Why are countries so reluctant to do anything about this? Is it the massive recall for existing cars they’re worried about?
The whole situation reeks of the kind of thing that'll be mostly solved with technological progress over time (one of the german makes already has something that exempts a car in front of you from having the LEDs focused on it, I assume development is ongoing) and it really just remains to be seen if we get some law (which probably won't be decisive since this is a fairly subjective issue with no "obvious" answer) along the way.
GM vehicles had been notorious for having poorly adjusted headlights from the factory. The fact that Xenon systems seemed to always come with auto leveling and LED often does not is crazy.
Stuffing ever more controllers, cameras, and sensors in there to focus and aim LEDs just sounds like the most over-engineered solution to this problem imaginable. The dealers are just going to love all the income from repairing all these points of failure. All for what gain? Yes, yes, “safety,” I know. Consider, though, that as drivers feel more comfortable on the road with their white dwarves, they are likely going to drive faster and more recklessly. It’s the same as American Football helmets switching away from leather—the hits get harder.
I agree it's all overcomplicated bullshit in order to polish another percent or two out of the turd but the overcomplicated bullshit is already in the field so why not write software that uses it a little better?
>Consider, though, that as drivers feel more comfortable on the road with their white dwarves, they are likely going to drive faster and more recklessly. It’s the same as American Football helmets switching away from leather—the hits get harder.
Faster when adjusted for equivalent safety sounds like a good thing to me.
> one of the german makes already has something that exempts a car in front of you
… and this technology does not have that level of efficacy, and neither do any of the others.
The issue is not the technology or the absolute brightness of a bulb.
The problem is that replacement bulbs have a different beam pattern and the headlight mount needs to be adjusted. That's it.
In the vast majority of cases, car headlights are blinding simply because they're aimed too high. On most(all?) vehichles there is an adjustment mechanism under the hood. Problem is it takes special tools and procedures that nobody knows or cares about.
As a sibling commenter said, we've managed to survive for the better part of a century with toggleable high beams. This isn't a complicated problem.
No, it's almost always true that the light output is far, far too bright. Adjusting headlight aim is good and should be done, but it does not solve the problem, and notably is not effective in road conditions other than smooth (bumps cause lights to go up and down), flat (inclines cause the harmful light level to change), and dry (water or ice on the ground cause reflective glare).