I'm happy my Tesla does a decent job of having the screen be quite dark at night but the headlights are quite bad with the horizontal cutoff style that only lights the first few feet of horizontal ahead of the car. I need to see those deer and elk on the side of the road, damn it.

Some of the towns here also started scattering flashing LEDs over every road sign they can find. Some areas feel like driving through Blackpool Illuminations. The worst offender locally is a roundabout light that flashes blue, which of course you assume to be an emergency vehicle approaching.

The quality of driver is also decreasing. One of our MPs computed the data and discovered "Since 2016, 1,367,942 foreign drivers have been issued a driving licence without taking a UK test". There are apparently 42.1 mn licenses [2], so ~1/30 never took a UK test. It's getting dangerous out there.

[1] https://mattersoftesting.blog.gov.uk/the-mot-headlamp-aim-te...

[2] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/know-how/population-of-th...

When you're in another car their car's sensors might detect your headlights and dim a little bit. But as a pedestrian? You basically just get blinded - from low light right to 10000 lumens straight in your eyes. It's overpowering.

Can't make them illegal fast enough, IMO.

Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them.

So who are they for? I think broadly people may just not be able to avoid excess unless restricted by the facts of their environment. Allow people a plethora of calories, they'll get too fat. Allow them a plethora of entertainment, they'll drive themselves insane. And somehow .. allow them too many bright lights and they'll all just blind each other.

Public roads are not race tracks; they are for people.

I would love to hugely curtail automotive design:

- of course, dim the headlights to a reasonable brightness.

- The Escalades have to go. Big trucks are for business, not taking the kids to school.

- No screens in the console.

- Absolutely no AI self-driving mode until it can be designed by the government. Allowing AI's to pilot cars based on the crappy engineering of a whiny trillionaire is nuts, yet we've allowed it. Let the government set the standards for "smart roads" to force cars to share sensor data.

- Crush every cyber truck into a cube, while you are at it.

There might be some issues with retro fitting the world's existing road vehicle fleet, but that's a deployment detail. :p

In recent years I've started being unable to tell who's intentionally blinding traffic and who's just got misconfigured lamps (shining at eye level instead of angled down at the road). It used to be feasible to also let people know when their lights are misconfigured, I'd probably decide 1 warrants a signal across several hours of driving (also because of avoiding collateral targets), but the most recent time I drove, I think there was always at least one car in sight that had the issue. It's completely constant. It was worsening a few years ago but it's really getting out of hand now, in Germany and the Netherlands at least. Some people's lights are even piercing by day! Thankfully that is quite rare yet

Even if the dip angle is the same (1% gradient or so), this can still dazzle most people nearby.

Additionally, car designers should leave headlights and indicators alone, unless they are making the vehicles safer. The first time I encountered an oncoming car with a horizontal LED strip between the lights, I had no idea what style of vehicle was oncoming.

As a long-time walker in the US, anecdotally, I've noticed some especially blinding car headlights, and they seem to be among the whiter ones. "Hey, thanks for ruining my night vision and my sleep cycle." But I usually can't tell whether the cause of the problem is the the aiming, brightness, or temperature. I thought headlights were carefully regulated.

(There's something about LED lights that brings out oblivious or indifferent behavior. Maybe involving efficiency improvements, and people not reassessing requirements (e.g., when you couldn't get a too-bright light, or it would be too expensive to operate, you didn't have to think about other not-too-bright requirements). In recent years, we got municipalities installing miserable bright white street lamps, prompting complaints from walkers and people who don't have blackout curtains anywhere that shines in at night. And the last couple years, some individual residential properties in my very dense neighborhood are installing crazy-bright white LED floodlights outdoors, shining at sidewalks and adjacent property windows, brighter than even the new street lamps. I'm starting to see walkers at night going out into the street (which isn't very safe), just to avoid the blast. The first too-bright property lights to appear on a block's street are very easy to spot, because they're obviously the brightest thing there.)

In the 1980s my dad had a Citroën GSA (and indeed I had one in the mid-2000s, when it was about 20 years old) which was a low-to-mid-spec family saloon. It had headlights about a foot wide and 5" high with a bog standard H4 type halogen bulb in. They put out huge amounts of light - far better than anything else on the road at the time - without being glarey.

Get rid of Angry Robot Face cars.

older people.

As you age, you gradually develop cataracts. These are deposits in the lens of your eye that make them cloudy, and you get glare from bright lights.

When looking at bright lights, it is like looking through a dirty windshield. Light reaches your retina indirectly from the deposits which makes it incredibly hard to see, reducing or eliminating contrast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glare_(vision)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Flashlig...

You can also get cataracts earlier due to other health conditions

only recently did i realize, it was the regular headlight LEDs being shined directly at me as they went over a speedbump

Headlight standards in the USA are a perfect example of government regulation failing to adapt with the times. Until recently the NHTSA was still using 70s era regulations, until Congress forced them reluctantly to update.

"Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 (FMVSS 108) regulates all automotive lighting, signalling and reflective devices in the United States.

In February 2022, FMVSS 108 was amended to allow automakers to install adaptive driver beam (ADB) headlamps on new vehicles. However, carmakers have not implemented ADB because of contradictions in the rule.

As of December 2024, FMVSS 108 has not been updated to adapt to widespread use of LED headlamps, which are criticized for being too bright and blinding other drivers. Some manufacturers have reportedly engineered headlamps to have a dark spot where they are measured according to the regulation while being over-illuminated in the rest of the field."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S...

"Adaptive Highbeam Assist is Mercedes-Benz's marketing name for a headlight control strategy that continuously automatically tailors the headlamp range so the beam just reaches other vehicles ahead, thus always ensuring maximum possible seeing range without glaring other road users.

This technology is also known as Adaptive Driving Beams (ADB).

Until February 2022, this technology had been illegal in the US, as FMVSS 108 specifically stated that headlamps must have dedicated high and low beams to be deemed road-legal. An infrastructure bill enacted in November 2021 included language that directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to amend FMVSS 108 to allow the use of this technology, and set a two-year deadline for implementing this change. In February 2022, the NHTSA amended FMVSS 108 allowing adaptive headlights for use in the US. However, the new regulations are quite different from the ones in effect in Europe and Asia and prevent car manufacturers from easily adapting their systems to the US market."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp?wprov=sfti1#Adaptive_...

I thought it was a problem with my eyes and went to an ophthalmologist who told me there's nothing wrong with them - but that she hears this from people all the time these days and believe headlights to be dangerously bright.

Go for a walk of an evening along a footpath into traffic. I guarantee it'll be Teslas and Minis that are the routinely the culprits of dazzling.

I'd guess it's cheap, lazily aligned hardware in the Tesla, and the ridiculous design of the Mini that cause the problems.

Yes, sporadically you'll be blinded by another model- one that needs an alignment - but it'll consistently be Tesla's and Minis.

For starters, there is higher market penetration for better headlight technology, particularly ADB (adaptive driving beam). North American road safety regulations have made it very difficult to get this technology into cars, whereas in Europe it is reasonably widespread. Even rental cars I have had in the UK have this technology- most recently a Mazda3 which had a very good implementation of it, I could drive through the countryside with high-beams on constantly, and you could see the car quickly dim the beam facing towards oncoming traffic if any came around a bend. These are not high-end cars; I have rented cars with a manual transmission and cloth seats yet better headlights than the fanciest S-class in North America.

There is also less variation in vehicle size, and better emphasis on road safety testing. In Canada I often encounter lifted pickup trucks, which changes the alignment of factory lighting, not to mention the lights on these are often aftermarket anyway and usually installed without any thought for alignment. British pickup trucks are rarer, smaller, and would fail their yearly MOT for having improper headlamp aim.

Then there's the height of the hood, headlights are so much higher than they used to on average. Amplifies that pain.

But I don't necessarily have a problem with the headlights just because they're too powerful.

2. The color temperature of modern headlights is worse for the eye than previous generations'.

3. Automatic high beams still blind the oncoming traffic for the first 1-2 seconds or so, before the vision algorithm realizes that maybe it's time to turn them off.

Earlier in the year I got a replacement rear-view mirror with an anti-glare coating and it's paid dividends. It helps so much at night on dark sections of road when newer cars with bright headlights are around me. Finally decided to also replace my side mirrors with ones that have a similar coating.

- In many new cars the headlights do indeed appear as very bright. In the Xenon era the headlight height adjustment per occupancy was done automatically but at least in a few new cars I've been in with LED headlights this is not the case and the driver needs to adjust it by hand and I'm pretty sure the vast majority doesn't do that.

- Many new cars offer automated switching of high beam lights and the results vary to say the least.

- Small experience from UK highways gave me the same impression, the middle strip is not a solid one which is a huge issue when the lights from the other side blind you and I'm talking about normal headlights just because of road curvature or height difference of the opposing lanes while there are no overhead road lights.

EDIT:format

At least in late 90s, there used to be a law to black out half the headlamp. Either that was no longer the case or it's not as vigorously enforced.

This is the classic case of tragedy of commons!

Even with static headlights, the beams need to be realigned every year or two. Vibration puts them out of order.

A weak beam pointed at your eye will be more blinding than a much stronger beam aimed properly.

When I say properly, I mean with a special purpose abrasive glass polish. This could take an hour or more to do well by hand but it should remove the near invisible (in standard lighting conditions) film which forms on the glass surface.

This will also significantly improve visibility in heavy rain.

LED white lights are the actually the problem

https://www.trl.co.uk/Uploads/TRL/Documents/PPR2072---Glare-...

Finding participant / sample sizes for this is difficult, as it seems to be somewhere between a systematic review and a meta-analysis, but heavier on the recommendations than the analysis.

(I went looking because the 'nearly all' thing sounded like a bit of a stretch. Not that I would be surprised if this were true, but I would be surprised if they could make that claim with much confidence.)

Older cars had dimmer lights, but also a much softer cutoff that lets the eyes more easily adapt to the darkened area beyond.

There's also the nearly-religious-war of SAE vs ECE standards, wherein the former is more suited to soft filament lamps, while the latter creates a much worse cutoff in the "brightness war".

Got a "piss off" answer.

One thing doesn't need to exclude the other, especially as you begin to go above 50 and your eye sight isn't as good as it was when you were twenty-five.

Strong headlight that makes night go day saves lives, just remember to shut when meeting another vehicle or pedestrian.

The old halogen-warm colors were better, too. You don't want "area denial" lighting on your everyday ride.

True, driving at night sometimes can be an adventure and half but as long as you do not look at the incoming headlight, you are fine. Drivers automatically look at the headlight, that is the issue.

Also, there is the old and gold quick high beam towards the incoming traffic, it still works 99% of the time. Some drivers don't know or realised they are on high beam until you send a quick high beam towards them, it is all you need. It is an unwritten traffic rule.

My Suzuki Jimny allows me to lower the headlight beam so I don't blind incoming traffic. I keep mine very low and for being a LED one, still allows me to drive safely and see everything.

Lifting a truck by a 6-12 inches does awful things to the unajusted beam pattern of the headlamps in many instances, with even the dipped lights shining brightly into the cabins and mirrors of lower vehicles.

I'm thinking a mandatory recall order / fix-it ticket for all offending makes/models. The sticker shock alone might get manufacturers attention.

That and contributory liability in any associated accidents.

(Insurance costs / liability is a highly under-appreciated regulatory mechanism.)

I don't drive much here in Switzerland but I haven't noticed a problem when I do drive, but in the USA when I drive, especially in rural areas it's a pain.

The first time I had a car with this I was getting flashed by about 1 in 20 other drivers because they thought I had the high-beams on. I eventually took that car back to the rental agent who said that yes, it looked like the beams were adjusted too high.

With a manual control it's easy to fix. With auto-smarts (tm), not so much

LEDs make a lot of sense from an engineering and economics perspective, and that's why we must suffer them. It takes a special kind of leader to burn massive piles of cash/opportunity in order to protect a qualitative thing like how comfortable it is to drive at night. There aren't many CEOs who would be moved much by spectrograms of the headlamps in their cars.

In addition, people became aggressive and lack empathy - I was followed by a Jeep Wrangler the other day, still dark in the morning, his headlights lit my car interior via the back window to the level where I had to slow down and almost stop. Once he overtook I blinked as fast as possible just to let him know his headlights were high beam. The guy aggressively drove behind me and turned his high beams, which yes, were even brighter, but still same angle.

Their design flaws are many, but top among them is that their low beams are simply too collimated and too bright for safe use.

I wish I could (illegally) attenuate them in order to make them safer for other drivers. Is there a coating that I can apply to the sealed external lexan housing that will 1) diffuse and/or 2) uniformly dim their light output?

LEDs are a true technical wonder, but they've made so many things so stupid, from the status lights on every single piece of tech, to cars. (And I'd say streetlights too, personally, but I know some people like those).

Instead, they are too high, because the idiots with new cars rely on the automatic beam positioning which is always too slow.

Or they are fitting led bulbs in an halogen fixture and never bother to make the adjustments

My local sunglass shop had some yellow fit-over safety glasses. I found they cut out enough of the blue from the bad headlights to take the shock out of the experience of driving at night. https://cocoons.com/shop/safety/lightguard-medium-fitovers-l...

Harbor Freight's $2 yellow safety glasses are almost as good. I intend to stock up the next time I notice they're on sale for $1: https://www.harborfreight.com/yellow-lens-safety-glasses-668...

4 years ago I asked HN why the automotive industry wasn't using safe LEDs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405

The activists at /r/fuckyourheadlights figured out that the weaponized headlights put a little dim spot at the center of their headlight beams, exactly where the regulators measure the light intensity.

2nd picture clearly shows the dim spot: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/1hefn86...

Summary of research: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckyourheadlights/comments/18lrf3d...

Seems to me that all of this tech to create autonomous driving could be also used to augment human driving.

They are correctly adjusted.

I would like to see a headlight solution where you get the same amount of light thrown on the road, but from a strip that goes all the way across the front of the car, so that no individual spot is especially bright for oncoming drivers.

My car has 3 headlight settings, low, mid, hi.

Hi is when you are alone at night and want to see farther.

I used to use low in the daytime (to signal other drivers the car is on), and mid at night (to signal other drivers and gain some visibility.

But maybe the opposite is sensible, using mid lights in daytime (so they are more discernible from the daylight), and using low lights in nighttime (if you are in an already illuminated city, you don't need to light up the road, and since it's night, any small headlight will have enough contrast with the darkness)

They have always been that way. Im not accusing them of being involved in "headlightgate", but it would be great if somebody did some research.

Beam patterns are always checked when at rest, just like diesel particulate emissions..

- headlight covers fogging up/getting cloudy or even yellowing from sun exposure; these will scatter the light so more of what should go onto the street will be visible by oncoming vehicles

- 3rd party aftermarket LED replacement bulbs; usually illegal and completely mismatching what the mirrors in the headlights were made for, but that doesn’t keep people from buying and using them

I drive a regular sedan, and since >50% of cars are ginormous trucks with fancy headlights, I'm regularly annoyed at all the high beams and misalignments.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fRjMHtnShs

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZJoPbk53ug

(all his videos are good)

1. Some regions have mandatory DRLs (daytime running lights).

2. In many headlights, the DRL is implemented by dimming the high beam lamp.

3. LED lamps do not dim properly; compared to incandescent bulbs they dim only slightly.

The result is high beam glare from cars in broad daylight everywhere you go.

1% said they were sometimes distracted by incoming vehicles, and that was fine.

I too wonder why these are legal.

With that said, yeah, headlights are kinda bright these days

In my country I hesitate to even use the word "night".

Granted, my Yaris with full LED lights and their atrocious cool white light is a part of the problem, so I'm in no position to complain, but at least my lights are aimed correctly, so there's that.

We are in the process of forcing car to come with automatic braking, but yet we don't force cars to turn headlights when in motion...

He beamed back.

people are missing a lot of the natural sun radiation, causing the fluid in your eye to be less translucencent generally and possibly building up floaters more easily.

this could disperse light more inside your eye. enlarging the effect of blinding lights at night.

Crazily, we allow people to raise up their trucks so high that at night, if they're behind you in the lane, the cab of your vehicle is flooded so badly, you can hardly see sometimes. (Just wait till you experience this in a drive-through lane!)

In my state, it's against the law to run your fog lamps when the weather doesn't warrant them, the police seem to have forgotten this.

I'm pretty sure that, like "taking control of [their] borders by leaving the EU", this is a course of action that will make everyone happy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

...which has done Legitimate Research into how dramatic the change has been over time. Incidentally, I found it through this great article: https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightne...

Until we stopped at a gas station and I found a little knob to adjust the height of the light output. Not sure where this feature would be useful when you could just use the high beam when needed, but it was annoying even for me, the driver of the vehicle.

I personally don't use them. So I just get to observe.

I wonder why it didn't pan out. I know polarizers block some light either way, but with modern, strong headlights maybe it's time to revisit the idea?

Steering them away automagically from oncoming traffic is a better solution than abandoning them altogether.

(And yes, I do have cataracts. So oncoming lights _are_ a problem for me.)