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Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

This is an abdication of duty, or else an unwillingness to admit flawed decision-making, at NHTSA.

Any time I am approached by a new vehicle going over a minor hill, I am blinded by their LEDs. Makers like BMW obviously market such blinding lights as power, awareness, etc. but it is a danger to everyone on the road.

If you're in the middle of nowhere highway, hit the brights. Otherwise, these lights need regulated. I wonder if there is a resistance mod that could be put in to lower the brightness for someone who cared to.

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I’d argue the biggest offender here is Ford/GM

The German cars will at least attempt to dim the beam or auto turn off high beams, in Europe they’ll even divert the beam around you but for some reason we don’t allow that in the US. I drive a BMW as my daily and the computer makes every effort to not blind people.

GM and Ford I just get constantly blinded by gigantic pillars of LEDs, regardless if I’m driving another truck or a low sports car.

I think the NHTSA just approved these, so hopefully they’ll start being more common

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

But they stupidly didn't follow the SAE's recommendations and made it harder to implement in the US by deviating from the standard used in the ROW.

https://www.newsweek.com/nhtsa-roadblocking-headlight-techno...

Tesla is the worst - their DRLs are blinding if you're off to the side of them in a sedan like I drive. Apparently, they're supposed to be USER aimed / aligned AFTER delivery, but pretty sure only 5% of drivers have even the faintest of clues about any setting in their car other than "pair phone".

I'm not saying no other cars have issues, including the obviously misaimed 70s light-in-a-box bulbs. And don't get me started on the number of cars with ZERO lights, or only DRLs (no tail lights) at night here in the Bay Area (CA).

I am constantly struggling to avoid glare at night from crazy lights. If I could wave my hand and fix one brand, without question it would be Teslas - they're systematically bad. All others seem like one-offs (bad maintenance, post-accident/replacement-misaligned, etc).

>>And don't get me started on the number of cars with ZERO lights, or only DRLs (no tail lights) at night here in the Bay Area (CA).

As sort of a personal mea culpa, shortly after I got a new car, I realized I had done a nighttime drive with just daytime running lights. I leave the lights on Auto usually but it's relatively easy to hit the headlight dial with a finger when activating the turn signal. (Or, as I think was the case here I had just gotten a state inspection and the lights were just turned off.) I'm more aware now. Something seemed a bit off but it was a fairly new car.

Most Tesla headlights have matrix functionality (the ability selectively dim areas of the headlight that would be aimed at another car) but this is not enabled in the US.

> in Europe they’ll even divert the beam around you but for some reason we don’t allow that in the US

Is this true? Moving beams away from incoming traffic certainly was a feature (called "Active High Beam") on Volvo XC90 that I rented in California a few years ago. I've no idea if this was a US market car, or imported from somewhere, but it certainly existed and worked.

All of the German automakers have this feature that they all call something different, but yes. The current NHTSA regulations prevent it from being deployed in the US, as another commenter pointed out though it seems like the NHTSA finally relented and approved it so I’d expect it to start showing up. My car already has the hardware and it’s a software switch to flip it on, so I imagine most other newer German cars are the same.

My understanding is that in the U.S. it's allowed to have headlights that dynamically turn on and off the high beams depending on whether it sees a car coming. The more advanced Euro version has a spatial light modulator in the headlight that dims the light specifically in the direction of the oncoming car, while leaving the high beams on for rest of the area in front of the car.

> headlights that dynamically turn on and off the high beams depending on whether it sees a car coming

A nice feature in theory, my mother-in-law's Toyota has this, but it doesn't work very well.

It's the default startup setting in my Honda CR-V. Too many things in cars are being automated like this. Not being able to dial in a windshield wiper speed and only having an "Auto" option drives me crazy because it usually guesses wrong.

I agree with most of what you said, but BMW lights autodim very aggressively because they know it's annoying as hell. I know because i found how to verify that's enabled, and was testing it just hours ago.

Around here, there are geriatric drivers aplenty at certain times of year who drive with brights on all the time, hills or straightaways or anything. very annoying. including in daylight.

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