America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright | Hacker News Reader

America's Drivers Agree: LED Headlights Are Just Too Bright

wsj.com

101 pointsimpish920891 comments

I sell these all day at work.

Aftermarket, the blame largely lies on the end user incorrectly selecting and fitted LED modules, but I still see this problem far too frequently with cars coming off the production line.

I cannot tell if it's the business incentives around the engineers designing these boards, an actual lack of understanding of optics from them, or a failure in due-diligence from companies they supply to.

As a person formerly heading down a physics career: LUX AND LUMENS ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MEASUREMENTS!

I am worried far too many companies are taking Lumen readings from incandesent bulbs they are trying to replace, looking on DigiKey and selecting whatever COB from Cree with the same amount. This is not how it works physically and especially not how it works for how humans percieve light!

I wish more work would be put into the proper testing of the diffusion of light. Yes diffusers exist from proper companies like 3M and yes they are used, but it to me seems beyond something you can just dump on an otherwise busy engineering team in isolation and expect good results. You need proper user testing and more importantly need the cost of diffusing methods to come down many order of magnitude per mm^2.

And I'm not even covering other considerations like colour rendering index optically or standardisation of techniques compliance wise.

It is an emerging area, but I can't help but be aggravated by the seeming lack of process. Good LED specialists understand how to make them look correct, the rest of the world just can't seem to yet.

Beautifully stated. At this point, with so many sources of unavoidable artificial light, it feels like a basic education in the way light behaves is critical for everyone so they can keep themselves sane.

In addition to cars, I'm a cyclist and have noticed that LED cycle lights, both front and back, can also be far too bright sometimes. Blinding in fact. A few years ago, I was behind a bike which had such a high powered rear (red) LED light that I had to drop back to get away from it. It reminded me of the sort of powerful red light an airport might have. For bikes, it sometimes felt like an "arms race" in brightness.

It's not that bike lights are too bright, it's that they use garbage optics in countries that allow it. US brands have a bias towards off-road mountain bike lights that spray light everywhere. Look instead for bicycle lights that meet the German StVZO standard. Busch and Mueller stuff is good, you can also find generic stuff on AliExpress all day long.

https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...

On top of that, strobing.

I still don't understand the point of having strobe lights on a bicycle. What is that all about?

It was found that drivers unconsciously filtered out a single small light moving like a bicycle does (weaving back and forth slowly, often towards the edge of the driveable area). Flashing lights are somewhat annoying but much safer for cyclists.

No they are not and explicitly banned in some country. The strobing light is way more blinding for any other user of the road. It also makes it hard for you eyes to adjust. This means that you struggle to understand how fast the bicycle is moving, and exactly how its moving (and therefor anticipate their movement correctly), but you also get blinded which might prevent you from seeing other user of the road (especially pedestrian and other bicycle). With strobing light, you not only putting yourself at risk, but every other user of the road.

Strobes are much harder if not impossible to effectively gauge the distance, bearing, and speed of. They are insufficient.

Both a bright solid light and a much dimmer strobe provide all of the benefits with none of the down sides.

And flashing lights are not filtered out? How can traffic even exist during Christmas season?

A continuous light at least gets perceived as a path through image space. Strobes on the other hand can easily fail at getting perceived as belonging to the same unit of light source when there are many other illuminated dots (xmas crap! rain droplets!)

I’ve read the strobes are bad because it makes it hard to see how close or far you are. Maybe the best thing is to just wrap yourself with some battery powered Christmas lights…

For me it’s mostly battery life. Most bike light batteries are tiny and would require more regular charging if put in solid mode.

As a car driver, I love strobe lights on a bicycle. Much easier to notice them and avoid them.

As long as they're at a reasonable brightness...

Totally agree. Bike lights also shine far into the distance, and I have the feeling that (with the old lights being weaker) didn't used to be the case. If these new overly bright LED lights shone a bit more downwards it might be an improvement.

This is sometimes the only way to make sure the drivers notice you.

But they wont. They will only be blinded by some surprise entity they can't put anywhere meaningful in their mental model of the traffic situation and pass by blindly.

It's a good way to get them to shine their main beam headlights in your eyes in retaliation as well.

I’ve noticed this s lot cycling in NYC. One alternative that I like a lot: play music from a portable bluetooth speaker to make your presence obvious.

This is often user error. Many bike lights have a daytime mode that is far too bright for night. But winning the arms race is so important...

Driving around at night in a somewhat low car (1993 Miata in my case) has become increasingly unpleasant because trucks are getting higher and headlights are getting brighter. On most trucks on the road today, the headlights are at eye level for me. The only thing I can realistically do (other than not drive the Miata at night) is keep the windshield spotless, because even a slightly dirty windshield becomes like a rear projection screen when lit up by these floodlights.

IMHO it's not the brightness, it's the contrast --- a diffuse field of light at the same brightness wouldn't be quite as uncomfortable as the sharp contrast between light and dark they create, and this goes for the one whose car has the headlights and the one being shone at. In my experience, newer brighter lights also means a sharper cutoff so there's a very bright area immediately in front of the vehicle followed by a very dark and invisible one, while the old incandescent style headlights tended to be dimmer overall and fade out gradually, so it seemed like visibility was actually better despite the lower brightness.

I wonder if ECE vs SAE patterns also have something to do with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp#Construction,_perform...

But it's also brightness: legal limits for brightness above the horizon were set in an age when light designers weren't able to do very detailed control of light distribution and the dimmed area was always a mix of some bright spots and on a much darker average. The legal brightness limits were selected under the assumption that the highest allowed was an exceptional peak that would only occasionally hit an observer for a short time before returning to the lower background.

Now headlight engineers have perfect control over the brightness distribution and they blanket the entire cone with what was intended as an exceptional maximum. And it's a full on arms race, because for the driver behind the wheel it's certainly awesome, one of the very few ways cars can differentiate from others (olders!) in terms of the quality of actual day to day driving.

because for the driver behind the wheel it's certainly awesome

I disagree --- I have been in a newer car with bright LED headlights, and while visibility in the bright area is certainly great, it makes it much harder to see anything beyond that, because the eyes are adapted to that brightness. The effect of having things "pop" into view as they cross that threshold was actually quite disconcerting.

Same reason why using fog lights when it's not foggy is a bad idea.

I think it's a combination of brightness (light output), glare (the light is emitted from a smaller area), and contrast (the difference in brightness above/below the beam).

I've also noticed that these can make it worse for the driver. The road appears so bright in the beam that outside it is pitch black. Whereas with older lights you could see stuff a bit.

>IMHO it's not the brightness, it's the contrast

Joe can tell you something is too god damn bright, Joe can't tell you something is too... much? contrast?

Yeah. As another driver: They're too god damn bright, and I don't feel their increased brightness improves my visibility either.

Considering the move to SUVs and crossovers and the like, I’ll just say this: these headlights are hell for you if you’re driving a car that’s lower to the ground because they hit you directly at eye level now.

The entire headlights issue is definitely frustrating.

In the EU i even noticed the rare US XL pickups (those bigger than parking allows) are blinding pedestrians and cyclists, especially kids.

So for that reason alone some vehicles are not fit for use in residential areas, and likely to be improved or forced out by law.

Headlights on trailer trucks are not even that bad/high.

I tried complaining to my (Australian) state road authority about this 10 or so years ago. Got no response.

Glare is a massive hazard, as is loss of night vision and bright spots in your field of view. It's significantly worse for some people e.g. radial scars from eye surgery.

In other related bad Australian driving condition news .. road signs in the past decade or so have gotten waaaay too reflective.

Driving at night in the country is something myself and others have done for decades, it's a common complaint that "regular old non LED headlights" are now reflected back at cars at night so well that they ruin night vision for several seconds and blind the driver to any dangers (kangaroos, potholes, objects on road, etc) in the near distance past the reflecting sign.

I've not met anyone that had any complaint about the night time visibility of speed | direction | curve signs before main roads upped the mirror factor.

Today the balance seems wrong, the signs are unmissable at the cost of loss of night vision in the vicinity.

I've just about given up night driving, it's too stressful. The last time i saw roos on the road was the straight bit with one dogleg from Narromine through Nyngan into Bourke. Silly buggers didn't want to get off the lane, but worked it out eventually.

There's feral deer in Brisbane around Minnipi which are as much of a problem.

Come to Seattle WA, where just about _nothing_ is reflective and driving at night in the rain is a game of “sure hope I’ve driven this road before and know the layout”.

I'm driving for 18 years now, regularly long distances over night, on the German Autobahn. LED lights are a massive problem and made night driving much more tiring in the last 12 or so years. Also, fuck your matrix smart lights, they move away after blinding me at worst case or the light source is too bright even if not directed at me anyway. I have them in my 2020 Audi and don't use them because other drives flash at me and I understand precisely why.

> I have them in my 2020 Audi and don't use them because other drivers flash at me and I understand precisely why.

That's too bad, because smart lights are being touted as the solution to this blinding LED light disaster in the US.

The US also has a problem of SUVs and pickup trucks that aim their blinding LED headlights right at your head or rear-view mirror if you are unlucky enough to be in a lower vehicle.

I'm glad you posted this. I moved to the USA 7 years ago, and my eyes have aged. All I remember is less glare in Europe because the ECE design is better than DOT, even though ECE shines further, the cut-off is better.

But from what I understand from your post is that even in Europe, with the ECE ones, there is still glare because of the sheer brightness?

LED street lights have an additional problem. They are bright but outside of where they cast the light they are dark. Previous types of lights would light up the areas around the main lighted area in a diffused way. LED street lights don't.

I've seen many people use their phones as flashlights to navigate while under these worse LED street lights. I never saw this before. Danger has increased and safety decreased.

This feels very stupid design failure. Making wider beam should not be impossible. But I wonder how standardised the spacing is for this to work.

Light pollution though. Seems like that's more a feature than a bug that might be beneficial for insect and animal life.

With leds and proper design not actually that big issue when they are properly installed. If dark spots are the problem, that indicates there is little light pollution. Just have to extend the beam so it covers only road and slightly beyond.

The blueish white leds that has become default because of a slightly more efficient light output is also worse for glare, eye adjusting, and light pollution. Warmer tone leds are just a small bit less efficient and slightly less inexpensive so the much worse blueish tone is default.

I would guess lense design could 100% alleviate this problem.

They’re also too bright for pedestrians. When a car like that passes me by I can’t see anything for a while.

Then there are also the cars standing on the pavement with those headlights on blinding the pedestrians going in the opposite direction, because the driver inside can’t be bothered to turn them off and feels like sitting in a car in the dark and being an asshole to everyone around for whatever reason.

I through it would be a nice idea to have lights polarised vertically and screens polarized horizontally... scattered light gets de-polarized so object illuminated by the lights would still be visible through screen, but direct light from other people's headlights would get blocked.

Don't know how that would look practically (how bright can one really make a polaralized light source that is cost-effective / how expensive is it to create whole windscreens that are polarized / getting it rolled out would be a challenge).

Still it's a very anoying problem and it would be nice to find a decent solution.

The main problem with this is that a polarizing filter blocks overall light by about a half, so wouldn't be usable in the dark.

LED everything is too bright. Headlights, house lights, store lights, street lights. Walking around my neighborhood of San Francisco at midnight feels like walking around a movie set in a bad uncanny way. I can only assume the point is better night vision for machines, because they provide the opposite outcome to me as a human.

House lights are fine, you either have old ones or bought the wrong ones.

I'm still using my stash of incandescents, and halogens for the track lights, but I don't control my friends' houses :)

Check out the IKEA light bulbs, they are cheap and great.

A world-wide issue. Always wondered if this trend is akin to a sort of 'design-for-individualism' i.e. "Hey, so what if it blinds others? Look at that great visibility you have from your car seat".

I think UK drivers also agree. It’s like lots of people are driving around with their high beams on. They aren’t because if they were you’d wouldn’t be able to look at them at all.

They are 20% too bright and all too cold.

I am just heading back from the UK to SoCal. I was in the west country for a week and did plenty of backroads driving in heavy rain at night.

I can't say I noticed many blinding LED headlights but general headlight alignment and high beam discipline is infinitely better than in the US.

Headlight alignment is at least part of the yearly vehicle check for vehicles older then 3 years. Aftermarket lights that are illegally bright will (or rather, should) also fail that check. But I would assume if you're knowingly putting some eBay NightVision-b-Gone supernova in your car that has "not legal for road use" on the box, you're going to swap it out beforehand and put it back afterwards.

It is bad here (uk) but in America it is wild - not only do they use far brighter bulbs in the usa, but the rules on how they can be angled aren't as strict and in some states are not enforced at all.

It can be unpleasant here, but I don't know how there aren't more accidents in the US

>in some states [lighting laws] are not enforced at all.

This is how it is in the American South, where every 90's pickup truck has been "retrofitted" with xenon bulbs, without actually having replaced the headlamp reflector housing == blinding oncoming drivers.

Don't even get me started on people driving around with their actual highbeams on because "it allows me to see better" [an actual response].

My state does not even inspect vehicles in any capacity — would love to see police actually cite offending vehicles, but they're too busy busting kids for marihuana.

There are more accidents in the US than in civilized countries. Per mile.

I find wet weather particularly bad, if the roads are wet and it's raining then I often find myself blinded to the road ahead as a car is passing me on the opposite side of the road.

One issue I noticed when I rented a newer car a couple years ago, was that it automatically switched to full-beam and dipped where it thought appropriate though I only switched on low beam in the first place. I was driving a winding country road with a fair amount of oncoming traffic so I didn't really need full beam. The problem is that it only dips when it has seen the oncoming headlight, whereas to avoid dazzling the driver it would be better to dip just before they come into view.

I had this experience with an Opel (Vauxhall) recently. The solution was to manually deactivate the high beams when they were automatically engaged. They stayed off after that. Don’t know about a permanent solution, this was a one week rental.

Matrix headlights that automatically notch out oncoming cars have existed for years - but are banned in the USA.

> but are banned in the USA.

No, they've been allowed for 2 years now, pursuant to a law passed November 2021.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...

What's allowed is not implemented by any cars yet because the us standard is far more demanding than the European standard

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/cars/headlights-tech-adaptabl...

Some Ford F-150s have them. They can be enabled with a software tool. They are amazing!

"banned" is not quite the right explanation. More "deemed not good enough". Source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/cars/headlights-tech-adaptabl...

It's not only oncoming drivers that can be blinded.

On my car it works for bikes and people too.

On my car it works from behind other cars as well. There's a tree lined road near me, drive behind someone at night and there's a dark box around them, with the the trees being fully lit up.

And it also works with over-reflective road signs, they too get a dark box.

I thought that the matrix functionality was only for high beams.

Also, they're banned in the US? What the fuck?

Matrix headlights practically don't have separate high and low beams. It's a different setting for the same projectors.

The avoiding functionality works up to a limit even on low beam setting in my car.

I'm usually not a fan of photo enforcement because I see it abused to fix bad city/traffic planing, but I think it could be really valuable to enforce proper headlight regulations. LED headlights, especially on SUVs/trucks are a huge hazards to the public, maybe comparable to light drink driving.

Well, the worst drivers are those that just keep their brights on, because they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching. Fucking idiots.

The worst offenders are jacked up vehicles like SUVs and utes/trucks/pickups of whatever people call them. When you are lower than the oncoming car, it’s completely impossible to see ahead.

The most common offenders are cars that had the angle of their beams set wrong by someone who didn't care, I think, based on observations walking next to them. It's too common for one to point high enough to hit my face, nowhere near the correct angle, like 1/10.

Of course, driving, the tall SUVs and trucks that half the time do have their brights on that insist on being behind you. But I think a lot is that the person that angled the SUV's headlights either didn't care, didn't know, or knew and was actively malicious.

auto-dimming exists

(and really, could've been implemented with 1950s technology? as far as I can tell, my lights basically react to oncoming traffic, overhead illumination, and taillights. Using dlp-like active repatterning, now that's the fancy part, but just turning on and off and switching between high and low beams doesn't require a high BoM)

I think that auto dimming has made that aspect so much worse. It fails often, and removes that aspect of driving from the driver's mind. They just don't think about it anymore and blind the fuck out of pedestrians and cyclists since the sensor doesn't pick them up.

> they have no fucking clue you're supposed to lower them when another car is approaching

You know it's also true if you are approaching another car (eg. from behind). And if there are people in front of your lights in general it's a pain for them too

Auto-dim rear view mirrors have been around for ages.

Would you rather have your tax money spend on auto dimming glasses for everyone to wear when walking, move all car road infra under ground, or just be a decent human being?

Probably regulation is needed. In the UK were I live

>..retrofitted LED headlights are not road legal in the UK, and will fail an MOT. This has been the case since 2021, when the MOT inspection manual was updated https://www.passmefast.co.uk/resources/rules-of-the-road/dri...

I wonder if super bright reflectors might be a solution to this. Entirely passive, and makes your problem with their lights their problem.

Something similar is true for street lights. We recently got LED street lights. And while they're brighter than the old ones, what bothers me more is that they're not diffused. If I accidentally look at one, I keep seeing the individual LEDs for a while after, every time I close my eyes.

Old cars have two headlight settings: Low-beams and high-beams.

New cars have two headlight settings: High-beams and asshole.

Please, just invent eyeglasses that dynamically subdue oncoming headlights (of any type) already. Incredibly, this golden goose has not yet been plucked AFAICS (the tinted co-called "night-driving-glasses" don't work - or did I just not find the right brand yet?).

Wouldn't this make it harder to see everything, since it would also cut the light transmission of your own headlights as well?

I'm thinking a blot on the glasses that only cuts out the headlights, nothing else. [0] It could also possibly be a blot the size of the lamps on the windshield that tracks where the eyes are in relation to the oncoming headlights at any moment. I'm not saying it would be easy, but the tech is conceivable at least.

I have been told this problem is something that gets worse with age, but in my case; if there is oncoming traffic in the dark, in many if not most cases I largely lose perception of the lightless events in my own lane. There could be a deer (or someone) standing there and I wouldn't know.

I have been wondering how many accidents that might be caused by this.

[0] Edit: The dynamic "blot" could perhaps just affect the left half of the glasses (in countries with righthand traffic) , with a small twist of the head one would not be blinded in that case. I just hope this might give someone ideas.

Having owned a few old motorcycles, the stock bulbs are terrible, you can barely see anything at night. LED aftermarket parts have been decent in my exp. That being said some cars are too bright but surely you could dim them a bit.

The real problem is that in america public ilumination sucks and is almost inexistent. Its really hard to see anything on the road, of course drivers are going to want more powerful lights

Decent street lighting has never stopped Australians with retina burners, stock or aftermarket. It also wasn't a problem before LEDs. People who had spotlights fitted to their cars never used them on the road (when others were around) and now that's apparently the only reason people get them (even if they already have retina burners for headlights)

https://archive.is/yS2wX

Did the US at least get round to fixing their laws around sharp cut-off and auto-levelling?

Legalize adaptive headlights.

Too blue, not too bright

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