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Comment by crnkofe | Hacker News Reader

Post-Corona cars are all much brighter. Its gotten so bad that I'm frequently left wondering if people are driving with high beams or just regular new-age lights. Got to wait to see if the person on the other side drops the lights to be sure. SUVs in particular are bad especially during acceleration which points the lights higher and on inclined road. I also regularly "switch" rear-view mirror to dim mode otherwise I'm literally 3-way blinded also from side mirrors. I didn't do any of these things regularly 5y ago. I'm still wondering if this is just automotive industry incompetence of making safe vehicles or an "incentive" to buy a SUV yourself so you don't get blinded all the time.

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There are definitely people who don't care to switch between high and low beams when oncoming traffic appears. I was riding in the passenger seat with an ex-coworker the other night, and I noticed he just kept the high beams on the entire time. After a while I asked him, "Why don't you turn the headlights down when there's oncoming traffic?" He looked at me like I just asked the most ridiculous question and said "What do you mean? The high beams are brighter and make it easier for me to see." I reminded him that high beams blind other drivers and he basically said "Fuck them, I don't care and that's their problem if they don't like it." --that seems to be pretty much America's slogan right now. Fuck everyone else, I'm doing what I want.

Wow. Straight out of King of the Hill.

> 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...

Wow.

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.

Maybe mention that head on accidents sometimes happen because a driver target fixates on oncoming headlights. I can't imagine that high beams help with that.

On the way to work today, I made a joke about a full-size truck by mockingly saying "hurr, I drive a big truck to my white collar job to have more mass in an accident because I suck at driving."

My friend (and conveniently coworker) says "by Game Theory he's technically winning."

Then I got more upset because damn it, he's right.

They might actually have high beams on.

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 drove a car with this feature and retroreflective road signs or markers would set it off at night. In the dark of night on a country road, approaching a tight curve and your lights go dim. I've been turning it off ever since.

I like the concept but it's one of those things I struggle to see working practically.

Ive a ford maverick (smallest hybrid truck i could get in the states), and was very skeptical of this feature. Im surprised about how correctly responsive it is. I drive something like 60/20/20 suburban/urban/rural. Im always ready to turn it off, for fear of imperfect performance or incorrect toggling, but i cant point to a single instance where it did the wrong thing. It’s a little bit amazing!

I think it’s decent in some use cases but it’s not a silver bullet and any lack of maintenance on the sensor equipment used to control it causes bad experiences.

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

> SUVs in particular are bad especially during acceleration which points the lights higher

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.

> Aren't self-leveling headlights standard by now?

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.

Self-leveling usually "one time", or "slowly", as in changes based on the weight on the rear axle. It doesn't work on the timescale of acceleration, braking, cornering, etc.

Actually, it did it "all the time". I found out about this while being stuck in traffic, and seeing the lights move slightly up and down while inching forward and stopping. It was visible because it moved in discrete steps, compared to the continuous movement of the car.

I hadn't known it was a thing before, and went looking in the owner's manual for confirmation.

They might be, but that does not help much, as roads are neither level nor pitched at a constant grade. The attribution of the effect to acceleration might (at least in some cases) be a misdiagnosis of a problem actually caused by a slight longitudinal convexity of the road.

Here in the UK I can't say that we have the same issue - BUT we have far fewer SUVs and lights are regulated far more. You'll fail your yearly MOT (car roadworthiness test) if you have lights that are too bright or misaligned, and I have seen people pulled over in London for having non-standard/too bright lights.

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?

Yes. The US has excellent national standards (low beams can be 15,000 to 20,000 candela per side), however nearly everything is administered by the states, and only 14 of 50 states have annual safety inspections. It used to be most states, but it was hijacked and used as a racket to steal from customers. Accessory LED lighting (off road) is illegal, but only required to be covered on road in California and Pennsylvania. Additionally, the US also bumper height restrictions that are mostly ignored (except California). Many lifted SUVs and trucks are illegal. That means if your car is t-boned by a lifted SUV you could be struck in the head by the bumper.

Thanks for detailed explanation. I wasn’t able to believe in YouTube videos, that many extremely tuned cars were legal in US. In Germany they would be immediately towed away as not roadworthy. The lifted trucks leave me always speechless. Why!?..

You may have noticed that the most fiercely-invoked right in the US these days is the one to be a full-on asshole.

Comic book lives?

https://youtu.be/67aLDt1VJZI?t=116&si=5Cxyp-GT_i5DK-no

Who is making these cars and mods?

It certainly seems like headlights are far brighter in the UK right now, given that they're all LEDs.

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).

We're all getting older.

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.

I live in a rural area of Scotland and I don't really have a problem with headlights - 99.9% of drivers dip their full beams when they are aware of you. Now if we could only get people to indicate correctly on roundabouts.... - that's a far bigger peeve of mine than headlights!

While this check exists on paper it is not enforced in any meaningful way and hasn't caught up to modern headlights which to me are simply too bright even when original from the factory.

If I look directly at any headlight they burn into my vision. It makes driving difficult.

> We have a wattage maximum for headlights too.

Are you sure it’s not a luminance maximum?

LED lights can be much brighter at the same wattage vs. incandescent lights.

I was curious about this too so had a look. The brightness is regulated by The Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989 and does specify a minimum wattage in some cases but not for modern cars (“A motor vehicle with four or more wheels first used on or after 1st April 1986: no requirement”). As far as I can tell there are no legal maximums.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/1796/schedule/4

Really? I think we have exactly the same problem in the UK. Granted, my eyes are more susceptible post laser surgery, but headlights are definitely getting brighter and higher as the years go by.

Would that be, possibly, because:

  - 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

The majority (>80%) of drivers in my area are permanently on high beam, it wasn't always like this, but has become normalized.

Sure some of it is subjective. I'm a big fan of dark UIs. But the fact is that when I say 3-way blinded my entire car is objectively brightly lit so its definitely not just an eye thing. Happy to hear I'm not the only sensitive person around.

One reason for driving with high beams is one of your headlights is out. Then you turn on your high beams, problem fixed! You'll see it in places with less money, esp where I live in Philly. I would never do it, but that's the reason I've seen and heard from people.

It's so bad I am about to go to the optometrist to see if my eyes are just getting old.

Its not your eyes getting old, it's just that are just more inconsiderate assholes out there now, enabled by newer car models that have a uncomfortably bright high-beams with the worst color temperature for night vision (for both the drivers and their victims).

I wonder if Teslas should be recalled too: all of them are seem too bright, particularly Model Ys.

I have often wondered if my eyes have become more sensitive to car headlights since covid, but it seems I'm not alone in this feeling. I frequently wear glasses with a blue light protective coating while driving on busy roads at night. Interestingly, I find that I don’t need them when the road is empty or when it’s a bright night.

I struggle with the exact same issue in a pickup truck. I think people are driving around with their high beams on without knowing it.

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.

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