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Comment by Zancarius | Hacker News Reader

> Great, now everyone in a sedan is being blinded by all sorts of SUVs and trucks. Utter failure.

I drive a truck and live in a mountainous area. Trust me, it's not just sedans. Nearly everyone drives around with their brights on and it seems they no longer bother to turn them down when approaching traffic (automatic dimming features don't work well up here). Consequently, night time driving is dangerous. I don't know what their advertised beam pattern is, but it's like driving passed spotlights aimed at your eyes while on the road when you're on the outside lane.

FWIW mine are halogens (2014). Plenty bright (and aim-able—for towing), but they're useless when you're temporarily blinded by super bright LEDs.

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I rode with a work acquaintance at night once, and noticed he kept his high beams on the whole time, despite oncoming traffic. I eventually said something, like shouldn't you dim your lights when there's someone oncoming? He looked at me like I had antlers growing out of my forehead. "Duh... The high beams are brighter and let me see better." That's the bottom line: Not even a thought about other drivers. And these people are everywhere.

My 10 years old VW turns off the high beams when it detects incoming traffic, or in general stronger ambient lights (like, street lighting in a locality). But in the US there are no such requirements, I assume.

It’s a feature on new cars, but it’s not enabled by default (you usually have off, auto, high).

I think you're right. That's more plausible than blaming tech, which I did.

Judging by the increasingly anti-social driving habits I'm seeing during the day time, this possibility definitely stands out (the worst being a tendency for people to slow down traffic 10-15 MPH under the posted speed only to speed up to 10-15 MPH over when someone attempts to pass them).

Yeah you shouldn't be able to see your car's shadow (cast by the car behinds headlights) on the road in front of you when your headlights are on...

> automatic dimming features don't work well up here

That's disappointing to hear, but a counterpoint: the first car I ever drove that had auto-dimming was a Ford Escape rental in Utah. I drove from SLC to Moab and back, plenty of night driving in mountains, and it performed far beyond my expectations. I really never had to adjust the lights manually.

Which is to say, probably more to do with the specific implementation than the terrain.

That's a good point. If it were brighter, I'd pay more attention to the manufacturer of the vehicle to see if there were any obvious correlation.

(Truthfully, I'm just guessing that the drivers are relying on auto-dimming tech since it seems way too consistent to "just" be "oh, haha, I forgot." But, the latter is certainly possible given your sibling comment—perhaps more and more people genuinely don't care about other drivers.)

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