing even while being blinded.
I've never forgotten that tip because it does work, and I use it almost every time I need to drive at night.
I can see it when I drive and it illuminates the inside of the car in front of me. I had to fight the Toyota dealer tooth and nail to get it adjusted down. They claimed it was in spec. At least it is ok now when it is unloaded.
When I load the car to ski/camp or add the bike rack with 4 bikes, the lights go up again. Every car I had in Europe had a little load adjuster for the headlights to take it down. https://gb.e-guide.renault.com/eng/Kadjar/HEADLIGHT-BEAM-ADJ...
Of course I would expect that to be automatic in 2023.
I used to love driving at night but nowadays it's actively painful.
at night these days, I legit drive around with my left hand shielding my sideview mirror, and my rearview flipped up so it's on that light-cutting mode.
I do miss the old floor mounted high beam switch on many older cars. It was very convenient to just tap your foot on the top of the dead pedal to turn them on/off. I don't know why that stopped being a thing.
Window tint helps enormously with this. When I drive other people's cars without any side window tint, it's unbearable.
There are also dimming side mirrors that can be retrofitted, but obviously that depends on how much aftermarket support there is for your vehicle.
I really dislike driving in the US at night, I think most people do not realize how bad things have gotten there (or, put differently, how much better they could be).
There must be something missing in the regulations used by the vehicle checks.
It used to be only BMW/Audi/Mercedes that had this 'feature'
I have no doubt that's a large contributor to the perceived size of the problem.
Sometimes I have to turn on my brights just to have a chance to see my side of the road. Very uncomfortable.
turns to parks in a street, there is a guy smoking outside his car, the car running:
the friend: "Look, I think you have your high beams on!"
the guy: "No."
End of the conversation, "this is how it is - and how it will be" lingering in the air.
Makes me wonder if we could design a headlight that used lower power emitters across the entire front of the vehicle, so you ended up with the same aggregate lumens hitting the road, but less of the blinding glare.
I don't discount aiming, though. Right from the factory, the headlights on my Model 3 are aimed pretty high. And I notice that when I see oncoming Model 3s and Ys coming at me, they have some of the most glaring headlights on the road.
Curiously, trucks aren't often the worst offenders IMO. My truck in particular has four enormous halogen reflector lights, which makes for very little glare, but it still does a respectable job of lighting up the road at night. Aimed correctly, it's better for oncoming drivers than any newer sedan with projectors.
If your brightness suddenly changes, people may assume you're further or closer than you actually are and if your headlight direction changes, they may assume you're on a collision course with them and in turn behave erratically.
I really did not expect this from Volvo. Tbh the person who suggested this needs to be fired immediately and barred from doing anything safety-related for the rest of their life.
They are great - driving towards them you still see the headlights as a block of light either side of the car - you just aren't blinded by it.
As a driver of the volvo - you just drive and never need to think about your lights - you can see as well as in any car, and better infact as the sides are of the road are still well illuminated.
Worst of all... how exactly does this tech deal with pedestrians? Perhaps by blinding them completely? Maybe it has some detection for movement, but what if I'm just standing by the side of the road, maybe waiting for a friend to pick me up?
I really wish regulators would stop this madness. Feels like an arms race out there on the road.
For context, this is demonstrating a more advanced "automatic brights" system albeit somewhat rudimentary compared to some of the newer LED projectors (e.g. Audi, Mercedes). Turning on your brights is still opt-in. Normal brights don't turn off automatically for pedestrians
People must think that since they're computer controlled that its fine to run them in the city, or else they just forget that they're turned on.
It's more of an issue than ever. I sincerely doubt these new vehicles would pass the old 80's sealed beam alignment tests.
I am blinded constantly at night.
That's not even talking aftermarket, etc.
I frequently flash my headlights at people warning them their high beams are on, then they flash their actual high beams.
The stressful steps required to take it to the finish line (product someone can buy on amazon) is demotivating though, if I'm being honest, especially compared to the pretty fun and well-paid job I currently have! Many of the typical motivators like money, prestige, etc don't work for me, I just want to invent useful stuff and to a lesser extent, have it help someone. Planning on iterating on prototypes and keeping the stakes low. Any other motivation advice?
It's more akin to revenue generation rather than safety enforcement.
Our problem is insanely bright LED lights on bicycles (and even joggers)!
I speak as a cyclist who no longer even owns a car.
I never thought I'd get more angry at people riding bikes than driving.....
In France when I was a boy, headlights needed to be yellow rather than white, exactly so they weren't blinding. And everyone did this. If you were visiting from abroad you had to put yellow cellophane over your lights. It was lovely.
I'm curious what the difference really is. AFAIK adaptive headlights are still somewhat of a niche feature, so most cars won't have it. I'd expect them to be largely similar to what we get in the US -- what laws are different that would change this?
Which is why WoF/MoTs/etc are super important in countries that are not America. Having to have your entire vehicle checked over once a year means that issues like this are solved relatively quickly/it breeds a culture of wanting to make sure your vehicle is in a good condition.
Used to be smaller cars in Europe/other countries as well, though unfortunately the big car/SUV trend is taking over everywhere now and tbh I think it's disgusting that governments have allowed it. They should've been banned 20 years ago. Why so many a-holes in London need to drive giant gas guzzling yet still somehow "ULEZ compliant" Range Rovers down narrow streets as if they're driving a small hatchback rather than an actual urban tank frustrates the hell out of me.
I just changed from a Mini to a Civic myself and I honestly see no need to go larger than that except if required for work (trade, etc). Even then, why tf you need a Ute in central London.
Some people don't know they need to, other's don't care.
There hasn't been time to do it yet, but I need to contact the dealer and see what they can do about it. It makes me feel terrible for other drivers when driving at night.
> Adaptive driving beams automatically adjust the high beams
That's super strange. Many cars in USA today already advertise adaptive high beams, and have for years.
Anyway this completely misses the point. The problem we have is not due to high beams blinding you (that does happen, but it's just driver error and it's 5% of the time if that), it's due to general misalignment, as the article notes earlier. I'd love to say I'm surprised by this bad conclusion, but this is BI so it's just normal clickbait for them.
Annual, or maybe biannual, inspection that includes headlight aim is an obvious and easy fix. As well as enforcement and fines. If socal can have a roaming on-the-spot emissions testing unit, they can also have a unit that just tags people for bad headlights. they'd rake in dollars.
This is part of the problem for sure.
Then he flipped his brights on, and I then realized that his standard lamps were just ridiculously bright...
«Ridiculously bright» with the new ones
I've got the more subtle blue light blockers (I wear them basically 24/7) and unfortunately they do not help with this.
If dynamic headlights were just made legal, how does my car have this feature? Does dynamic headlights in this context mean more than automatic up and down adjustment?
Same for the person in the article:
> She said she doesn't even drive at night anymore in an attempt to remedy the problem.
Are there any new cars that use older technology?
How come NHTSA have not reacted to Tesla's lights problem?
Why is that?