The Porsche Macan EV is being recalled because its headlights are too bright
insideevs.com
insideevs.com
We have a wattage maximum for headlights too. I am under the impression that roadworthiness test and regulations are very different in the states - is that the case?
Of course it could just be confirmation bias, as I'm getting older and I suppose my eyes gradually deteriorate. I do a lot of night time driving and oncoming traffic is definitely brighter, for me at least, than 20 years ago.
Then there's the fact that old headlights were one bulb, and the mirrored surface behind them was simpler.
Another problem is white light is harsh, and the old incandescent bulbs had a yellow/off white tinge which is easier (the redder the light, the less likely it is to destroy your night vision).
But when I'm driving at night and there's a line of cars with sleepy old halogen incandescent headlights in my view, those seem about the same to me as they always did.
Some are brighter, some are dimmer -- sometimes due to differences of voltages or aging, or sometimes due to differences in aiming or beam shape -- but they still appear to average about the same as ~all headlights did 20 years ago.
Sometimes, they're uncomfortable. They very seldom hurt. I can almost always still see where I'm going without any particular trouble unless they're particularly, acutely bright for whatever reason. Just as before, when my eyes were younger.
And unilaterally, they're easier to ignore than when modern bright-white (what are they, 5000k?) LEDs are shining my way. Those are uncomfortable more often than not. They're very often painful. I often can't see where I'm going when they're particularly bad.
Same eyes. Same road. Same weather. Same night. Different headlights, different results.
If I look directly at any headlight they burn into my vision. It makes driving difficult.
https://youtu.be/67aLDt1VJZI?t=116&si=5Cxyp-GT_i5DK-no
Who is making these cars and mods?
Are you sure it’s not a luminance maximum?
LED lights can be much brighter at the same wattage vs. incandescent lights.
I wonder if Teslas should be recalled too: all of them are seem too bright, particularly Model Ys.
Aren't self-leveling headlights standard by now? I think in the EU it was mandatory for Xenon lights, but I don't know whether LED lights are considered differently. My dad's almost 20 yo Citroën had such headlights, even though, thanks to the funky suspension, the car never had dramatic changes in level.
I don't know, but as a pedestrian & cyclist in the EU, not a day goes by where I don't get blinded by headlights. SUVs are by far the worst offenders, but it's not just SUVs. Most newer cars seem to have the same problem.
Heck, many newer bicycles have a headlight that's offensively bright and often seems aimed directly at my face. It's a sad state of affairs.
I hadn't known it was a thing before, and went looking in the owner's manual for confirmation.
I have a 2021 model vehicle and it has an “auto” setting for headlights, where it turns them on or off automatically depending on if it detects a car in front of them. It’s better latency then I have as a human remembering I have them on and turning them off so I use the feature but it’s definitely not instant and I’ve noticed it fail to detect a few times when there’s obstructions over the sensor like snow or rain.
I assume this wasn’t unique to my $30k model of car and is a common feature now, so might be the cause of the extra brightness
I like the concept but it's one of those things I struggle to see working practically.
As my vehicle ages I might consider turning it off as it gets worse performance but I also live with a few car people who constantly rail against the performance of the feature so I’m primed for this more than the median user
When I learned how to drive, my mom showed me how the headlights turned on and off. If you didn’t turn them off, the car died.
The automation has made light management a very second thought.
My friend didn’t know what the blue high beam icon on the dash was. I blame the automatic light feature.
Since moving to the US and driving here, I've suspected people have this attitude, but this is the first time I've encountered confirmation.
> Peggy: I don't know why everyone doesn't drive with their high beams on. You see so much better.
[1] http://tviv.org/King_of_the_Hill/The_Peggy_Horror_Picture_Sh...
My friend (and conveniently coworker) says "by Game Theory he's technically winning."
Then I got more upset because damn it, he's right.
- brighter headlights are falsely perceived to be of better quality, or,
- they are but more prevalent because of COVID economic downturn necessitating upsells, or,
- 2019 is simply 5 years ago, or,
- undocumented neurological long-COVID effect is affecting engineers? - isolation and political polarization concomitant with covid shutdowns accelerated the demise of the social fabric, and generally weakened a prior sense of obligation to others
Heads should have rolled years ago when the problem became glaringly obvious.
What I do now on the highways is point my side mirrors all the way out and flip the rearview mirror. I already have deeply tinted windows.
Of course this doesn't help with oncoming traffic.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_sg/GUID-1C20964...
The description makes it sound like the Tesla implementation of "Adaptive headlights" is actually just "automatic high beams". The most common extra feature of adaptive headlights is corner-adaptive, the ability to pivot into the direction of travel. For the past years adaptive headlights could even mean "smart headlights" with selective dimming. Does Tesla include these features as well?
Anecdotally I can say that what stands out with (some?) Tesla headlights is that they keep the high beams shining for way too long and even the low beams seem to be overly bright. I can't say if this is down to the driver manually controlling the high beams or the general calibration of the incoming light sensor and the auto leveling of the headlight.
I think fancy Mercedes models have very advanced stuff like that. IIRC it's even crazier: in addition to compensate in the mirrors/rear-view mirror, they can also detect where another car or pedestrian is and adapt, constantly, precisely how their own beams are projected as to not blind anyone.
EDIT: other manufacturer do it too, it is called "Matrix headlights".
Which is great and all, but means things like they are projecting FRICKIN' LASERS into people's homes (especially when turning) or if you are a pedestrian that it doesn't detect properly (e.g. at some distance down a cluttered urban road etc) you get someone driving at you with really very uncomfortably bright lights shining in your face (I get this a lot when running at night - perhaps the models detect a pedestrian walking but not jogging?).
I am sure it works great in controlled conditions (and I have seen YouTube videos out on the clear open road where it detects oncoming vehicles nicely) but it feels pretty ineffective and anti-social in an urban/suburban environment, at least to me.
Here [1] is the VW ID.3. It's subtle, but notice how the area around the other cars is much darker. In real life it's kind of amazing to watch, as you see the LEDs follow the other cars on the road and "erase" them from the light.
I believe the ID.3 does blot out drivers in the opposite direction even in a curve.
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1135084_us-finally-allow...
I appreciate that cyclists want to make sure they're seen by car drivers, but beaming ultra-bright flashing lights straight into the eyes of oncoming cyclists on a cycle lane surely creates a hazard that outweighs any benefits?!
The only ones I've been able to find are imports from Europe like B+M or Supernova, and a few expensive domestic ones like Outbound Lighting. If you walk into almost any bike shop in America they will have only circular optics that blind everyone.
The reason they're so bright and annoying is that you, dear motoring public, love complaining we're "not visible enough" in the comments of newspaper articles about people killed while riding a bicycle. Or in letters to the editor. Or to your legislators. Or at hearings about road infrastructure. Or hearings about road safety legislation. Or after you've plowed into one of us.
If you all would like to work on the whole "not killing large numbers of vulnerable road users", we can certainly look into the whole "make our bike lights not blink."
My state requires, at night:
* a rear light visible more than 500 feet * a rear reflector * pedal reflectors or ankle reflectors (both ankles) * front reflector (+500 ft) * front light (+500 ft) * wheel reflectors
Our state used to only require a rear light, but a state legislator refused to let a road safety bill pass unless he got put his paws all over it and increase equipment requirements for cyclists to "balance" out requiring drivers must give cyclists a minimum of three feet passing distance.
And yes, sometimes it is necessary to use a blinking mode to assure that we won't run out of battery (and thus have NO light) before we get home. On a long ride, for example, or in wintertime when lithium ion battery capacity plummets.
Except for all the dead cyclists of course.
https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/stvzo-bike-li...
But that applies more to running red lights, or using bicycle lanes in the wrong direction.
Maybe there are some super expensive ones, but I don't think we can entirely blame cyclists. The design of affordable lights is just not very good.
https://www.gazelle.de/fahrraeder/esprit this is a solution
It's not exactly cheap (and probably can be found cheaper elsewhere), but then it's superbright 2400 lumen with 2 sets of leds (headlights and meeting/dipped lights) and a powerbank. You can switch with the buttons. I own a slightly different version (2200 lumen, same casing) and it's great.
edit: cheaper here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006446894517.html
What the hell, are your lights welded/glued in place to the bike frame or what?
Most bike lights are screwed in, and with those screws you can adjust the angle of the light both up/down and left/right like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71AKoH1V25L._AC_SL1500_....
Speaking for my German bubble, there are roughly two types of bike riders: those who invest 1k+ on their gear and those that buy a flea market bike for 100€ and then fit the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention). Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.
[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71nSkKcBIdL._AC_UF894,10...
It can't be that what he meant, since if you can adjust the vertical angle, you can stop blinding people.
>Most students I know fall in the second category, making those lights quite popular.
I know. I nearly ran over one who had no good lights, dark hoodie with no reflective gear, when I was reversing on a dark street, at night. Nearly shat myself after the close call.
I know students are poor, but God damn man, your life is worth more than a couple of Euros you're saving by running a crappy light who's battery died 2 years ago. Skip on a pizza/few beers in town one time and get a proper light.
You don't need to spend thousands of euros on gear to have a safe and visible cycling experience.
People are just stupid and lazy about their own safety, that's all. You only realize it when you switch from a cyclist to a driver, how dangerous these cyclists with no good lights are at night.
> the cheapest light they can find (that is, the ones I mention
Dude, that light you shared is a luxury compared to what most students I see have. Most have these god awful things with low battery: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Bicycle-Accessories-S...
You have misunderstood. Obviously I can angle the light, but it still has a circular beam pattern like a torch. Dipped car headlights are not like that. They have a sharp cut-off at the horizon so you can light the road brightly without blinding oncoming traffic. Very few bike lights have a beam pattern like that.
Definitely not on any modern light. They usually have a rectangular beam pattern.
My 1975 vintage Peugeot bike already has a front light with a lens that directs the beam downwards, can be adjusted to point even further downwards with a screw, and even has a small shield on top of the lens to stop the beam from travelling upwards.
It works perfectly with the original dynamo and a cheap LED light bulb from Amazon.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikeforums.net-vbulletin/640x48...
Front and rear bike lights must be connected to a 6V/3W generator, ie a dynamoHub dynamos are indeed more expensive (around 50€ as a starting price) but since bikes are the primary means of transportation for many people, I think they usually see this as an acceptable price for the convenience it brings (I know I do).
Also, quite a few bikes here are leased (for around 20€/month, including all maintenance) and those always have a hub dynamo I think.
Here's a hint: Germany is extremely car-centric and makes regulations that cater to drivers, not road safety.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Kilometres-cycled-per-in...
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/exposure-a...
Germany does rather well. Though the paper is 6 years old (and based on numbers even older) and the number of bike accidents in Germany have gone up since then.
People choose the strobe, presumably because they feel more visible and therefore safer. I understand it, but it's annoying as hell.
Maybe these are not common in other locales but I don't understand why that seems to have offended some :/ I'm talking about rapidly flashing lights in narrow streets in cities from people pushing their bikes (and me having such bike too, and trying to remember to switch of the light when pushing bike manually to not annoy others)
All the bike-share bikes in the US have generator hub lights as well (except for the ebikes, of course.)
If cities actually invested in safe infrastructure the need for such lights would go away.
Blinking lights are not legal according to road code in Germany and I assume many other EU countries nor do they necessary improve your safety.
Yes, strobing lights do draw more attention at a glance (which is why they are reserved for emergency vehicles and signaling an emergency) making you think you'd be safer, but actually not since it makes it very difficult for the human eye to determine the distance to/from that object in motion on the road if it's always blinking, making the use of only strobing lights on the road unsafe and therefore banned for non emergency purposes.
That's why your front and tail lights must be in a constant state. It's for your own safety too, hence why emergency vehicles don't strobe their running lights/brake lights but have additional strobes for that.
Street maintenance trucks and all such vehicles, at least in Europe, don't strobe their running lights which are constant-ON as on all road vehicles and the strobes are additional warning lights. So they get the best of both worlds.
But for cycling, blinking lights are stupid because you're strobing your only running light you need to see and be seen.
The UK has one quarter the deaths despite having ~3/4 of the population of Germany...
It's expected that if a lot more people cycle, you're gonna have more cycling deaths than in countries where fewer people cycle.
If nobody would cycle you'd have zero cycling deaths, hooray problem solved, you successfully gamed the metrics, if wining arbitrary metrics is the goal.
Was that your goal?
Random numbers alone mean nothing if they're meaningless and out of context. More people are killed every year by cows than by sharks. Does that make cows more dangerous than sharks or just that people are more likely to be around cows more often than around sharks?
If Germany has a higher population than UK, and also a higher percentage of people of that population cycle, then yeah you're gonna have more dead cyclists. D'uh!
Show me deaths per capita and cycling rates per capita, then we can talk about drawing a conclusion.
DE 5.5%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
UK 1.7%: https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics
Great Britain has half the bike usage of Germany. Germany has 36 million bikers (43% of 84 million), Great Brittain about 12 million (19% of 68 million), so the stats line up more than you'd think at a first glance. The difference between Germany and Great Brittain becomes laugably obvious when you look at the statistics for how many people use bikes as a primary transport method (6% GB vs 21% DE).
That said, biking outside of large cities in Germany is kind of terrible, so I'm not at all surprised about how deadly cycling in Germany, though that may just be my spoilt Dutch take on things.
Edit: my source for these statistics: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...
My impression though is I spot blinking lights cyclists at closer distances than solid light. Especially in rainy weather.
And I absolutely have a more difficult time judging blinkers relative speed to me.
This is exactly the attitude that gets people killed. I hope you never experience the feeling of taking someone’s life.
I have lost count of the number of times a driver has sheepishly smiled and waved after my screaming got their attention and narrowly avoided a collision. It’s a routine experience for cyclists.
So my conclusion is I spot cyclists with solid lights more easily than ones with blinking lights unless you think there is a scenario where at close range blinking lights become easier to see and so I miss solid lights.
Recently I met one of these idiots on a dark cycle path and I veered away from them instinctively (partly because I could see they were present but couldn't judge where they were) and then overcompensated and swerved behind them - very nearly hitting their child on a kid's bike behind! I hadn't seen their child because I was blinded by the adult's light. They probably thought they were keeping their child safe but they were really putting them in danger.
*: technically, you're allowed to use blinking bike lights during the day, but what's the point
That makes them useful during the day
I wish they had this rule in the UK.
The problem is not even cars though, but other cyclists. Even with a cutoff beam it is easy to blind oncoming traffic if the light is not setup correctly. Flashing, it should be illegal.
The consensus amongst the cyclists there generally is that flashing front lights are a bad idea. The can be confusing and disorienting and are pretty unpleasant for other oncoming cyclists and pedestrians, not just other car drivers.
[citation needed]. They sure are annoying to look at, but I doubt about the improved visibility. Drivers are used to tracking positions and velocities of steady light sources - like those from cars, traffic lights, barriers, reflected lights, etc. Blinking lights are harder to track and are unusual; they seemingly should draw attention, but other than bicycles, they tend to show up on stuff like ads, Christmas lights, broken light fixtures, etc. - that is, things safe to ignore.
In the same manner, a single bicycle light might not register as a vehicle in the minds of car drivers. By blinking the light the short-circuit is broken - or so the theory goes.
Surely they are just turning the light off half the time so half as visible?
There are also pedals that include front and rear lights. https://redshiftsports.com/collections/arclight-pedals
I mean I'm guilty myself, got myself a new bike a few years back that has a headlight built into the frame etc.
I get having bright lights, but try and angle them slightly downwards at least.
The Germans seem to have a standard (with TUV certification) for it, as of course they do. But we don't get much of that kit here.
(And because search engines are absolutely ruined: Searching for less, like "dim bike light" or "non-blinding" or whatever always winds up with finding more, instead.
"Oh, you're searching for a nice pleasant light that just illuminates the path in front of you at a warm color temperature without blinding anyone? Let me show you the MEGAFUCKER 9000! Powered by 48VDC and over 9000K, this light is guaranteed appear brighter than the sun and to ABSOLUTELY FUCK anyone within a kilometer! /r/fuckcars approved! You always knew you were an asshole, and with the MEGAFUCKER 9000 everyone else will know it too!"
Every single time.
(It's the same with anything else. Want a small, diminutive spatula so a small egg pan can actually be used for cooking instead of wall art? The more specific the search terms are, the bigger the fucking spatulas in the search results become.
Or even industrial or craft materials. Want rigid, open-cell, large-pore foam that doesn't sponge up water for a project? Good luck. Unless you already know exactly what product you need down to the SKU (which one can only glean via telepathy), the search results will consist entirely of opposite-world SUPER-SOFT EXTRA ABSORBENT foam.)
LLMs are absolutely terrible at finding specific, detailed facts that have any consistent element of truth to them, and the well from which they draw their knowledge was deliberately poisoned from the beginning.
Anyways, if you wan't 'german' standards, search with german words, like 'Fahrradlicht' and 'Fahrradbeleuchtung' and maybe you'll find some fitting pieces, though they won't be cheap.
That standard btw. is 'StVZO' (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fenverkehrs-Zulassung...) as applied to any bicycle above 11Kg weight.
Common brands offering stuff adhering to the StVZO or otherwise reasonable specs are:
https://axabikesecurity.com/product-category/lights-427/
https://supernova-lights.com/en
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/sports-fitness/cycling-bike-c...
Or try:
https://www.amazon.de/Radsport-Beleuchtung/b?node=235162011 and see what's there.
Or there:
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/bike/electronics/lights/
Or here:
https://www.bike24.com/Bike-Lights.html
Amongst countless others, but I'm lazy, and dilligently deny delving deeper to deliver your data. :p
I bicycle a lot and I tell other cyclist that they need to adjust their lights all the time. At least they seem to take feedback. Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
No, one is actually unregulated, and the other is imperfectly regulated.
> Somehow, drivers think that they, in their multi-ton metal boxes are a band apart, and tend to take zero criticism from anyone outside of their metal boxes.
I can't imagine, with such a homogenising, negative attitude towards a group comprising millions of people, why they might not listen to you.
I’ve got a slightly dimmer light on my helmet that is great for getting people’s attention when they’re just not looking for bikes.
Now even the regular beams they sure do work fine (the car even does fancy stuff as lighting the interior of a turn when you take a sharp turn at night) but honestly I find many cars, including mine, have headlights to bright.
Worse: on these new cars with super fancy headlights if I'm not mistaken you cannot even configure where they aim at anymore. It's all automated. It used to be the case on older cars where it was easy to configure and you could aim the regular beam moderately low as to be sure to not annoy anyone.
I don't bother flashing at people anymore because I figured out they may simply have a car where the regular beams are simply too bright too.
My dad's 20yo Citroën had self-leveling lights, which weren't user adjustable (at least not in an obvious way). However, even though the lights were relatively bright (Xenon), nobody ever "complained" about them, they somehow always found a way to not blind oncoming cars while lighting the road very well.
They were fixed pattern, with the high beam on a manual switch, though, so they never tried to guess whether there was someone in the oncoming lane.
> Due to a software data set error, the affected vehicles were programmed from the factory after the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) specs, whereas U.S.-spec vehicles need to conform to the requirements of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS).
Presumably, if there were a way for the headlights to comply with both US and EU regulations, they'd just have them be that way everywhere, rather than having to deal with multiple configurations at all. So are the US and EU both saying that each other's way is wrong and too dangerous?
The US limits the brightness to X, the EU limits the brightness to Y, and Y > X.
Porsche could just make every car globally use X, but they’re a luxury brand so they probably try to use Y where they can, even if it is a bit of work to differentiate between markets.
> European lighting standards (UNECE) allow over two times the light output from high beam headlight systems as compared to the U.S. (Broertjes, 2018). U.S. compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 150,000 candela while European compliant systems allow a vehicle maximum of 430,000 candela (Official Journal of the European Union, 2018). This provides for gains in sight distance, but also increases the potential for glare to affect oncoming and preceding traffic when high beams are not dimmed.
And
> 3. European specification systems consistently provided more roadway lighting when an oncoming vehicle was approaching, or a preceding vehicle was close.
> a. Based on static target illumination data, the increase in roadway lighting could be as much as 86 percent (comparison of average European specification high beam to U.S. specification low beam).
https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/AAR/files/ResearchReportEuroS... (scroll to at least page 19-20 for illuminating illustrations).
Do people in the EU consistently behave politely and turn them off when appropriate?
I don't have enough driving experience between the two countries to compare driver behaviour.
Low beams are getting too bright. I never turned my rear mirror into the anti glare position so often as in the last couple of years.
Plenty of people turn on their high beams and don't bother to manage them. I guess automatic dimming systems should help with that. Looking a bit, they don't necessarily default to on in US vehicles, which is likely to minimize the benefit.
and for a fraction of second they are indeed blinding, disorienting, and irritating other drivers and pedestrians
In the EU countries I usually drive in, yes they do. If they don't, you turn your own high beams on until their turn theirs off and generally they do it within a second or so, they had probably just forgot them.
Properly leveled lights should cast the beam below the horizon: any person seeing the headlights situated above the their height should not be blinded by them. I suspect the etymology of "high beam" is because they project higher to allow seeing further (and blinding everyone in the path)
Unsure if that was just the few vehicles I drove or if it's EU-wide.
Cars without manual angle adjustment have lost that courtesy gesture and just drive around glaring all the time.
This seems to be the extent of the recall. But there are other differences between the EU and US. For example, on what the headlights are illuminating. US headlights shine more light off to the right of the vehicle than EU and I think it is due to the assumption that roadside signs are more often lit via headlights/refection in the US vs sign-mounted lighting in the EU.
I think most people agree that EU regulations allow for significantly better headlights than US regulations allow. But those better headlights must be paired with an expensive adaptive system or they become terribly dangerous. If you compare "cheap car" headlights in the US vs EU they are probably very similar in performance.
There are regulations governing the spread/angle, the minimum brightness, the maximum brightness, how much an object at X distance is illuminated, whether the angle of the beams is too bright in the vision of oncoming drivers, etc.
Real life disagreements on minor technicalities between competing bureaucracies are not zero sum or conducted in breathless hand wringing internet rhetoric. It's more like a disagreement on a FOSS mailing list.
That's somewhat common for US/EU safety disagreements. Here's the canonical example, from back when the TTIP was still seriously being considered: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/25/why-am...
I remember reading that the US car safety rules generally assume that the people in the car do not follow the rules, whereas EU regulations assume they follow the law and use seatbelts.
US crash safety tests don’t care about the damage the car does to pedestrians, but EU regulations do factor that in.
https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449090584/why-arent-auto-safe...
As a EU citizen living in the US, this makes perfect sense.
The quality of driving here is far lower, I often see vehicles without plates or temp tags and it's not unusual to hear about uninsured drivers hitting people.
It's ironic that such a car centric country naturally ends up with terrible drivers because of the low barrier to entry.
The upside? It probably saves the lives of some people so reckless they shouldn’t be driving.
Cars being built for pedestrian safety is one piece of that picture. As you note, impact safety falls into this category and provides limited benefits for collisions at speed. There’s a lot more to that story though, as we can see in societies that value pedestrian lives. Automatic braking and avoidance, driver attention monitoring, and speed limiters are all options. Add in safe infrastructure, safety enforcement, etc.
There’s a broad range of tools available to reduce pedestrian deaths. None are perfect, none apply universally, but we should consider all of them.
For what it's worth, I did personally live in a city and had a pedestrian lifestyle for about 15 years. I never felt particularly imperiled; the national statistic for pedestrian deaths may seem spooky but some very basic precautions, like making a habit of looking both ways even when you have the right of way, eliminates almost all of the risk.
There's a reason that driving safety is the #1 public policy when a country develops.
The parts of the US that are within about an 8hr drive of Mexico are like the US's poor eastern europe, at least as far as driving goes.
You might make it an hour in the northeast or southeast without a plate. The cops would see dollar signs like Mr Krabs.
Nor are moving violations.
That isn't generally true as the EU favors driver assist technologies such as automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, and speed limiter features.
Unless someone in the marketing department has determined that headlight brightness is a selling point for 0.001% of customers, in which case they'd configure them to the maximum allowed in the region.
This has subsequently changed: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...
(Why do I have a feeling that all the ways I can come up with to compliment the US for this achievement sound like irony?)
Up next, let me tell you about that time that we held onto analog AMPS cell phones for years longer than any developed country that I know if, and how when we did finally begin to transition to something digital we made sure that we failed to standardize on any one format and made all of them as incompatible with things like European GSM as we could.
> held onto analog AMPS cell
*cough* faxes, anyone? *cough*
You can go into the car's settings and lower the headlights, but because of where it is by default, it presents a dangerous situation for other cars. How many non-tech folks would know to even search for this option?
https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/en-us/GU...
But I think in general (and with other cars too), the problem isn’t the brightness of lights, but their angle. Bit even with my lights lowered, if I’m at a stop light that is on a slight hill, that still can cause the angle of my lights to appear to someone on the other side as too bright.
https://www.osram.com/ecat/NIGHT%20BREAKER%20H4-LED-LED%20hi...
Sounds like the tester was trying to be clever - afaik in most places the test is checking if your beam pattern is correct using a machine that measures it in front of the headlamp. What is inside the headlamp shouldn't matter to them in the slightest - either the beam is correct or it isn't. But I don't know where you live so I can't comment on the law in your specific country.
They also will fail you for having polished or otherwise refurbished the lenses instead of replacing them. Basically they are gigantic hardasses about headlights.
Result: people see flashing blue(-ish) light in their rear view mirror. Not a good thing, very distracting!
The worst thing about all these lights is they aren't static. For a start I can see the LEDs flickering, presumably due to PWM. Why a fully DC circuit that doesn't even dim the bulbs needs to use PWM is beyond me. But the worst is their "clever" auto levelling and dipping etc. It just looks like the light is constantly in flux which is really distracting and annoying.
Being from Europe, the European ones are superior. They go further and they are brighter, and have a different cut-off: ECE vs DOT: https://i.ibb.co/ryf8W0w/dotece.jpg
When I lived in Europe (Belgium) every year the beam height was checked on my car. That way I wouldn't blind people when driving behind them.
Here in there US there are no such things, yet cars often enough get headlights replaced which aren't adjusted afterwards. Or people install a lift-kit which hasn't been taken into account when designing the vehicle.
Now I wonder if the Macan has different lights in the US vs ROW, as the cut-off isn't something that is easily changeable, and it would massively increase the cost for something that is never activated.
But having the same bulbs makes sense.
That said, I looked into replacing the headlights on mine, but then you end up with a Frankenstein's monster car, as parts of it are US coded, and parts EU. I did get EU mirrors.
No they aren't. Driving on the roads in continental Europe I see it all. LED lights with blue glare, road beams with strength of high beams, adaptive strobing LED/laser headlights, adaptive LED/laser headlights scanning surroundings with top-down bright horizontal line, badly adjusted headlights directed and the eyesight level. Includes brand new unmodified cars.
Driving in Europe, I get constantly blinded by french cars and their headlights.
Those headlights are just way too bright, combined with shitty engineering. The automatic ones don't turn off fast enough. Then you have people blinking at approaching cars to trigger that sensor. Many drivers don't bother manually turning them off, on some cars the headlights are still controlled by a rotary switch that requires you to take your hands off the steering wheel, while on others the auto-headlights aren't easy to re-enable if you had to manually turn them off once so people don't bother turning them off at all.
Related:
1) indicators ( eu flashing yellow ones) are getting smaller: ok at night, but during the day...very hard to see. I prefer the US red brake/ blinker to these tiny mf's.
*2 Animated (EU only?) yellow indicators. The transition between each segment (usually five?) is always too slow, and very distracting. I prefer the US, and very terrible, blinky-brake lights to these disco-on-xanax horrors.
3. Why can’t there be a sign for 'zippering' where traffic merges?
4 - Why can’t people just zipper-in anyway?
Because people still think they're somehow going to arrive 30min faster by not merging one-by-one, ignoring the fact that by not letting others in they're actively slowing all other traffic down. Then have all other nervous drivers looking for the first opportunity to cut someone off because they're not going to be able to merge otherwise and you end up with all those crashes near the ends of merge lanes. It's a driving culture issue, varies by country.
Completely agree. If I buy a new car, I will ask if it is possible to turn these off out of respect for other drivers!
Yes!
https://www.kyocera-sldlaser.com/bright-solutions/automotive
Still obnoxious to use on the road.
But those high beam can kill me one day no doubt. Too many close call and hence the little Toyota i got I feel comfortable to use the high beam all the time.
But other road users: bikes, pedestrians, old car drivers... They suffer.
The only way to improve your situation: also buy a new car with bright lights and tainted glass.
> “First, I’d like to teach you some words,”
How has his brain not imploded from the fatal levels of condescension? He thought a writer wouldn't know what "obfuscation" means?
Also: that is a magazine about football, and an article written by someone who writes about culture items like Taylor Swift. It's not "reporting." It's (at best) commentary.
Completely missing: any sources from people who, you know, actually know what the hell they're talking about.
For example, someone who knows what the hell they're talking about could point out that the flood of photos from digital cameras in that subreddit, used as "proof", are from digital cameras which have barely a few f-stops of dynamic range, whereas the human eye has thirty. The very best digital SLRs in the world have a dynamic range of around 14 stops.
AUTO HI-BEAMS: OFF (always OFF)
HI-BEAMS ON: ONLY when there are no cars in front of you
APPROACHING BRIGHT HEADLIGHTS: Short 2x burst. Resist going further than this, just glance off to the passsenger-side of your windshield and avoid looking directly at the lights, deep in thought...
IF you are FLASHED by oncoming traffic, at least CHECK (the indicator on your dash will be a very bright BLUE) - IF they are ON then TURN THEM OFF. IF they are off THEN give a courtesy SHORT 1-2x flash.
IF the car(s) IN FRONT of you seem to be excessively braking or flashing their HI-BEAMS seemingly at random - CHECK YOURS! Courtesy flash not recommended so much here.
Cars BEHIND you with BRIGHT LIGHTS? Brake tap might or might not help, I also target large traffic signs with some short rapid bursts to hopefully get their attention.
At some point, doing nothing becomes the best strategy. Some people really do love antagonizing.
Stay focused when you're driving, you should be striving to do it "like a pro" and with respect for others.
/psa
p.s. that botton in your light control cluster that you don't know what it is? Leave it off please. Those are your Tow-lamps and they make your taillights extremely bright.
Many people on the continent need to learn about this. Lot of them are lighting up the opposite lane like if it was the side of the road instead.
IMO places where people switch what side of the road people drive on (ferries, tunnels, etc.) should put up warnings and hand out fines to people with reversed lights. For cars that don't have digitally adjustable lights, I'm sure there will be money making opportunities for garages near these places where the lights can be physically adjusted.
Disappointingly little detail is given on just what the issue is in the linked article... https://www.motor1.com/news/706105/porsche-continuing-gas-ma...