I know I’m not the only one who feels like I’m getting visually assaulted everytime I drive at night. It was bad 10 years ago but now, it seems like headlight manufacturers have a deal with insurance companies and optometrists to make the lights as bright as possible. Is this ever going to stop or is there some kind of race in the headlight industry to see who can reproduce the power of the sun first?
In Canada, the federal government just put out a nationwide poll for input on this exact subject, as it’s coming near to the time to review the related legislation. It’s very possible that some of the headlight implementations currently on the road will soon be illegal nationwide.
Thank god, I’ve been sick of this shit for over a decade. I don’t know who would vote against dimmer lights. Do you have a link for this poll?
The poll closed 20 April: https://tc.canada.ca/en/corporate-services/consultations/canadian-experience-vehicle-headlights-glare-night
I seem to recall it opened in February. There were lots of news articles on Lemmy about it at the time.
In regional areas the extra light at night is genuinely helpful.
However, thats on unlit roads with so little traffic that you only see an oncoming car once every 5 or 10 minutes.
On roads with more traffic theyre just not necessary because there aren’t any animals or other obstacles.
In regional areas the extra light at night is genuinely helpful.
Bro, that’s what the high beams are for.
The current situation is the normal (low beam) headlights on some “newer” cars are so bright, I could turn of my headlights at night and the car behind me gives enough light for me to see without a problem.
Oh I thought thats what everyone was complaining about.
Everyone here has after market LED light bars or spot lights. Factory lights and evern high beams are no big thing but light bars have the fire of a thousand suns.
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Trucks with 3 sets of LED lights blinding me all the time
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We haven’t. Many states have new laws on the books about this issue, and others on the horizon. The issue is that they approved at one point, so there will most likely be a grandfather clause for existing ones on the road because you can’t force car manufacturers to go back and recall all these things to be retroactively compliant with a new law at cost to them. Not how laws work.
You can ban the sale of super high power bulbs, though. all of the bright headlamps fail (even LEDs, eventually…) and they simply get replaced with compliant bulbs.
It is less about the output in lumens of the lamp, but more about the angle and color temperature.
In most cars, the difference between regular headlight operation and “brights” has nothing to do with the output, it’s about the angle of the beams. Of course, when you angle the headlights up so you can see farther down the road, now you also point them at oncoming drivers eyes.
The scourge of “blue” headlights amplifies the problem. They’re no brighter, but they are more uncomfortable to stare down.
In most cars, there are a variety of ways to fine-tune the angle of the beams with often little more than a screwdriver. The problem is that most people have no idea that they need to be adjusted. This is why regular inspections are important as well as some sort of standards that can be applied across a wide variety of cars.
The reality is that correcting poor angle on headlights is a trivial task, should only take a few moments. Additionally, most modern headlight systems are active and can adjust the angle by pointing the lamp down or using shutters or individual LEDs to change the angle or beam pattern. Eventually, this will just be an irritating thing of the past, but it will take a number of years before every GM truck and SUV is off the road as well as a lot of current Hyundai/Kia products (anecdotally observed by me to be the worst offenders).
LED’s generally outlast the car
Not the PCB flea-bay ones. Not ten minutes ago I discovered yet another 194 bulb fritzingTF out on my car that the previous owner had installed. This is the fifth one that has crapped out. I only notice because I rarely drive at night and my car looks like it’s spazzing out.
I work in auto parts. I processed warranty returns for about 5 years as my main task for a while. We didn’t get many led bulb warranty/defective returns. Hella, Sylvania, Osram, Heliolite, and can’t remember the other brand we typically sell. Those brands have very very few returns that weren’t “we fucked up and ordered the wrong part”
Just stop buying cheap shitty bulbs from cheap shitty suppliers
That would be my recommendation as well. I would guess that the temu bulbs fail because they don’t seem to have any practical means of active cooling No heat sinks or other mode of heat dissipation. Couple that with likely bottom-shelf cob leds, and you are now piloting a seizure-mobile.
Myth. LEDs do not last. Led house bulbs also suck, and die all the time. Led headlight literally go out on 2 year old vehicles, ive seen it often, usually Chevy’s if i recall.
The whole “led lasts forever” was a scam.
Which brand led bulbs are you buying, so I can avoid them? I have bulbs that I use daily when I’m at home, and a few are getting close to 15 years old at this point.
Feit
I wouldn’t ever buy from them, I had to wait months for them to answer a simple technical sales question about capability on one of their lights. Only got an answer because I sent another email after months and ruined some ones KPI lol. Them not answering within a week disqualified them
They can last forever, or you can push them too hard with too little cooling to save money. Almost all bulbs seem to do this.
Of course bad designs overheating the leds do lead to some cars models (and brands) burning out their LED’s, but as a general statement its still true.
So Chevy cant design a proper circut. Check.
My Acura MDX has permanent LEDs, they cannot be changed without buying a complete new headlight assembly. I’ve been driving it for 11 years and have never had any of them fail. They will outlast the car.
Wasteful and terrible idea for repairability. I’ll take my sealed beams and 1176 generic bulbs that are user serviceable. Have you seen the cost of those headlight assemblies ? Also, get in 1 small fender bender or a deer you’re looking at maaaasive repair bills now.
Any fender bender means massive repairs. I’ve been replacing bulbs for over 30 years, it’s nice to have great visibility and not having to worry about bulb replacement. I totally get your point, but it’s a non-issue for me altogether. I’ve never had to replace them up to this point, and I’ll never have to replace them in the future most likely.
I’ve driven it for so long at this point if I get in a fender bender it’ll be totaled anyway. They’re mathematically engineered to last between 41 and 68 years. That’s one cost I’ll never have to worry about.
Makes sense ! I just dont like non replaceable parts.
It gets worse when you combine super LED brights with matrix headlights that are marketed to “allow the high beams to remain on even with oncoming traffic”.
The last part: it can work like that, with a transition period
Because consumer protection and regulation seems to have stopped being a real thing after Reagan. Since then everything good has been legacy agencies patching at the edges where they had authority (all gone now thanks to the Supreme Court - see Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo).
Buckle up. It’s only going to get worse.
(This is extra ironic because buckling up is only even a thing because of consumer protections. So I guess get ready to be thrown through a windshield.)
its just so american to only think in a timeline of presidents :) always gets me
i guess adaptive headlights were also invented by reagan
Your overlord’s president is also your president
My apologies.
Deregulation happened completely randomly in a vacuum like a decaying lump of a radioactive element with no cause.
In all seriousness though… yes, ALL changes happen in a sea of social, economic, and political factors, but someone pulls the trigger, and it’s fair to point at the gunman.
Adaptive headlights only recently became legal in the US.
That’s because a significant amount of the regulatory agency leadership is appointed by the executive and follows their policy priorities?
Because (particularly in the US) people have the attitude of “I know that it’s going to be shit for other people, but it makes me feel a little better about things, so I’m going to do it anyway”
That’s a very complex thought process. Let me unveil the real reason:
“whoah that’s cool”
That’s it. If someone made a pan-nuclear LED with the same brightness as the surface of an entire white dwarf, people would buy it. That’s where the thinking ends. Where the light ends up, other people, etc… Who cares?
“Other people exist?”
Its (like many things) mostly the us’s fault. A slide away from rules into vibe based everything.
I remember a long time ago when I was first getting my license you had to pass a headlight test where you parked in a spot and there where painted lines on a wall for both high and low beams. It was how you adjusted your lights and was common in Canada. Now no one even knows what I am talking about. The rules are still there but no one enforces them and most forgot they can even adjust their lights (not sure new cars and trucks can be anymore).
Manufacturers in North America are now putting their lights so high up on vehicles and use such bright piercing lights on everything that night driving has become a nightmare. The answer to getting blinded is now to out blind others, its madness.
I love that people are asking me if I have some kind of visual deficiency when the phenomenon of blinding lights is so common that it’s in the simpsons from 27 years ago lol
Its gotten to a point that seems impossible, just full clown world. Its gotten to the point that my favorite car to drive at night is my Fiero, because I am so low I am below most of the blinding lights.
And those are “only” halogen. It’s gotten much worse since then. Like you said, a sort of arms race.
I mean they also say “high intensity” which implies HIDs rather than halogens to me, and those require a clear cutoff unlike halogens/incandescents.
It’s also common with European cars, which are much lower and yet have increasingly bright (and bluer?) lights.
The brightness is an issue, but the placement and angle are the bigger problem. Its the slippery slope of following american trends. Years ago Mercedes Benz (I think) put out a car that used IR light and a heads up screen (no visible headlights, just running lights) showing the driver the night landscape without needing to blind everyone. It was banned in the states, no real reason why but the idea went dead.
Without actual headlights I’m certain someone would pull out in front of you, people are dumb
Running lights are a thing, and I see enough people driving with only them at night now.
Was it banned in other countries too, or is there some other reason it isn’t used?
Cost, probably
Mercedes put it in the S-Class, their flagship. They can afford fancy extras there.
Makes sense.
Not sure, but the tech is old and tested (almost all cold war era things used IR lights). The issue is I think they can sell the super terrible bright lights as “safety” features. And a lot of consumer trends are american based and just forced on the world.
A German auto company isn’t going to pull a safety feature from the EU, South American, and Asian markets just because it’s banned in the US.
No but they will not also pursue one that is not allowed in the us market as hard. But then again times are a changin.
I think you’re over estimating the amount of influence the US auto market has had.
It was banned in the states
UV scare. They had to use UV lights to make it work. But they weren’t on the same wavelength as say a tanning bed but people made a noise about it anyways.
No IR not UV. Not the same wavelength UV and IR are on the opposite sides of the visual spectrum.
This is a US and Canada problem. This is basically a non-issue in the rest of the world.
There are two standards for headlights, one established by the UN that applies to 99% of countries. Whereas the US and Canada have the other standard that is far worse for glare.
The global standard has strict rules on glare, requiring a sharp cutoff line at the top of the beam. The american regulations do not have this. American regulations do not account for headlight height off the ground, defining alignment purely with angles. An SUV or pickup with its headlights mounted above your eyeline can legslly shine the fullest part of its lights directly into your eyes at all times. In contrast, the international regulations account for height, and require tall vehicles to incline their headlights further downward to avoid dazzling other drivers.
This problem can be solved for new cars instantly by switching to the international standard. The auto industry is international. They sell in markets with the global standard and could switch their headlights immediately after a change in the law. This is an easily solvable problem.
Thank you for the informative text, but it is definitely a problem in the rest of the world too, at least in Europe. The front lights of cars have gotten too bright for urban settings, and perhaps there are just too many cars around, to the point I have read and heard dozens different people in recent years wondering if it’s just their perception.
Driving a bicycle at night on the side of a road is impossible if you are not equipped as well with a sun in a box.I don’t think this is true anymore. We have standards for headlights with much sharper cutoff and even allow active matrix headlights now. But that won’t help until it’s been true long enough for most cars to have this.
In addition to general asshatedness, there’s definitely a regulation issue.
- many states don’t do annual inspections Much less care about headlights
- how the eff is it legal to sell led headlight inserts that fit standard headlight fixtures, with a wink and a nod that “they’re not intended for headlights”
For me it’s not the brightness, but the color temperature of the light that gets me. Why do we strictly regulate the color of turn signals and brake lights, but not headlights? Warm white should be mandated.
What can any of us do about anything? Everything sucks ass and I have no idea what to do. Should I talk to my literal neo nazi neighbors until I’ve somehow successfully re-educated them? That’s fucking stupid and not possible. The second they turn around from our conversation, they see a television, in their own house, in all the restaurants, in every waiting room in the country, blaring FOX News.
Going over to a Facebook market place pickup, and seeing a dude with Fox just playing in the afternoon on a weekend. I was just like “you really choose to do this in your free time?”. I felt nothing but genuine pity. And I got a pretty cool green enamel sink for free, so I wasn’t about to say anything.
Same reason we just accepted increasingly loud exhausts. Too many selfish idiots on the roads to enforce it effectively.
Same reason we accepted living further and further away from amenities. Cars are a self-reinforcing malady.
Not even the same. LEDs statistically are better for helping light up the roads during the night, and reducing lack of visibility crashes.
https://landline.media/blinded-by-the-light-are-newer-headlights-putting-drivers-at-risk/
No one said loud exhausts or LED lights* cause crashes. They are just annoying to other people. So I would say they are exactly the same.
*we’re not talking about all LED lights here. We’re talking about misaligned and excessively bright LED lights. I’m sure new, modern lights let drivers see better (that’s why they are put in the new cars) but they don’t have to blind other drivers to do that.
I must be taking crazy pills…the title and comment is all about how we just accept this and how manufacturers are racing to make lights as bright as the sun. No where in the comment of this post does it say misaligned.
I’ve read other articles about it the consensus is that the lights are not actually brighter:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/oct/31/headlights-too-bright
“”"Although headlights feel significantly brighter than they used to, Brannon notes that the maximum standards for light output set by the US transportation department’s NHTSA haven’t changed in decades.
Part of the issue, he says, is that the temperature of the light in headlight bulbs has changed.
Experts point out that more drivers are buying bigger cars. Because these cars are taller, their headlights are more likely to shine in the eyes of drivers of smaller cars.
Additionally, many vehicles on the road have misaligned headlights. Over time, the regular wear and tear of driving can jostle headlights out of alignment, meaning the brightest part of the light ends up illuminating areas it’s not supposed to – say, right into an oncoming driver’s eyes.“”"
And this is also my experience. I see a lot of cars with LED lights but few cars in on the roads blind me and when they do they are clearly shining right in my eyes. In Europe huge cars are still not that popular so I’m guessing it’s mostly misalignment, people driving with long beams on or some custom lights that are way brighter than the norm. I have no idea if most people don’t know that they are blinding others or if they don’t care.
Some people are are more sensitive to sharper LED lights and they have bigger problems when driving at night now. In that case properly aligned LED lights are better (and safer) for some, and worst for others.
It seems most people who have issues with the new lights already have vision issues to begin with and would have the same issue with the gold/yellow halogen lights anyways but probably don’t remember. As I can damn near look at the new LEDs and do not get blinded at all by them but the old lights if the vehicle forgot to turn off their brights.
I have much less problem with yellow headlights, and most people mentioning color temp in this thread are expressing as much.
My bike has a yellow headlight and white high beam, which makes it very obvious if I’m flashing someone as opposed to the changes in intensity some headlights have when the reflector is angular.
That’s not what we’re talking about, did you read the title???
It really is, the OP is asking why there isn’t more regulation to stop companies from swapping to the LEDs, and the statistics say that there doesn’t need to be because they’re safer.
This is like asking why they don’t regulate 3 point seatbelts cause it irritates some peoples necks…and we should go back to lap belts.
I know they have gotten brighter over the years but that’s not what’s been the biggest issue for me. To me it’s the fact these trucks keep getting taller, 3 feet ago it wasn’t as bad because the lights were closer to the road, now the headlights on these trucks are damn near eye-level.
Yeah I don’t understand why everyone needs a tank-sized SUV to drive their kids home from school. I’d love to get a small sedan sized truck with a normal car engine but the back is a truck bed, but those are long gone as an option in the states. When I was in Australia I saw these, they call them a ute.
Over here, ADRs (Australian design rules) stopped this problem before it began
Ha! I wish it did. Certainly keeps it from getting too bad though.
maybe i dont have the perspective of other countries but some of the lighs im experiencing are well above acceptable (im guessing aftermarket). has there been fines for this from police or transport departments?
The police can issue “yellow stickers” for illegal modifications including non compliant headlight modifications.
If given one, the vehicle has to go for inspection.
It happens, however it’s rare enough that it doesn’t really stop people doing stupid shit like fitting the wrong bulbs in the wrong housing or fitting LEDs with the power of 10 suns and fucking binding everyone.
Yes, shops here can’t sell non-ADR compliant headlights either
So the problem is just with people who individually import them that aren’t compliant who haven’t been seen by police yet
We used to be a proper country.
The auto industry lobbied to deregulate headlights, and of course, they got what they wanted. Ostensibly, it was to allow for more aerodynamic designs. Of course, the real reason was to have a proprietary part that often needed replacement so they could charge hundreds of dollars directly for something that used to be cheap and standardized.
Ultimately, though, I blame the systematic dismantling of our public education. Basic values of citizenship used to be taught in public schools, and most kids grew up to be fairly decent. That’s not as common anymore.
They lobbied to deregulate it because they were only allowed to use one specific design. That’s why until the Ford Taurus every car had the same round headlights.
We need laws against the current stupidity, but can you imagine the waste if we were still forced to use one specific incandescent bulb everywhere?
Switch to one specific LED bulb instead. (Or two! Your choice of circle or rectangle.)
There was actually four different standard designs. You had the rectangular lights which came as either a 4x6" quad configuration, or the larger 5x7"design with one light on each side. Then there was the 5 3/4" round lights which were also a quad configuration, and the 7" round lights with one on each side. Prior to 1975 there was only the round designs and prior to 1958 when the quad 5 3/4" round light configuration were allowed, the only legal headlight was the 7" round design, which itself dated back to 1939.
The reason for the standardization in 1939 was that similar to today, every car had different designs in different configurations, though the main problem then was finding replacement lights when they inevitably burned out or got damaged.
The first car with composite headlights (in the US) was actually the Ford Thunderbird, but the Taurus is one everyone noticed.
What’s funny is that we’ve actually incorrectly regulated headlights in the US. It’s the only example I can think of off the top of my head where deregulation might help.
We’ve banned euro-style dynamic lights that can carve out dim spots for oncoming traffic on the fly.
(Of course this doesn’t preclude other additional regulation that we do need about angle and things of that nature.)
Either that changed or at least one brand has a waiver. Mine does that. It’s really cool driving with my high beams on but watching the dark spot follow the oncoming traffic. It’s also interesting driving with those same automatics high beams through town yet have so many dark spots it’s practically like only having running lights. It’s a fantastic feature
It clearly functions as intended, although the data geek in me wants to run experiments to verify it’s effective
It’s fucking horrible even here in EU, where I would expect it to be better regulated. Can’t imagine how bad it’s in the US.
I’ve even seen multiple posts on local subreddits about people buying SUV/crossovers and one of the main reason was being blinded by other SUVs.
Fucking horrible it should be checked at every MOT, and it sometimes is, but the newer vehicles are exempt from yearly MOTs for some stupid reason.
I didn’t think about it a the time I bought might but that has been a plus to be fair my are stock. Only had a hand full of people putting on their brights back at me. What you going to do.
Adjust your lights to not blind other drivers?
Well that’s no fun at all!
“Only a handful of people indicate to me that I’m being an asshole when I know I’m being an asshole. What are you going to do? I am helpless in this situation.”
These comments make me glad I don’t have to drive at night often.
Also why did they make them cooler? Everything used to me more tinted red and now everything has gone to blue which is worse for your night vision.
