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Comment by wbobeirne | Hacker News Reader

With regards to the OPs note about headlights being too bright: Has anyone adjusted their headlight angles? I noticed oncoming traffic has occasionally been flashing their brights at me, and I suspect they think I left my brights on and are trying to tell me. I'd love to drop my headlight angle a degree or two but don't know if that's a daunting task on a modern car.

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If you consider my 24 year old car "modern," then my modern car is easy. There's a screw on top of each headlight that will tilt them up and down.

I thought I noticed people flashing their brights at me, but then I realized it's actually them hitting a small bump, thereby raising the angle of their LED headlights momentarily. I drive a somewhat low-sitting sedan, so SUV LED headlights do that a lot.

Two things; modern HID or laser or LED headlights should have the auto adjustment, so just jump to the second paragraph if you have one of these. But halogens can be adjusted usually from inside. They tend to have adjustment buttons to compensate for load (situation might be different for US cars, I’ve seen this with EU cars). This could be easier place to get started.

The manual adjustment is also very easy :) there are some screws on your headlight assembly that you need to rotate. It is different for different cars, though. So I’d suggest referring to YouTube for your own car’s adjustments.

I do feel there’s a regulatory failure with headlight angles in the US. Owners of maladjusted headlights should get fix it tickets and it should be strictly enforced. If a car without high beams blinds you, something is wrong.

It seems like most are just broken out of the box. I have never encountered a Tesla on the road that did not blind me, regardless of whether it was behind or in front of me. Some manufacturers just get away with shitty light projection.

This can also be due to dirty/aged headlight covers dissipating your headlight beams wider than intended.

You can get kits to clean them, but it’s a bit tricky

> Has anyone adjusted their headlight angles?

My Mazda has a scroll wheel to adjust their angle

older cars had a knob to adjust them. With LEDs you usually have to open the hood and use a wrench or they can auto adjust. Service should do it for it.

There was a bestof Reddit post about some automotive expert who worked on designing headlights who put a large passage about why lights look brighter. I felt that it was just a large gaslighting exercise in the end lol.

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