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Comment by Scubabear68 | Hacker News Reader

We live in a very rural area, and the most annoying thing is huge pickup trucks with giant light arrays over the cab or on the grill, especially the ones that just look like a wall of light. The blinding effect is tremendous, and it is doubly dangerous in our area because the deer population have exploded. I don’t know if these are legal or the cops just don’t care, either way people use them with impunity.

I think the use case is supposed to be hunting and camping, but these assholes seem to no blinding everyone around them!

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Light bar money for on road use is misguided money - there isn’t a light solution that can beat night vision systems.

You get an infrared camera and on the screen a coloured bounding box is drawn over each identified pedestrian or animal etc. Green no threat, red sounds an audible alarm so you don’t need to drive looking at the screen to get benefit of it.

It sees things that just cannot be seen by projecting a light source from near you, no matter how bright.

EDIT: see from 2:25 in https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kQqCDjxYFVc

Unlike sending engines for cryptographic cyphers across nation state lines, night vision is absolutely one of those things ITAR cares about. And the number of loops holes and exemptions Audi had to apply for made the project financially unprofitable to the point of moving to always on high beam DLP style headlights.

Retrofitting one system in my car which had the option code was a yak shave.

Most automotive systems get by this by limiting night vision to 8fps(!). Similar to how GPS was limited to 100m accuracy in the first civilian models.

What blows my mind is one can get Chinese models off Taobao with 60fps for 1/10th the price of US products like FLIR.

That last part would indicate that the restrictions are utterly moronic if one were to reason. At the very least they need to be relaxed so technology that's readily available to end consumers worldwide isn't restricted.

Yes and no.

A benefit of those same restrictions means TSMC is building foundries in the US for a change.

GaAs sensors are awesome. Combine those chips with ML optimized compute on a silicon interposer and drone warfare gets a hockey stick in adoption.

As civilians we get functional self driving cars via trickle down.

ITAR isn't, or shouldn't be about economic protectionism; it's for restricting the flow of weapons of war.

If the US government wants to encourage domestic chip production, it has other ways to incentivize that.

ITAR blocks export, not import. It has nothing to do with TSMC building fabs here. $50B in incentives might have something to do with that.

And like sister comment says, ITAR is not about industrial or economic policy. It’s about maintaining a qualitative edge in weaponry. How is there a qualitative edge when you can buy the restricted components freely from China?

Just noticed the other comment on GP saying they’re restricted through a different list (EAR). It serves the same purpose so I’m leaving my response as is.

https://youtu.be/UAeJHAFjwPM

There are three types of night vision, and the consumer grade active illumination stuff using infrared light is covered by EAR (Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations) instead of ITAR (which is still significant, but less strict). Which doesn't detract from your point, which is that night vision is hamstrung by regulations. With all the advances in technology, the consumer grade stuff should really be more accessible because it would save lives if drivers could see better in the dark.

Just FYI you can embed a timestamp in youtube url's. For your example, note the end of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=kQqCDjxYFVc&t=2m...

That's amazing, if they could project this on a HUD you'd have solved the problem basically.

> You get an infrared camera and on the screen a coloured bounding box is drawn over each identified pedestrian or animal etc.

This might be a good use for that new transparent TV technology.. Infared HUD in 4K.

I was blinded to the point of nearly driving off the road by one of these over the holidays here in rural Iowa. It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered someone actually using the light bar at night while driving 60mph down the road. To say that I couldn’t see anything at all is an understatement. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, look down and to the right to avoid the lights, but the closer it got the more my field of view it took up. I genuinely thought he was going to hit us because I couldn’t tell where the truck was at or where my car was at, it was like a train coming down a tunnel.

That's wild. I wonder if you just have a couple of jerks in your area. I grew up in a rural area and my parents still live out there, and I cannot ever remember someone driving on the road with their light bars on. I used to have one on my jeep. Anyone who has them knows they're being a jerk if they're driving with it on the road.

Judging by this behavior, some others I won’t go into, and local Facebook wars, we have a significant concentration of jerks without a doubt.

In the Rockies you see loads of vehicles with light bars. Never see them lit up on the road. Maybe it comes down to local policing? Cops around here aren’t likely to appreciate non-locals driving with lights on. Could just be culture though.

> Cops around here aren’t likely to appreciate non-locals driving with lights on.

I hope they equally don't appreciate it when locals do the same.

I don’t think the locals are likely to do it. Good way to get everyone in town to know you for being a tool.

That's a better set of locals than the ones around here, then!

Probably in that way alone!

I would like to think so but i saw the same crap driving through the middle of a Denver on I70 recently. I almost had to pull over it was so bright I couldn’t see but no one did anything as I have become accustomed to.

It's super common in the south nowadays. I grew up similarly, and had light bars on my trucks/all my friends did/etc. But we weren't driving around town with them on.

I was gonna mention the exact same thing. Wild times in big trucks. Their wheels and mirrors all stick out to the edge of the lane too.

I find the sales listings on these trucks hilarious tho. They are the ultimate custom McMansions, listed with extremely high premiums for all the custom work, that essentially never sell. If you are in the north a great description to add is “Texas truck” or really any state south of where you are. They also commonly have well over 200k miles. It’s a crazy phenomena.

The funny part is you can punch these truck owners right in the daddy issues just by pulling up next to them in a base model truck with actual dirt in the wheel wells and a ladder rack on. Using a truck to do actual work > aftermarket pageantry and they damn well know it.

Meh. I know blue collar mexicans who save up and get trucks like that because they like it. Some people just like it.

Forgetfreeman isn’t talking about the blue collar Mexicans…

I will say tho, the base model trucks and just about any trucks aren’t made for work anymore. The boxes are like 6ft long as opposed to 10. The tow power on base models isn’t great. Work vehicles today are becoming more and more those vans. Not saying work trucks are obsolete, just they aren’t what they used to be.

You aren't wrong. Those of us with work to do will be significantly better off when fashion moves on to some other type of vehicle.

> cops just don’t care

ding ding ding. Not much revenue there, and it's not protecting rich people's wealth, so...

I’m sure more funding will solve the issue

Those are for navigating 4x4 trails in the dark, and are illegal to use on public roads. Where I live many vehicles have them, but I have never once seen them used on a public road.

AFAIK they're illegal on public roads. So is using fog lights unless there's actually fog.

This is a tricky one to research.

From what I can tell (in the USA) it's not necessarily illegal to drive with the fog lights on at all times. The main requirement for all headlights anywhere is that they're positioned and aimed correctly.

Specific states or regions may technically have restrictions, but it seems pointless to enforce if it's a stock vehicle that meets the requirements. High beams are way worse than the typical fog lights. I don't think most people should have to worry about their fog lights unless they're aftermarket.

Reminds me of those signs that say "no engine braking". They're specifically referring to jake brakes on commercial vehicles, not dropping a gear on a normal car or truck.

If you're going down a long incline, trucks should use jake brakes. It sucks being behind truckers who only use brakes and the thing overheats so much you can smell it --they're the truckers who end up on the runaway ramps.

I think your comment is attracting downvotes because unmuffled engine brakes are loud, and those signs are usually placed when people live near the road and find the noise obnoxious. I think it doesn't apply to trucks where the compression brake has a muffler.

High beams are infinitely more damaging to another driver's vision than fog lamps.

Fogs lamps are worse for the person using them than oncoming traffic. This is due to the way the light is focused. It's directed downwards to avoid the light reflecting straight back into your eyes off the fog or snow. This is what makes them different. However it affects your ability to see far even if you have your high beams on.

I remember reading about this in an article written by a rally driver in ADAC magazine maybe 20 years ago now.

I use my (factory installed) fog lights only when the conditions are bad enough that I need a downward facing light to be able to see the lanes or obstructions. mine turn off if I turn on high beams, which do not have the very close reflections. they make a significant difference in specific circumstances. why I see some people drive with them on under all conditions, I will never know.

I discovered the fog lights on my new-to-me vehicle recently and use the lower ones (the upper ones are burned out and need replacing) at night to illuminate the near road better and make it easier to see and avoid holes in the road.

If we're talking about our own vision rather than another driver's, yes, fog lamps might detract a bit from our night vision. The truth is, if you're using them in an actual fog, your distance vision is fucked anyway, and it's your regular headlights (which do not power off when the fog lamps are on) which are doing the damage to your night vision, since they're focused at eye level and reflecting back. The fog lamps aren't a big worry in that regard.

> I remember reading about this in an article written by a rally driver in ADAC magazine maybe 20 years ago now.

I've seen those arrays of fog lamps installed on rally cars, and I'm not sure what they're about but they're a pretty different paradigm than anything that comes installed by the factory on a passenger car.

Re: rally car lighting

They're not the same light pattern as fog lights (well, not all of them). Some are "pencil" beams that reach far, some are closer to fog beams for close-in. Coverage is the name of the game.

They need them because the goal is to be driving as fast as possible, so you need as much light as you can get onto and down the road.

The reason they're on pods on the hood is because they're removable. They only put them on when needed, because they're very expensive and you don't want them getting damaged when not in use.

Ah, this makes sense. I've heard about the phenomenon of drivers of regular (not rally) cars driving so fast that they outrun the range of the headlights, such that even with perfect reaction time they are not able to stop or react to something on the road ahead. Simply increasing the brightness of factory high-beams must only get you so far.

Rally car lighting systems have more in common with aircraft lights. The landing lights on a 757 are standard GE units with 600w, 28v, bulbs, costing $50, that produce 750k candle power. Narrow beam. As bright as the sun. Wider beamed taxi and runway turnoff lights still use 450w.

ACLs see some use in concert lighting as well. They're not just for aircraft! (and rally cars)

USA is a country of "freedom" where the cops pretty much never, ever enforce such rules, if they do exist.

it seems to depend on state - some are no more than 4 headlights at a time, where fog lights would be main headlights plus fog lights, as opposed to main headlights plus brights.

most laws appear to be based on direction and aim.

Many cars have both daytime running lights and fog lights in the same enclosure. And depending on settings (auto vs manual, etc), the DRLs might stay on at night. And cars vary a lot in configuration. It would take a lot for the police to accurately recognize and ticket people with fog lights on when there's no fog.

Sounds like you need to install an even brighter one and turn yours on to remind them what it’s like

Photon pressure sufficient to curtail their forward progress..

Fuck it, show em what a Kubelblitz black hole can do to their chrome bumper.

I’ve always thought that we should have a reverse matrix LED headlight: it directs flashing high beam only to incoming cars with flood lights or high beam, while leaving those driving properly unaffected.

We can do this passively with corner cubes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector

This reminded me of a news story:

>A small city in New Zealand plagued by “siren battles” – cars decked out in loudspeakers commonly used in emergency warning systems and often blaring Céline Dion hits – is calling on authorities to step in and end the noise.

>The battles are part of a New Zealand subculture where music enthusiasts cover their cars in up to dozens of industrial speakers, loudhailers and sirens, then compete to have the loudest and clearest sounds.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/24/porirua-siren-...

"The battles are part of a New Zealand subculture where music enthusiasts cover their cars in up to dozens of industrial speakers, loudhailers and sirens, then compete to have the loudest and clearest sounds."

Those people ain't "music enthusiasts", they are "noise enthusiasts". Music enthusiasts do not intentionally destroy their ears or those of others.

No, no, not Céline Dion!

Is that what the US military dished out to Noriega in the Panama invasion? No wonder he surrendered! It was alleged to be 'heavy metal', but is there acoustic evidence? I bet Celine would've got faster results.

Because the people who compensate for ??? by buying a humongous mall-crawler truck will totally understand and be sympathetic when having their outrageous "lookit me" type behavior reflected back at them.

The main issue with huge pickups is that the headlights are so high compared to other cars that aiming them down is less useful than cars.

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