The war against headlight brightness | Hacker News Reader

The war against headlight brightness

theringer.com

65 pointspavel_lishin70 comments

We already have a mechanism for this and it's called the Department of Transportation. But as we've seen in recent decades, we can't be reliant on our administrations to do their jobs. You can see on any headlights they have a D.O.T. number but these have been faked by unregulated imports for a long time.

But aftermarket isn't even the issue here. A lot of cities have given up any kind of enforcement for illegally modified cars, let alone DOT updating regulations for new technologies. I was pulled over regularly as a teenager for having lights I purchased at AutoZone for "being too blue". I doubt that ever happens anymore.

Why did they stop? Seems like a ticket quota wet dream

Let's see the calibration certificate for the measurement instrument, and your training records.

This doesn't really work to get you out of a ticket.

There is probably too much overlap between the people who become police officers and the people who think unsafe modifications to cars should be legal

They can't even figure out how to approve a replaceable standard LED bulb after 20 years while consumers just buy them anyway.

There is no standard LED bulb for external vehicle lighting. Every car with LED lights has proprietary lighting. Only halogens and HIDs have standard bulbs. LEDs cannot replace halogens because they don't project light from the same location or radiate it in the same pattern. Projector and cutoffs do not solve this problem.

(a) I think issues mentioned are basically moot (or solvea le) for brake lights and they still haven't done anything.

(b) The lack of any standards for LED bulbs and only having proprietary lighting is definitely part of the problem.

> I was pulled over regularly as a teenager

You'd think either you or the police would have done something rather than just pulling you over again and again.

In the UK you'd get a ticket then have your car impounded if you repeatedly ignored a simple compliance warning, and if they thought it was dangerous to other drivers, they'd probably seize it on the spot.

It's just an excuse to pull you over. The only time I ever got a "fix-it ticket" when one I was already middle aged. They're just taking advantage of your naivety as a teenager to sniff around. Teenagers with disposable, conspicuous consumption are profiled. With no record of the reason for the stop, there's no reason to fix it. I did replace the lights, obviously but that didn't stop them from pulling over every time I went through that part of town.

Headlights are now entirely too bright. The base lights are brighter than the bright lights from not that long ago. If you're in a car and a truck is coming the opposite way...you can't see anything. It's incredibly dangerous. I have terrific vision and now try to limit driving at night.

I think the issue is more about the angle of the lights than their brightness. lowbeams are only supposed to illuminate a fairly short distance in front of the vehicle. this is a big problem with lifted trucks. the owners don’t bother to realign the lights.

Lowbeams on sedans are blinding me in my small truck (not lifted, headlights aligned as intended). Something must be done.

Even "properly" aligned headlights are a problem on trucks, because they're too high to begin with.

> Vehicle size is another issue that comes up regularly, since NHTSA regulations for headlights don’t include a standardized mounting height, even as cars have ballooned in size in recent years. This means a perfectly aligned headlight in a larger car can still wreak havoc on a smaller car

It's also a big problem with hills. If two cars are approaching the crest of a hill at the same time, (IE each one is pointing up hill, facing each other) then each one is going to be blasted by each others low beams.

This does nothing when the ground is curved the wrong way, which happens often enough. Hills are already dangerous enough and blinding people whenever the second derivative of altitude is negative isn't helping.

except when they go over a bump, or a hill. or when they break and give gas, or when the car is loaded, or when they hit something and it's permanently bent, etc...

and then there's the internal adjustment knob that most people are clueless about. and most of the rest just put it on full high angle, because they see better that way...

society is fucked, and this issue is just sign #4745...

Same here. LED headlights are driven on a signal and it causes me migraines (seizures) sometimes. Regulation has failed us.

> “With complex arrays of LEDs and of optics,” he said, “car companies realized they can engineer in a dark spot where it’s being measured, but the rest of the field is vastly over-illuminated. And I’ve had now two car companies’ engineers, when I played stupid and said, ‘What’s the dark spot?’ … And the lighting engineers are all fucking proud of themselves: ‘That’s where they measure the fucking thing!’ And I’m like, ‘You assholes, you’re the reason that every fucking new car is blinding the shit out of everyone.’”

Can anyone find an example of what they're talking about?

I'm not an expert at all, but I thought headlight regulations defined multiple zones rather than small spots. Like this image shows: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Light-pattern-size-and-i...

They should really do a photometric study of headlights shining at a wall at a specified distance and take the average footcandles across the area being measured instead of measuring a specific spot.

Edit, this website has a photometric plan (top down view) for some site (two-headed pole lights) lighting at the top pf the page: https://www.innodez.com/photometric-plan-and-study/

Every time this comes up, someone comes in telling us how adaptive headlights will save the day now that they’re finally approved. Here’s the issue: this problem exists today, and stuffing ever more computers in newer cars is not going to fix all the jacked-up F-150s with retina-searing aftermarket replacement bulbs, and the new cars rolling off the line without adaptive headlights (which will soon become used cars on the road for many years to come).

It’s funny you single out trucks. Most all new-ish cars these days have the same headlights.

Oh trucks sit higher? Is that it? Should we exclusively develop low profile cars/trucks/SUVs? I think second-order effects would prove that this line of reasoning is a disaster.

So now what? Make headlights less bright? Is that safer, when you’re driving down a wooded road at night without any other cars around?

>So now what? Make headlights less bright? Is that safer, when you’re driving down a wooded road at night without any other cars around?

We have a solution for that, they're called high-beams.

> Oh trucks sit higher? Is that it? Should we exclusively develop low profile cars/trucks/SUVs?

For the love of god, yes. The American auto industry is simply out of fucking control with the size of trucks and SUVs, which is not JUST making them more difficult to drive safely with larger blind spots, making them MORE prone for parents to run over their own children with, take longer distances to stop and require larger brake components which cost more, more likely to kill anyone they happen to hit whether they're in a car or not, more expensive to buy, and equally shitty on fuel as trucks from the early 2000's are despite 20 fucking years of advancements in ICE technology, but is ALSO making them blind people because the headlight of a Silverado is roughly level with the ROOF of a standard sedan or compact.

Like I'm sorry, there is no fucking reason at all that an accountant from Stevesburg Ohio needs a vehicle that has worse safety characteristics than an LTL truck. If we can make SEMI'S not blind me, then we can do it for Joe who works at Walmart. Like... I don't even know why you'd call that LOW profile? My 2010 F-150 is the biggest vehicle I've ever owned, and if I park next to a modern F-150, the newer truck makes mine look like a goddamn mid-size truck. It's ridiculous how HUGE they've gotten.

I’ll meet you in the middle on this. Trucks have gotten big, no doubt.

I contend, knowing farmers who use their trucks for work every day, they can’t do their job without them.

So the question becomes, do we need regulation about who can buy a big truck? I contend that no, regulation just creates loopholes.

Oversize SUV's and farm vehicles are not the same thing at all.

Farmers with penis extension trucks, ute's, oversized bull bars, vanity spotlights et al are a thing .. but those vehicles are not essential for farm work .. they're there for the circle work.

We have farm vehicles, actual three trailer semi prime movers for road trains, modified nine tonne trucks, two storey high combines, chaser trucks for binning grain, ex military trucks for off road fire protection, etc.

These are not the road trucks the GP comments are rightfully complaining about.

I said “farmers who use their trucks” you’re twisting my words.

I'm stating as a fact that farmers about the globe are able to farm millions of tonnes of grain without the use of oversize yank tank "trucks".

They are not necessary for farming, it's commonplace to farm without them.

If US farmers are overly attached to a penis extension with dog balls and claim they are unable to live without them then that's a pathological condition, not a fact.

> I contend, knowing farmers who use their trucks for work every day, they can’t do their job without them.

Did I say "no more trucks?" No, I didn't. My complaint isn't the existence of trucks. My complaint is trucks that are MASSIVE for no reason.

I would also hazard a guess that the same farmers you're talking about have driver's licenses that cost more money and require more stringent testing to get, which is suitable when they are regularly driving vehicles like tractors, that can pancake a standard car. And like, at this point, you really should need a CDL for anything larger than an F-250.

I would also hazard a second guess that your farmer friends would find their trucks easier to use if they were lower to the ground and had smaller wheels, as pickup trucks did in the 80's and 90's, before the CAFE standards the auto industry begged for went into effect and allowed them to make the land mammoths that are now common in suburbs all over the United States, owned by not-farmers.

> So the question becomes, do we need regulation about who can buy a big truck?

No, we need regulation that states how big a truck can be and still be a consumer vehicle. And, we need an end to the subsidies in this country both on fuel itself and on the engines that it operates in vehicles people buy that make them financially feasible in a way they wouldn't otherwise, and failing that, there needs to be steep increases in gas and registration taxes and fees to account for how abusive these vehicles are to the roads they operate on and the communities they operate in. And once they actually cost what they should, the market can decide. If our accountant is just THAT COMMITTED to his F-350 SuperCrew with the 8 foot bed that he uses to buy groceries, that's completely fine! Assuming he can pay for it.

Of course everyone should be allowed to use as large a truck with as bright of lights as they want[1] on their own land. Likewise, excessively bright or high-mounted lights should be illegal to use on public roads. High beams are fine if (& only if) there's no other traffic close enough to be harmed by the bright lights. These rules are not an onerous burden on anyone & we need them to maintain safety & civility on the roads!

[1] within reason, not to the point that it blinds aircraft, neighbors, etc.

Yeah I just hate trucks. Truck drivers aren't even a protected class, maybe I'll never hire one :P

There's a significant correlation between one's personality and their car. Truck drivers are selfish.

For a while, I assumed I was just having vision troubles as I get older. Then I started thinking that the roads around here are just poorly graded so that headlights are constantly in people's faces.

That stat showing the average brightness of lights, though, certainly seems to line up all too well with what I have been experiencing. Baffling how bad it is now. Driving at night is much more annoying because of it.

Me too! I was thinking maybe my eyes had just degraded immensely from age 16 to 30

As someone who got LASIK surgery in my mid-20's, I want to double-underline this comment. As a fun fact for anyone not in the know, at least for the procedure I had, it is normal to have stronger halo effects in your vision basically for life. Don't get me wrong, the tradeoff is amazing and I don't regret it in the slightest, but for those who may not know, stronger halo effects means you see sources of light notably brighter than they'd otherwise be. If you've ever had your pupils dilated at the doctors, it's basically that at about 60% strength if you aren't in daylight.

And this has made driving at night for me an exercise in being blinded continuously by cars in the opposing lanes. At several points in my life I have now had to start wearing fucking sunglasses when I drive at night because otherwise, while I can see the headlights, I can't see anything the hell else including, but not limited to, retroreflectors, parked cars, and PEOPLE. All because every asshole with a newer car has lights bright enough that they can spot planes when ascending a hill.

Is there a war against loud exhaust? I'm affected far more by loud exhaust than by bright headlights.

Realistically, there isn't a war on anything because there are collective action problems and we have decided we just don't care. "Do whatever you want, I guess" is how it works.

What does the DOT even do?

Why do we allow stupid brake/turn signal combos that can be ambiguous for way too long when making quick decisions. (Was that a brake light? Flashing brake light? Turning?)

Are turn signals supposed to be red? Or orange? Or let's place them below the level of the back bumper... for reasons. Some standardization would be nice.

Previous discussion from 24 days ago (197 comments):

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42443406

when i was much younger, i had bought my first car which was well over 20 years old. a gigantic boat of an early 1970's ford. pretty much the family truckster. it had the four round headlights. outer two are low/high beams and inner two are high beams only. so when you had high beams on it was all four high-beams.

now, myself and my young wife were on a vacation and it was late, like midnight and i was trying to find a hotel for the night in a small town. i got pulled over.

the reason? i "blinded" a police officer because i had the high-beams on. i hadn't realized it. he pointed to a dim little red light on the dash (i didn't know what that was). even with 4 high-beams on and my young eyes, it was still a struggle to see in the dark night.

the officer laughed at me trying to turn them off. nope - that's the windshield wipers. that's the thing to tilt the wheel and so on. he said: "did you happen to notice that big switch thing on the floorboard?" (i had not). "push it with your foot" and then "have a good night" as he chuckled and disappeared.

that was a long time ago, but who else remembers real high-beams and floor switches? or even knows that was a thing?

I remember, as a little kid, being "in charge" of telling my father when to dip the headlights because I saw the glare of a car coming over the next hill or around the next curve. Of course he saw it too, and wouldn't blind an oncoming driver, but he'd make it seem like it was all up to me.

That would've been around 1980, in some kind of late-70s Pontiac, I can't remember what model, maybe a Bonneville. But it definitely had a floor switch.

IIRC, a big problem with them was that they would rust out in areas that salt the roads in winter, when the driver would track in salty slush on their boots.

I hate lights in general. People's garden security lights over a mile away can illuminate my bedroom. People walking around at night with LED headtorches in my face (I am now blind thanks), I can't see the sky at night thanks to overly powerful street lights, and they didn't stop me nearly being murderered a couple times, and worse to my friends. Working in an office we had constant bright overhead lightning. Everything is needlessly overilluminated.

If cars and drivers were more heavily regulated, it might make a difference for a whole array of problems: leaky engines, illegal modifications, poor maintenance, etc. otherwise it's pretty much the anarchic tyranny of all of against all.

Other than regular inspections and stiff fines, this is just pointless.

Gangsters with illegally tinted windows, illegally modified exhausts, carrying a silenced ghost gun AK-47, with illegally bright headlights aren't going to care much about your Reddit threads.

I've noticed this. My car has one of these bright headlights (I had no idea when I bought it). Its a lot easier to see in dark streets, I'll admit that.

But my car also has some electronics that turn headlights down if I'm using high beam when another car is coming my way. Maybe that's the solution, but for the low beam too?

No, fuck your automatic headlights too. By the time your car detects my car, you've already been blinding me for at least a few seconds. You're also blinding bikers and pedestrians, which that software doesn't detect.

Yeah, I don't turn on my automatic high beams until I'm on a rural road where I would have had them on manually anyway. But around town, I switch to low-beam only operation.

Why do people buy $40,000+ cars and not read the manual at least enough to know how to operate the damn headlights?

Most will be unaware of the manual existence, it might not even be printed

Printed or not, owners manuals are required by law and everyone who has passed a drivers test should be aware of their existence. People are simply lazy, overconfident, and don't bother to read the big book.

The "big book" for my decade-old car is 387 pages. A few pages are dog-eared-- like the handwritten radio reset code-- but if there's a note in there about my headlights... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And I despise modern LED headlights.

Well, they are small pages. And I don't expect everyone to read every page... but at least be familiar with all of the buttons, controls, and indicators which the driver is expected to operate.

Because in living memory, we didn't have to operate headlights. We would turn them on, and sometimes turn on brighter ones.

I think the problem is actually the opposite, and that people today often presume their headlights are "automatic", and that no decisions by the driver are necessary.

In the 90's you'd get into a car at night, and if you couldn't see the dashboard, you'd know you need to turn your lights on. This nudge doesn't happen anymore because modern dashboards are also illuminated while headlights are off. This is why you see many people driving around with DRLs only at night in cities. The legacy situation is that people "operated" their headlights, and today, many presume they don't have to.

In the 1990s we had automatic headlights that worked perfectly and didn't blind anyone.

The technology “worked” as it was designed, but it also created a new problem by training drivers to ignore their vehicle’s controls.

you have your high beams on. Just use your regular headlights. You don't need it turned up to 11

I drove a newer car and it had this feature to leave the high beams on "auto" where they detect when a car is coming and turn them off

> Its a lot easier to see in dark streets, I'll admit that.

The solution to driving on really dark streets is to turn your high beams on temporarily.

> But my car also has some electronics that turn headlights down if I'm using high beam when another car is coming my way.

I've heard this statement from other people before and - no, it doesn't work. You still get blinded for a few seconds before your "smart car" turns them off.

I'm not sure if my lights are weak or normal lately. I'm not sure how much of the road you're supposed to illuminate without it being brights. My lights are yellow too wonder if white would make a difference.

That's pretty funny, lights so bright it can x-ray a deer.

Listen to me.

LCD film on the windscreen. Camera for driver-eye tracking, Camera for headlight tracking.

Dim just the area (a good algo would yield a small patch) that blinds the driver.

So a worse version of a welding helmet?

No better because it only dims the bright spots instead of dimming the entire thing.

Bonus you will be able to also use it as heads up display if it has good resolution.

Yellow sunglasses might be a little simpler.

Ok taking it back. Bosch already has built this as a visor. https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/safe-eyes-save...

This is a good article that touches on a lot of the nuances of this issue, and I hope people take the time to read it.

I'm in the camp that "brightness" is what is people notice, but it isn't necessarily the root cause of the issue. Aiming, leveling, beam height, pattern, lens condition, compliance, etc are all significant contributors to this issue as well.

Light on the road is a good thing, the problem is when the light goes in your eyes.

Anecdotally, the condition of people's headlights that I observe on the roads in the US is atrocious. Any given evening I can go on a short drive and observe:

* overloaded cars (which will point headlights in the air because US cars generally don't have beam leveling)

* dirty or obscured lenses (and again, the US doesn't require washers, and rarely does highway patrol enforce even heavily obscured lamps)

* broken or damaged vehicles with damaged lamps pointing the wrong direction

* drivers with one working headlamp, using high beams as a workaround for fixing their car

* drivers who are oblivious to the operation mode of their lamps (either driving with DRLs or high beams on)

* aftermarket lamps that don't have a proper beam pattern

I think bright lamps would be fine if people used them correctly, and we had better regulations to ensure they put the light properly on the road, but unfortunately you really can't trust US drivers to do things correctly, and the last thing that is politically palatable in the US is to enforce/enact more road safety regulations. And it seems highway patrol is only interested in enforcing speed limits and vehicle registration these days. And in the few states that even bother to inspect vehicles at all often fail to properly inspect headlights.

I actually think mitigations are real, but economics of the situation is broken. Right now buying and installing really bright headlights is cheap while not blinding people with really bright headlights is expensive I don't see this changing any time soon. I don't really like the situation, but enforcing max headlight brightness is far easier than enforcing not other blinding people.

The whole situation with headlight regulations relying on smart headlights and calibration feels like plastics recycling. It is a neat idea which runs head first into unworkable economics.

The EU generally places better mitigations on headlight glare, and their vehicles aren't any more expensive. It would be pretty easy to regulate: "if they're over [x] brightness, then you must have these mitigations"

But the other problem of maintenance will probably always be a problem because most states are reluctant to burden their driving constituency with any inspection/enforcement program worth a damn.

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