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Comment by throwyawayyyy | Hacker News Reader

Oh my goodness the lights! Am I misremembering or is it really only the past few years that it's felt like half the cars on the road have their highbeams on constantly? Not even a big car thing, though big cars make it worse; it's any car with LED headlights.

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My car, and several of my recent rentals, have had automatic high beams. They’re usually not great about not just blinding people. Turning it off is one of the first things I generally figure out.

That said, yes, high hoods and higher, brighter lights make this a distinction without a difference.

I've honestly been asking myself if this is because of so many aging drivers who are trying to compensate for vision loss, when they should probably be staying off the roads at night? There can be a lot of denial in accepting one's reduced capacity.

Or, is it people who have become so accustomed to automatic-everything that they don't really know or think about the light controls? This could also explain the reverse problem of people driving around a night with only daytime running lights or parking lights.

Or, is it really just selfish jerks like those who want massive tanks to crush their opponents? They would like to give others sunburn, if possible. This could also explain those turning on fog lights in all conditions or those who attach off-road auxiliary lights to their trucks but use them on the streets.

In the US- yes, it's so annoying, like half of the drivers never switch to low beams. Or maybe nobody checks the alignment of headlights, idk...

I think it's automatic highbeams mostly. They either make the driver lazy or unaware of who they're blinding. Sorta like how it's a bit jarring to go back to a car with completely manual lighting after driving one that automatically flips on low beams when it gets dark.

I have automatic high/low beams function and it works pretty well, sees other cars from far away and switches to low earlier than a human would. The problem is I very rarely use high beams, and never on highways, so it was even stranger for me to see so many Americans drive with high beams. In Europe the annoying habit is to drive with front anti-fog lights on all the time, some people do it but it happens in the US too.

I don't get what's wrong with foglights. They don't blind nearly as much as a low beam in a corner (or a slightly misaligned one), but make it easier for others to see you.

Yes. Most implementations of matrix high beams are bad.

The VW Passat for example (and most derivatives of it) is straight up dangerous because the camera system doesn't work properly. The only way to make it detect my car is to blast it with my high beams (which are 50W incandescent bulbs, so the other person isn't totally blind).

Having to do that is absolutely ridiculous but unfortunately there won't be a recall if the customers aren't the ones who have to live with the problem.

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