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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01

LED headlights are fantastic. They work everyday. They never get burnt out. In the spirit of boomers, if they're blinding you, go complain about the lack of inspections in your state. I love LED lights.

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LED headlights are blinding. One thing I’ve noticed is that many people, especially people with non-LED headlights, are resorting to running with brights on at all times. Pretty sure it’s not legal, but I have to admit that many LED headlights on low are actually worse than old style brights. It sucks driving at night, and seeing LEDs directly is physically painful.

Inspections don’t help; any slight variations in road angle puts someone in direct sight of correctly adjusted headlights. Unadjusted headlights aren’t the problem, and probably never will be, unlike the old headlights. Most LED headlights are relatively new and perfectly adjusted (and are designed to stay adjusted forever.)

I don’t know the whole story, but I heard that Europe has widely adopted dynamic masking on LED headlights and that in the US, lobbying of some sort is preventing adoption. I would LOVE if we had such a thing… or some fancy night goggles that could mask all bright points without masking anything dark (or maybe even boost the darks)… I would be willing to pay a lot of money for that.

Edit: a search just informed me that the headlight laws changed in 2022, and dynamic masking is coming here. https://www.mcnicholaslaw.com/adaptive-driving-beams-on-the-...

Curious, "dynamic masking on LED headlights", are you referring to the LED matrix systems where individual pixels will be turned off as to not blind those in front of you, but the remaining pixels are still on?

If so, they are widely adopted here in the EU but only for full beams not the regular headlights.

Yes, that’s what I’m thinking of. Search says it’s sometimes called Adaptive Driving Beam or Dynamic Light Assist.

Ah too bad if it doesn’t apply to low beams… LED low beams are still extremely problematic.

The search results are telling me that dynamic masking in the US will only apply to low beams and not high beams. Maybe that’s a good thing? I’m just hoping the situation will get better somehow.

> Maybe that’s a good thing?

Definitely, I'd love for that here in the EU as well. With it being pitch black half of the year here in Sweden I'm constantly blinded by LED low beams to the point that high traffic country roads are becoming very difficult.

However, LED matrix / dynamic high beams is also a godsend. On a country road, you can keep your high beams on and they will disable the pixels that would blind the other drivers, but still light up the side of the road where deers and moose appear.

Maybe one day we can have both

In the EU beams cast light off to the side of the road and not into incoming traffic.

When we go from uk to Europe for example we have to fit deflector stickers to the headlights to alter the beam so we don’t dazzle drivers on the other side of the road.

In the us I don’t think you have this. Driving at night in the USA is horribl, like a thousands subs beaming directly into your eyes.

It isn’t THAT bad here here. It’s getting worse with bright lights and tall cars sure but it’s not on the same level of the USA due to the beam shape

I agree that the problem with headlights is misalignment, not brightness, but there are some vehicles that come misaligned from the factory. cough F150 cough.

The F150 lights are so high that they're blinding even when properly pointed down. We need proper regulations for maximum height too. And while you're at it, regulations for maximum hood height so that they stop killing so many pedestrians.

I saw a car with terrible headlights, so I started a recording to see if there was flicker (which sometimes indicates that they're aftermarket). The light turned green, the car pulled forward & leveled out, and the headlights became less blinding. It was just a regular Hyundai SUV:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1mshs0v...

I don't think the problem is with LED lights in particular, it's really the "color temperature" of lights and brightness or "lumens" are two high. Old incandescent lights could have also been too bright (think police car lights shining into your eyes).

But I generally agree - ever since I got PRK eye surgery ultra white car lights are hard for me to handle. My wife has always been sensitive to light (she has lighter eyes), so that goes to show that there's certainly a range of tolerance for this and it's really a safety issue.

Inspections are a good idea, but I'd like to see some control over what can be sold to prevent the installation in the first place.

My theory is the manufacturers' marketing departments went to the engineers and said "we can't sell cars with safe headlights anymore, please make the next model's headlights seem brighter than they actually are."

Blue-white headlights are actually much less functional for human vision than yellow/amber headlights, so the engineers had to use the regulatory loophole to exponentially increase the output of their marketing-imposed blue-white lights.

Who cares whether somebody says "I hate LED headlights" or "I hate the lack of regulation and/or enforcement around LED headlight brightness/angle characteristics in my state"? It's a pointless distinction colloquially. We all understand the problem. Nobody is confused. And it is a huge problem. Sometimes I have to pull over because the oncoming car has completely drowned out all other sights. It's reckless and dangerous, and that's all that matters until it's fixed. Then we can talk about the useful feature of LED headlights.

Becaused LED lighting is good technology and better than old school bulbs in almost all scenarios. Say "too bright headlights" when you mean that.

I think he posts from a US standpoint where regulations for the aftermarket is problematic and adaptive headlights are allowed but with such high standards that no automaker has them yet. Also LUMEN is a very stupid way to market car headlights as it just depicts the light intensity. Candela is usually used for this specific application since it’s a measurement of light intensity in a specific direction.

Agreed, I love my (stock and factory aimed) LED headlights. Haven’t had an issue in 5 years where I would’ve replaced multiple lamps in an older style headlight, which was the case with the Subaru I owned before.

LED headlight retrofit kits are probably what should be illegal, that’s where you get the poorly aimed and overly bright headlights.

Were you replacing them because they got dim or because they burned out?

I haven't replaced my lights for an extended period and am wondering if that's why they are dim, but if they burned out that fast they were probably getting some kind of contamination on the bulbs (which concentrates the heat).

Halogen bulbs do dim out as they age. The most common problem with modern headlights is the plastic covers get oxidized (cloudy) due to sun exposure. The cloudyness blocks some of the light from the bulbs, and scatters the rest.

https://www.theautodoc.net/blog/why-do-headlights-become-clo...

The other problem is that some bulbs are just not very good - the filaments aren't properly positioned, or they don't have a good spectral output.

3M has a kit for polishing the haze off headlights with a drill, and for restoring the UV protection layer [0]. Dan Stern [1] told me it's really better to just get a new OEM headlight.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/3M-39008-Headlight-Restoration-System...

[1] https://www.danielsternlighting.com/

I suspect I had a wiring issue that was causing the lamps to burn out prematurely, either that or the lens housing wasn’t watertight and moisture/condensation was destroying the lamps.

> They work everyday. They never get burnt out.

Until they do (because everything has a failure rate) and cost thousands for an entire new projector assembly. Compare to the cost of a halogen bulb every couple 10k miles.

The MTBF for OEM LEDs is in the decades timescale. Projector assembly isn't called LED bulb for a reason. It's time to nuke this misconception from orbit. If your 17 year LED headlight has failed, you need the part that represents just the LED bulb, and not the entire headlight assembly. See price difference between part 1 and part 9 below:

https://vw.oempartsonline.com/v-2024-volkswagen-gti--autobah...

“MTBF in decades” is marketing fiction. The diode itself might last forever in a lab, but the driver electronics, thermal paste, seals, and optics sure don’t. Real-world LED headlights die from heat cycling, moisture ingress, and driver board failure long before the diode hits its theoretical limit. Most assemblies don’t even have a serviceable “bulb” to replace. Pretending you can just pop in a $40 LED chip instead of the $900 housing is wishful thinking.

They are fantastic, but not for the other drivers. I live in Sweden where it's very, very dark for a large chunk of the year. I'm also not a boomer. But when it's very dark, the difference in blinding is staggering between meeting an old yellow light headlight vs a modern LED headlight. It's not about lack of inspection (although that is also an issue as it seems many headlights are not properly calibrated), but difference in the warmth of light itself. LED headlights is great for you at the cost of everybody you meet on the road.

Human eyes are hypersensitive to blue-white light, but the old lighting science found that orange-yellow light is best for humans in a low-light environment.

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