the amount of times i've thought to myself "are those his high beam lights or his normal lights" and never found out the answer. some of them are just as bright as high beams it's absolutely insane
I always look for foglights on or seeing 2 lights on next to each other. So many people around here drive with misaligned normal lights or have their high beams on
I have flashed my lights at oncoming blindness, only for them to switch on their actual high beams, which were even worse. It's insane. I wear polarizing sun glasses for night driving now, to try to block glare.
European here. Is anyone blinded by the LED headlights of cars through the side mirrors? I'm going crazy they're so bright. I find it especially dangerous on the motorway as I cannot judge how far the upcoming car is when I need to overtake.
People dont seem to know how to adjust their height. All SUVs have lights up in the sky, all of them and if you drive a low driving position car your're blinded constantly. The worst if when they come you from the rear in dark, constantly blinded from the mirrors but not only that your cab is so heavily light polluted you cant see shit. I would have kept halogens but hell its impossible to drive at night when theres bastards with 10x the light output at seemingly near UV wavelenght light welding your retinas hours after hours night after night... Warm tone auto leveling projector/lens LED headlights are fantastic, one can see well and the oncoming traffic doesnt get blinded
Theres all the great technology out there, its cheap yet the auto makers want a while grand for one shitty headlight thats so full of flaws they should be banned
Also an european. Oh boy does everything blind us here. Many manufacturers are still figuring this matrixLED stuff out, so the lights kind-of-work-most-of-the-times. But far enough from prefect so that every third car annoys your eyes. :) These things wait until the absolute final millisecond while approaching - when your finger is ready to flash them back - to block the light off from your car's spot. Brightness-wise, Peugeot was one of the worst offenders with their lights a few years back. Their 4008, 5008 & 508 are unbearable even during the day. (Off topic) Also - the automatic brights are the worst thing ever. Never do these understand that the car in-front is close enough already. Nor do they act fast enoguh coming around the corner ("Good old times" when people had courtesy to switch the brights off before coming around the corner- when a human eye sensed some-one-else's lights approaching). Also these turds activate in cities and such. Don't "accept" fog lights as oncoming traffic... Thank you guys for bringing up a topic I felt I too needed to rant about. :) Also a tip - I've found that my cars rear fog lights (Yes there's a pair) work as anti-automatic-brights for the car on my tail. (May not be an ethical approach... & can't be done across the Pond.)
I've been talking about the blinding headlights for years, and I'm young. My dad has it even worse because he struggles with driving at night already, and the bright headlights make it even worse.
As a pedestrain where vehicle should only be using low beams I notice the same think. It is so bad they have me saluting Hitler. You know raised arm & hand to block the offensive light pollution.
Your headlights are incorrectly adjusted if reflections are blinding you. Even the brightest OEM headlights do not cause glare when adjusted correctly. They do not come adjusted correctly from the factory (but they say they do).
Even with low beams, all you need to do in a populated street is go over a single speedbump, and everybody hates you because of your blinding lights. A bad speedbump can make me blind people on the second floor (first floor after ground level), _in their own homes._ Wild that this is legal.
@Volvithever conside the thickness of road paint? I've seen some that is almost 1mm thick. Given the USA DOT regulation that headlight can light out to 820-feet - even road paint can cause an up angle in headlight beams. Never mind stones, shells or litter.
The most dangerous aspect is driving on a city street and being completely blinded so you cannot see someone exiting their car on your side, or crossing the street, and you hit them.
Holy cow. I'm so glad it's not just me. I've been noticing this a lot lately and I thought I was just getting older or something. People are installing stupidly bright headlights and making it a pain to drive at night. Then it makes other people more reluctant to turn off their high beams. It's a real safety hazard, especially in deer country.
Yeah I live where a LOT of people have installed the drop in LED lights in their older vehicles to help see at night (no street lights, + deer and moose). When those vehicles are oncoming it "fogs" the whole roadway with light and I just have to look down and at the road markings and hope nothing is in the roadway in front of me.
I sincerely *hate* that aspect of coming up on a car with bright lights! It doesn't bother my eyes quite so much but sitting there with nothing to do but hoping a deer isn't in the wrong spot at the wrong time always worries me.
Yep. I drive a semi and when I’m in small towns on a two lane road (two lanes going in opposite directions) some drivers are driving with their high beams on. This makes it damn near impossible to see where I’m going. Then there’s the pick up truck people that think it’s a great idea to add those LED bar lights that shine brighter than the sun.
I'm in the same shoes. I thought I was growing old and more sensitive to light - turns out, it's not that simple! Good to know. Shame I'll be in the ground by the time all carmakers were forced to do those adaptive headlight systems.
61 years old here. I FULLY remember the days before all of this. When you could take a long drive at night with no issues. Now,I literally plan my life around avoiding night driving if I can.
Yep same with me, despite having my bike and car fitted with Touring lights it is meant for rainy days / very dark places. Dang those people who seem to keep their additional lights on even on clear night 😡
PepperRidge Farm also remembers. Most of the blame is on the Boomers followed by the Xs. Weird how my grandma was older than both of those generations but she was hard to deal with yet nice.
This Ironically this doesnt just apply to driving. Like, a room gets "dark" (aka a bit less than noon clear summer day outside light level) and people just instantly turn on the light instead of waiting for bloody five seconds and theyd see the same. I actually suffer a bit from this since I have oversensitive eyes and too much light (especially older flourescent lights) promote migraine...
Yes, and contrary to what this video says, it is a problem in Europe as well. It doesn't matter that these state of the art adaptive LEDs shut segments not blind. The general amount of light is higher anyways. As a result, your eyes adapt to brither environvment and when you're driving a car that is not new, and still has halogens, you suddenly feel as if your lights went off.
Some research indicates young poeple (those old enough to get a driver's license) might quickly readjust to night (or something like it) vision in under 2-seconds, but older drivers (say seniors) will take 8-seconds or more. Related, with blinding headlight is it possible to judge how far an oncoming vehicle is away? Porsche use to have a problem with this on one of their vehicle designs years ago causing an increase in car crashes.
Some parking lots are so lit up, it is like several military magnesium flares are being used it is so bright Sometimes I swear people have a fetish for bright light or something
Strobing brake lights in most countries indicates a panic stop situation. The ridiculous strobing brake lights in the USA that strobe at every braking cycle are not only illegal, but completely a waste of money.
Aussie here. I drive an NB MX-5 (Miata). I’ve had it since 2003, and had a 1990 NA MX-5 before that. I never suffered from blinding headlights until about 15 years ago when these LED and Xenon lights became ubiquitous. Yes, my seating position is low, so I’m blinded by almost every vehicle, but as I said, it’s only a recent phenomenon. I don’t know how they were ever allowed on vehicles. Even bright LED daytime running lights give me ‘snow blindness’. I’m even blinded from the headlights of vehicles shining on my side mirrors, and reflecting back into my eyes.
New owner of a 2002 NB, can confirm...when you sit that low everything is blinding, even motorcycles. It was pretty insane the first time I drove it at night, I was so used to my late model Subaru's as well as every other car I've owned for the last 12 years that I was concerned I wouldn't be able to see anything with the Miata's headlights. Surprisingly, I was able to re-adjust to the "old" headlights quite well. I also had to remember to use the lever on the rear view mirror when cars with bright lights are behind me.
@JohnSandovalesqAs an MX-5 owner for 35 years, I can tell you it’s a new phenomenon. 15 years ago, before these new bulbs, the halogen lights on even large 4WDs never, ever caused me an issue.
Same and I don't sit low I'm in a van and before that a Toyota truck and I just don't drive of a night now. And like you I'm affected even in daylight now it's crazy. 👍
@NomadHatch What is crazy is most are built in the vehicle from the factory! So IF they were truly illegal, then the car manufactures should ALL be arrested!
From what I can see driving at night, it’s the stupid punks who like to change the lights all over and under their trucks! Who the heck thinks it’s a good look with colored lights inside fender wells and under trucks? Ever notice the trucks blinding you have goofy looking wheels sticking way you past their fender wells and no sidewall to their tires? Y
German here. Those matrix headlights aren't the solution. They still require the system to detect and determine you to be a subject worth lowering the light intensity for. I get blinded all the time, as a pedestrian, cyclist, motorist in the mirrors. Orange headlights FTW! The Halogens were great. Just replace them with LEDs of the same colour temperature. No fancy camera system, no computer, no problem!
Yes, the real reason why you can’t see a damn thing is precisely the color temperature of street lighting and car headlights. Cool light perceptually creates more contrast, and increasing its intensity only makes that contrast stronger. Sodium-vapor street lamps and the classic H7 car bulbs had the right temperature and intensity.
We live in the era of "fixing" things that aren't broken because our society is build on infinite progress, even though we reached the peak a while ago
@bengnomino Sodium vapor street lamps... When they started replacing them with white LEDs in the area where I live, it became much more annoying to drive at night, as on the yellow streets you could tell from far that a car with a whiter light is approaching from the side, but the white street lamps completely masking that.
I don’t even like driving at night anymore because it is so difficult to see the road, pedestrians, bikes due to how bright oncoming traffic headlights are now. It’s dangerous.
I frequently have to either hold my hand up to block the headlights so I can see the road or I have to look at the fog line on the side of the road so I don't end up driving into a telephone pole. It's time for some class action lawsuits
Here in the states, I've noticed a trend that people who drive around with their high beams on all the time have ridiculously dark tint on their windshields. It's so bad that I have to shield the left side of my face to make it past oncoming traffic.
@Anankin12yup. When I was a kid I was so jealous of Americans for being able to mod their cars like crazy. Wanna slap a V8 in your Toyota? Hydraulic suspensions? 26in wheels? No problem mate. But now I realize that also comes with serious downsides lol
Yes this is very common now to encounter people who do not switch to low beams. It is a trigger for road rage as well. Even after flashing your high beams back at them, they still don't lower theirs.
I have windshield tint now because the benefits of not being blinded by oncoming cars outweighs the cons of less viability. Also I have off-road lights on the front and rear of one of my vehicles (never on while driving of course), but if it’s nighttime, and I see a high beam driver and there’s no other collateral damage cars on the road, I turn all my lights on at once including my high beams . It’s incredible how quickly people turn off their high beams 🤣
Truck driver here. The company gave me a brand new Renault D-wide with 0 km on it. I was surprised by how bright and powerful the headlights are even with the standard low beam - at night, I can see everything even too well. But on the other hand - on the highway, and especially on unlit roads, I often get flashes of high beams from oncoming drivers... and how can I explain to them that these are the factory low beams? And there's nothing I can do about it... I don't flash my high beams myself to answer, because I know it could completely destroy their retinas... I just keep driving, mentally apologizing (even though what's my fault, personally?)
_"even though what's my fault, personally?"_ -- does the commercial trucking industry not have rules and philosophies similar to those found in maritime and aviation? The captain of a vessel or airplane has the final say and responsibility in all matters related to the operation of the vehicle. Now, corporations can and do create a barrier to honest and effective application of a rule like that. Fishing vessels have been lost, passenger-carrying airplanes have been lost, because a captain was pressured into some unsafe situation by their corporate overlords. But I would guess in such situations, the captain themselves would be the first to say that they should've pushed back, regardless of the cost in terms of their employment. It's all hypothetical ethics. Until it's not. At the very least, probably worth exploring getting maintenance to make adjustments to the headlight angle, as suggested by other comments here. The most professionally dedicated driver would refuse to operate a truck they know is unsafe.
German here. Ive been often blinded at night for quite some time now. And it's not the older cars with retrofitted LED-turned halogen lights. I'm mostly blinded by newer cars with factory fitted LED-Lights / Laserlights etc.. Mostly Mercedeses, Audis, BMWs... Even Tesla's. My brother has a German spec Tesla Model 3. One day we were at a family gathering at a restaurant. I came with my 125cc scooter, my brother with his Tesla and when we left it was already dark outside. When he drove directly behind me I mostly couldn't see what was in front of me because those Tesla LED-lights blinded me so badly in my sidemirrors. Nothing modified. Blinded by manufacturer spec, it's unbelivable.
@PapaWheelie1 So I adjust them so I cant see behind me? You literally don't seem to know how mirrors work... Please don't give safety advises or learn to adjust mirrors yourself first before commenting...
@ghinio3675 - I’ve got hundreds of thousands of miles on motorcycles. You adjust them down when the lights are shining into your eyes. Seeing what is in front of you is more important than seeing the headlights of the car behind you in that case.
6:34 : The IIHS report states that highly-rated vehicles have 19% fewer nighttime crashes. But this misses the whole point: it's not the subject vehicle with the blinding headlights that's likely to crash , but the oncoming vehicle whose driver is being blinded, which the report does NOT account for. Typical bureaucratic mush.
Actually I can totally see this as a legitimate error. Kinda like the whole "airplane" simulation thing where an airplane got back and you're supposed to put armor on it depending on where it would be most effective. The planes where there was actual viable evidence for armor upgrades were never recovered since they crashed, falsifying the data. TLDR: They easily couldve made a mistake gathering the data and understanding it, rather than it being beaurocratic mush
@KryptoKn8Also of note, they're testing the single-vehicle crash rate of these vehicles. It's actually a given that better/brighter headlights would reduce the odds that a single vehicle encounters conditions that would cause it to crash
A similar effect causes large, heavy vehicles to be highly rated as 'safe'. Not for pedestrians or other vehicles. Europe incorporates these effects and it might be why countries like Great Britains have 2.6 traffic related deaths per 100,000 while the U.S. is over 14 per 100,000.
@KryptoKn8 The youtube algorithm gave me that gem a few days ago of that exact survivorship bias example😯 "During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The Statistical Research Group (SRG) at Columbia University, of which Wald was a member, examined the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions and recommended adding armor to the areas that showed the least damage. The bullet holes in the returning aircraft represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Therefore, Wald proposed that the Navy reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, inferring that planes hit in those areas were the ones most likely to be lost. His work is considered seminal in the then nascent discipline of operational research."
lights are so bright I cannot gauge distance, velocity or if a car is even moving towards me on a road anymore. It is also incredibly blinding and distracting but the more dangerous part is not being able to distinguish another driver's movement.
Bright LED tail lghts are a problem as well. One time I was stopped behind a Prius at a stop sign in a dark neighborhood for about a minute. Those brake lights were so bright, when they drove away I could hardly see!
Yep - I've just noticed this at the start of the 2025 winter. Mine was on some kind of silver SUV. Rear lights were so bright i had to hold my hand up to block them... and I still had the after-image burned into my retinas.
Yeah i was in a McDonald's drive thru & a Peugeot 3008 the brake lights are like looking at the sun. And the led rear lights are so bright you can't see the indicator illuminated!
I have been seeing that in the last few months. I wonder if the owner is even aware of that. I bought a Jeep couple years ago that had way too bright lights, I took them out, out of courtesy of my fellow drivers
1. Blinded by lights 2. Gets taller vehicle with brighter lights 3. Blinded by lights again because everyone got taller vehicles with brighter lights 4. Repeat step 2 On a serious note I have no clue why the US didn't just use the SAE standards
Now in my sedan my rear view mirror is lit up like the sun and I can see my own vehicle's shadow in front of me from the million lumen headlights of the car behind me. Then a car appears in the oncoming lane & even trying to just track the white line on the right/shoulder I can't see a fucking thing & just pray I'm not gonna sideswipe one of the parked cars. These bright lights only became a problem in the last 10 years but my god they piss me off on the daily. I swear my high beams don't put out as much light as some of these cars on low.
That’s kind of the American trademark … spend years debating how to fix something the rest of the world solved ages ago, then finally approve a version that isn’t compatible with anyone else’s standards. It’s not that we lack the technology; we just can’t seem to agree long enough to use it effectively. Until the agencies and lawmakers stop treating every improvement like a political negotiation, we’ll keep being “different” for all the wrong reasons. And part of the problem isn’t even just the lighting tech, it’s that everyone’s driving taller and wider vehicles now. The higher the headlight, the more eye-level glare you get. A lot of people buy trucks and SUVs just to commute, not to tow or haul, and it’s changed the whole lighting dynamic on the road. It’s wild that American automakers barely make efficient, well-proportioned cars anymore, like we collectively decided “bigger” automatically means “better.” The culture in America is just damaged and flawed beyond redemption at this point. General Motors and Ford are heavily; SUV, crossover, and truck base car companies. Besides the Mustang, Ford doesn’t even offer a car. I believe the only sedans General Motors offers are Cadillacs. _When gas prices get expensive again_ there’s gonna be a lot of hurting individuals in the United States.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one that hated LED headlights, they blind the fuck out of me and I can't see anything ruining my night vision. Someone complain to the transportation secretary already!
Same with new street lights, stupid LED is freaking brighter than the sun lol at night time, they need to start putting some serious filters to this lights, you could literally go under this lights and find ants, i moved from a city here in California that replaced all of their lights with those new ones and the whole thing turned in to a giant parking lot of a city.
I have been shopping for auto dimming glasses to wear at night to help solve the problem but I have not found any yet. It seems it’s hard to go from clear to dark quickly. It needs to happen in a fraction of a second.
one of the problems is that people use any crap they can buy on amazon. they use corn led bulbs that shoot light everywhere so they cannot aim the light properly. they use it for fog lamps and main beams so at night they are illuminating more the sky than the road and blinding everyone. some even put some led bars as if they were driving in the jungle. they simply do not care.
The lumen limit is enforced in Europe, because here vehicles must be inspected every few years to every year, depending on age of the car. About blinding: Don't look at the incoming lights (or mirrors, if you see light coming from them. Look to the side of the road. That's where the parked/stranded cars and pedestrians/cyclist are. I've had eye surgery. I got thinner glasses, but also easier blinding. Another possible reason is dry eyes or cataract. Both cause halos and blinding. Have your eyes checked. Less light on the road is NOT better!
100% feel that... and don't even get me started on driving in the rain...at night...and as someone with an astigmatism...night driving is already bad enough x_x
You can focus the beam all you want, but as soon as you put it on a taller vehicle, it's going to be a problem for a standard vehicle. Focusing doesn't magically make the beam innocuous.
It's illegal to retrofit vehicles not designed for HID lamps in WA but nobody cares. They all do it anyways and now many drivers with traditional halogen lamps drive around with their high beams on all the time to retaliate.
Blinding is shite here in Europe aswell,. especially if you live in a country with long dark winters, and roads with incoinations, some cars worse than others. If you have a low car its even worse.
A lot of it is the high kelvin. White/blue light is high frequency so bounces off everything and causes loads of bright reflections. Yellowish light doesn't and also cuts through rain and fog much better.
@JIMMYHIBBS1they are built like hot garbage. Headlights come misaligned from the factory. And their Adaptive high beams fails to detect cars half the time due to crappy camera based software meaning they just high Beam blast you.
@OutOfNameIdeas2i absolutely noticed that, since we dont have flat roads around here it means constant beam in the eyes since it doesnt know what its doing.
Lifted truck behind me just last evening had his brights on so much so, the interior of my car was totally lit up. I made a turn blinkers and brake lights functioning and he still blew his horn at me. I can only presume his high-beam aftermarket lights washed out my car's rear lighting.
When did headlights start automatically coming on an hour before the sun sets? I mean, I know it is mildly darker at that hour but it seems like the settings are really jumping the gun now.
Most cars' daytime running lights are actually the high beams at reduced power. When aimed directly at oncoming traffic, they are easily too bright regardless of the lower power level. The best solution would be for all (low beam) headlights and tail lights to come on when the vehicle is in gear, regardless of ambient light conditions. There is literally no good reason not to implement this solution.
@coronos3284 I agree. I've said for years that airliner manufacturers should eliminate the flap handle. Just make flap and slat extension a product of airspeed. They could also save HUGE amounts of weight by eliminating the thrust reversers. Just make bigger brakes. There is a LOT of needless complexity by having thrust reversers.
the thing that amazes me is that the people with these ridiculous headlights i guess never see them on someone else's car and think "well maybe this isnt a good idea if thats what theyre like."
Yea all the lights are being replaced with the white light which I hate. Streetlights use to be a soft orange now there a bright white and it’s so blinding
Yep, blue light messes with your eye's night vision. I started wearing amber-tinted "night driving" glasses whenever I drive at night because I hate modern lighting.
"but they had halogens so that must make halogens less safe" its literally survivors bias. and its intentional why else would they test these lights in near lab conditions as far as possible from realistic world as possible, hell they'd get the same result if they just stapped the headlight to a bench and looked at the wall the beam hits and say oh its not shining light over 3ft so it must be fine in all conditions.
European here. Adaptive headlights sound good in theory, but in practice they fall completely apart. They can't deal with curves or Ridgelines and that results in your retinas getting fried before the oncoming car registers you. The SUV plague has only made that worse since the lights sit just high enough to hit normal cars rear view and side mirrors. Anything other than dead straight on results in you going blind.
This. Typical case of the grass is always greener on the other side. Matrix headlights are annoying both behind and in front of you. I hate when the matrix headlights of the car that is following me basically flash my mirrors every turn because it can't follow the position of my car properly. Or when objects on the side of the road illuminate out of the blue, because the car behind me decided to do so. It's very distracting and annoying for everyone on the road, except for the driver of the car with such headlights.
Figured as much, I sat and watched my mom's Murano a few years ago decide when it needed to switch from high beams to regular lights out on some back country roads in pitch black with no street lights around and man did that thing blind some poor people
@henrikrasmussen7340 Ugh yeah. Especially SUVs sit just right to poke over the standard height concrete barrier we use over here. They cant see me but im getting blinded all the time.
I passed a car once with lights so bright all I saw was white it took up all my vision I was afraid I was going to crash my car. I couldn’t see the road I couldn’t see my dash I couldn’t see anything. It was like I was looking directly into the sun.
perfect for another blue eyed human myself we cant tackle the sun that much as brown eyes and now these shits??? also i apparantly have that condition thing or whatever the fuck its called that makes it so that when something is bright enough(doesnt need to be that bright but i think ive got not so serious one) i see the light doing the thing that black holes do when they are finished eating ejecting a fucking quasar which hilarously enough is the brighest object in the whole universe as a shit ton of light gets ejected two ways like a perfectly straight stick just search up a quasar or black hole quasar you will see what i mean on how the lights act in my eyes
Blue eyed here too. I'm constantly flipping my rearview mirror down when driving at night because of people with blinding headlights are behind me. I've even worn sunglasses at night when it was raining because I couldn't see with all the glare.
Love how part of that rivian clip the car is shining high beams into half of the truck it's following for a bit even though it's not that far away, poor system.
European here, its important to note that there ARE aftermarket LED bulbs which do in fact simulate the behavior of a halogen bulb filament and retain the correct beam pattern. There are also road legal certified models like the Osram and Phillips LEDs. Those however are expensive, so most people buy cheap Chinese retrofits and give LEDs a bad rep.
Yea, those compliant LED replacement really works, you can tell if it's good if it doesn't require readjusting the headlight, it just throw out almost the same beam pattern as it has all the focal point of light source be exactly where halogen version of it would be.
I have chinese LEDs on non projector lights and even those aren't blinding and have a very good pattern so i genuinely have no idea how people manage to fuck it up
American here, I bought the road legal Philips bulbs in 4300k specifically due to their legal status (in Europe, leds are not legal in the US, just goes in enforced). Something like $240. Still obnoxiously bright.
Road legal aftermarket LED light sources have to be tested and approved for each type of headlight, which drive up costs and make it hard to find road legal LED light sources for less common vehicles.
@johan.edlund exactly. The behaviour will depend on projector and other elements. It is not possible to emulate with leds the ligth emision of an halogen filament.
Yea it’s one or the other they think the blue light on the dash means the headlight are on or they drive with no headlights on which that one I don’t understand how can you not tell your lights ain’t on. Or the people that drive with one working headlight how can you not tell the other headlight ain’t on. It baffles me everyday.
I blame the new trend of always-lit dashboards. You get in a 90s car and if you drive in the dark without headlights, it's obvious, you can't see how fast you're going, the dash is pitch black. You get in a 2010s car without your headlights? Easily see your hyper-brightly-lit gauges or, worse, LCD screen on the dash, and aside from being slightly brighter than it should be, looks hardly any different. But what of the headlights themselves? Surely these people must notice it's dark in front of them? Ah, but nearly all new cars have daytime running lights now! So the *headlights* actually are on, it's the *taillights* that aren't. From the driver's perspective, the only difference is the position of a switch and the brightness of the dashboard. And we wonder why people don't realize. Any car with DRLs and a day-lighted dash board ought to have either auto headlights they can't permanently shut off (like most GM cars) or just run the taillights all the time like the DRLs. The fact they sell cars where the difference between headlights on and off is too subtle to be apparent is just stupid.
I once helped a young couple install replacement bulbs. When I asked them to turn on their headlights, they immediately turned on the high beams, not realizing that there were low beams. This needs to be a driver’s test item.
Agree with your sentiments. It boils my piss when it's heavy rain/spray/darker conditions and the tail-lights are not illuminated. Drivers are completely oblivious to this fact seemingly happy in the knowledge that their (front) running lights are on. Bloody dangerous and should be addressed more on all types of media imho.
@frisbee544I never understood how just because it might get dismissed in court as a reason to not enforce the law. It seems like a Cop out. Pun intended.
Yup !!! and some of them (actually ALL of them) have a blinking rate, and some are so noticable its torture ! I have to block my mirror when one is behind me. For the rest, Night-Time Driving glasses with blue-blocking (yellowed) lenses help A LOT Got mine on ebay
@User24x Au contraire, mon ami,. Those glasses INCREASE visibility. They reduce the intensity of bright lights that would "blind", AND your pupils can stay a bit MORE dilated, letting you see more in the rest of the road.
Today i learned something within 1:20 of this video "High / Low" Headlight refer to the actual beam direction on old car but today it just refer to how blinding the light is :D
as a european, I can say, that these problems won't be solved solely by allowing the matrix LED headlights. a lot of people just ignores the fact, that the headlight needs to be calibrated properly. even worse, anyone with a screwdriver or hex key can adjust the base calibration of the headlight, physically, "yeah I'll see further with adjusting these screws a little" - yeah, buddy, but blinding everyone else... and there are the lifted trucks. and there's the issue with the used car market: a failed/cracked matrix LED headlight is extremely expensive to replace. people will buy aftermarket headlight units to replace them, or convert back the car to regular LEDs. (no moving parts, no fancy light show) so what's the solution? mandatory technical inspection every year, or every 2 years, they check the headlights too.
in the netherlands and germany and several others there is a mandatory 2 year inspection of cars, for safety and they do checks the lights then, problem is people with smoked lenses mount the legal ones for the inspection, and after that mount the illegal smoked ones so you can bareley see the back lights and indicators, same for adjusting headlights correctly for inspection, after they put them back to blinding people
Unfortunately, we tend to have to regulate that kind of behavior with threat of punishment, at least in the US. If someone is found to have messed with their settings such that the beams are a hazard to other drivers, it could be considered attempted assault. If they're in an accident or are found to be the cause of an accident by being IDed at the scene, especially with surveillance evidence, they could be charged with willingly committing whatever happened to the victims, including manslaughter. This would keep most people in line, but anything less and they'll just keep ignoring the little voice in their head that's telling them people could get hurt.
In the UK there is an annual government test once a car is 3 years old, without which it cannot be taxed or insured so is not allowed on the road. This 'MOT' test covers brakes, lights (that they work and are adjusted correctly), steering, exhaust emissions, seat belts and various other safety aspects. Even so, I do get occasionally blinded by some of the more modern cars on the road, presumably under three yeasrs old!
Driving during night in this day and age is atrocious. Not only are the low beams extremely bright as mentioned in this video, but people are really bad at turning of the high beams in time and are also turning them on way too early.
@Kostas_Dikefalaios These are the same base technology as ADB. They take a few seconds to react even on straight road, and rarely get it right around curves and hills. ADB is the same in this regard.
I don't want to spend more money (ADB) to solve a problem created by spending more money (brighter lights), especially when the right solution is just use dimmer and cheaper bulbs.
It sounds like a boost to revenues for the car companies... but from all reports it still doesn't solve the problem. The real engineering solution is just to use a dimmer bulb.
European here. Those new headlights might be an upcoming thing. But it's not something we feel the effect of in general. We are still getting blinded like crazy every night. I have a feeling it's not going away any time soon.
Ya .. I adjust the side mirrors to blast the light back at the offenders. Makes for more movement by myself to use the mirrors but at least it makes night driving a little less painful. I also do tend to camp out in the passing lane if not much traffic around and right lane is clear. They can pass from the right when needed if I don't feel like moving over ..
I have been driving in England for the past 43 yrs and everyone of my cars had standard halogen bulbs. They where good enough through every season then and now. New car headlamps are blood dangerous and make me angry.
Plus they're bloody expensive. About 10 years ago I priced a new car, and LED headlights were like a 2000$ option, or something crazy like that. I suppose their price might have come down since, but the point is pretty much every car has them standard now, you're kinda forced to buy them.
I'm not a car person and I don't drive, so forgive me if I mess up with the terminology, but I do get ferried home late once or twice a week after an evening shift by a friend and we've found that the last 5 years have been a drastic change, it used to be we'd only get blinded by someone too scared of the dark on a country road or unlucky timing crossed a humped bridge. Now it's like everyone is on full beams and those that don't turn down their lights force my friend to slow way down to be as safe as possible while the light ghosting fades from his eyes. An even crazier thing is he's demonstrated that these ultra bright lights are pointless, as you don't really see much better with them compared to older lights, and for best visibility on country roads, just the side lights let you see clearly for a couple hundred meters, but since it's not legal to drive with just them on at night, we're all forced to blind each other instead!
8:33 no one is checking? Portugal here, we need to get the car inspected every couple of years if its old enough and then every year if its a tad older than that (I forget the exact spans)
Yeah, this is all over the EU. They also specifically check the lights and the setting of the lights. You must put them to 'zero' and then they slide some mirrors in front to see if the lights are not shining too high.
Another European here: these matrix headlights are absolutely not the solution. It sounds great in theory, but in practice these things suck at correctly detecting oncoming vehicles in everything outside a completely straight and flat road. Plus now the people driving those cars don’t even realize that they are blinding everyone else (and often don’t know how to disable it either), so the old trick of quickly flashing your high beams to remind them to turn theirs off doesn’t work anymore. It’s worse than ever before.
I knew I wasn’t the only one that noticed this. It is straight up even more dangerous to drive at night now. I noticed this problem in the last 5 years. It used to no be like this. And as a driver of a subcompact it is hell getting blinded by lights at night.
The amount of times I say to myself thanks for blinding me or turn off your high beams while I’m driving at night is alarming. I’m noticing it way more now.
I had a compact commuter car (Toyota) for many years and got sick of sitting at intersections with headlights shining through my entire car at stoplights where I couldn't even see or use my mirrors or what my kids were doing in the back seat & tailgaters which would be driving with their high beams on behind me at night and I couldn't see what was going on around me. Easy trick that doesn't require permanent modification is to use a suction cup mounted reflective sun visor in the back window (reflective part facing back) and just cover the bottom portion of the window while keeping the top portion open and visible as to not obstruct the entire window, and to re position your mirrors so the light shines backward but you can still use them when needed by just shifting your head. Not every time but allot of times people would pull up behind me and after a moment or too they would dim their headlights and even shut off their fog lights, not because they were necessarily being courteous but because they were now catching some of that light shining back at them. Works great when you have to rent a small car for road trips too. Hope that helps! :)
Nearly ran over a pedestrian because i was blinded by high beaming a-hole. It was during dusk, and in group of oncoming traffic full of high beaming LED can really take away your field of vision. It's ridiculous. This is what need to be regulated, not some BS mufflers and CARB mandates on aftermarket parts.
My dad's truck thankfully use dim but yellow lights. Many vehicles in the 2000s and before were using lightbulbs to be used for yellow/tungsten light. But with the electric vehicles say Tesla for example, all of them are using LED white lights, akin to that of hospitals, and video lights. If you have ever stared at a video light for a good hour or two, Those are exactly what you're staring at. For me I got used to it, but the ones in the rearview mirror, yeah, they're bright. BUT, it's this reason I can just tilt the rearview mirrors just enough to move the light more upward and away, than straight on.
@FreeRadicalX Yep. It requires a dedicated search to find good yellow fog lights that aren't cheap Temu crap, but it's worth it. My headlights are LED 5500K white but my fogs are now a very pleasant 3000K yellow. Get out there in the evening with a screwdriver and adjust them to overlap just right about 20-25m in front of the car and we're good to go. Yellow up close for great contrast and shadowing, whites pushing out a mile and a half to light up reflective features and large objects. Works well and I don't get flashed by oncoming traffic, so I'm pretty sure I'm not endangering anybody else.
It's an arms race. With the aftermarket bulbs, if someone gets blinded, and it pisses them off, their reaction is often "I'm gonna get _me_ some of them bulbs and blind _me_ some mafackas!". As Ghandi said, eventually we all end up blind and toothless.
I've never understood that logic, someone else is causing problems for everyone so I'm gonna do that too? At least with direct revenge it's aimed solely at the one that wronged you.
@ShaimingLong Bingo. Some people just like to do stuff that people "hate"... those same people will then probably call _you_ a "hater". Ever see those ads? e.g.: _Amazon hates this, but they can't stop you!_
@kentuckybowl-o-sticks It's one thing to be a contrarian, especially when being so won't make a difference to the big billionaire corporation - but I mean on the individual level it makes no sense to me. For a personal example, a 60 year old woman moved into little block of flats I live in, effectively chased out of her old house by young, noisy families settling down next to her. She was desperate to get somewhere quiet and took the downgrade of living in a flat, yet since she moved in she's consistently been the noisemaker, blasting out her cinema TV system until 3am most nights and she justifies it with "that's what everyone else did where I used to live, so I might as well enjoy myself now." She fled from people doing what she's doing now and it's fine for her to do it because the people she fled from did it. It's logic I can't wrap my head around and yet "but someone else did it first!" is such a common justification for doing something stupid or awful. Sorry for the long winded reply!
@ShaimingLong Yep... she's just like the people who bought blinding bulbs because they didn't like it when others blinded _them!_ Go figure... Why not just turn up the volume where she _used_ to live to drown out those who were irritating _her???_
I have a 90s chevy truck, the headlights look like flashlights compared to new cars, but when youre on a backroad without a ton of traffic and have them aimed right, they're more than enough.
as a long hauler... i absolutely agree with this. also emergency lights are super dangerous. your driving through the night for hours and then you come across a police car with a thousand super bright LEDs flashing in every direction. for several seconds you are as blind as a bat. you can still see the ghost images for a minute or two after you pass them. street lights in the middle of dark roads is also bad. again your eyes are adjusted to the dark then you come to an intersection with blinking LEDs and bright street lights. your eyes adjust and then it's right back into the pitch black.
There needs to be laws converting back to a softer more warm white light. I still have great vision at 50 but these headlights make me think I have 90 year old eyes when driving at night 🇨🇦
11:32 so lets add even more technology that is going to further increase the cost of a vehicle which it turn is will make it even more of a case of "not everyone can afford a new car".
Exactly! It also massively effects the cost of the car long term. Headlights are easily damaged, even in accidents where the airbags aren't deployed. They also need to replaced commonly because of water intrusion and UV damage. Nothing is going to make people run to the aftermarket faster than seeing an OEM headlight replacement is thousands of dollars!
Active matrix/autodimming headlights are not the answer. I live in the UK and a LOT of our A roads and B roads are windy, hilly, single carriageways where the fancy headlights simply cannot react fast enough. Even a millisecond of these blinding headlights coming round a corner in front of me is enough to temporarily blind me, and by the time my night vision returns I've covered 50m or more. If a bend is coming up I often have to just slam on my brakes to make sure I've got time to see the corner I need to take. Driving in the UK at winter has genuinely become something I dread because I know I can't avoid driving in the dark, and I KNOW it's just a matter of time before one of these blinding encounters causes me to carreer off the side of steep valley road.
what's insane is that it's going to take multiple people dying in accidents being attributed to blinding lights before anything is done about this insane trend
@NomadHatch You have to track the data to even notice a trend. I suspect it's happening already, but no government or car manufacturer cares enough to even track the data.
I made the mistake once of looking into my side rearview mirror and was instantly blinded by an insanely bright headlight. It was so bad it etched a dark spot into my vision and I proceeded to get a mind splitting migraine after. It pisses me off to no end
Nah, must just be a Floridian. Here the "slow" lane is where everyone passes the left lane campers and middle lane hogs that don't understand the concept of a multi-lane road, so camping in the slow lane is actually impeding passing traffic. I wish I was kidding.
As a european I can tell you that the problem persists even with adaptive headlights. The adaptive lights dont always recognise upcoming traffic or out of the ordinary situations. IMHO the US is actually on the forefront of regulating headlights in a safer manner than Europe does. (And yes that does mean european cars have better nighttime visibility)
Here in Australia they have wattage limits. The issue is it's not policed anymore and those head lights still under those limits are 10 times brighter now. Old laws need to be updated.
Yeah, but they don't really work. They still blind people on hills and curves. And even on flat, straight roads, the lights still take way too long to react.
Brakelights are getting way to bright too. Standing at a stoplight I can sometimes almost not see the traffic light due to the massive glare of other car brakelights.
Too bad standard (stick shift) transmissions are so uncommon, especially in new vehicles. When I would drive on an interstate on the great plains I would get some yo yo tailgating me IN THE RIGHT LANE when we were miles away from an exit, and the left (passing lane) was wide open. In a stick shift I would take my foot off the gas, and watch them in the rear view mirror. Since automatics don't slow down as fast I wait till I see their car "bowing" then I accelerate up to the speed limit. They often race up while I take my foot off the gas, making them brake a little harder. Two or three times of that they race around me and are on their way and after about a minute I never see them again. The beauty of this method is that you brake lights never come on so they don't know you are "break checking" them, which means they don't feel obligated to "punish" you. Alternatively, I drive about 1 mph (1.6 kph) BELOW the speed limit. That pisses them off as well and they race around and leave me alone.
One of the problems is there are lamp height regulations that people ignore when they jack up their trucks by 2 feet and put the lamp directly in your line of sight.
The problem is called "leveling" a truck. What cracks me up is when these guys complain that the truck vibrates on the highway after they do that and blame the OEM. LOL. Idiots. (look up U-joint mis-alignment...)
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. 98 percent of the people in the world think they are starring in their own movie. Despite what they say or think that's the reality of it. These are the selfish pricks who know their head lights are really bright but don't give a flying F because they think we all exist for them.
yeah but that doesnt solve the problem when cresting a hill and getting greeted at the top with the brightness of a flashbang. just ban led low beams. you dont need that much light with low beams.
As someone who travels to Europe frequently, adaptive matrix headlights are not the game changer you think they are. The headlights are still indescribably bright. The only benefit of these headlights is that it darkens the pixels of the oncoming vehicle. However, to the oncoming vehicle all this does is reduce the glare. It does not make the lights any less blinding by lighting standards. It’s still an incredibly bright light approaching you, albeit with slightly less glare.
If you are being blinded by matrix led lights, you need to see an optician or a doctor. Personally i have astigmatism, but recently got new glasses. I don't get blinded by lights in the night. The only shit cars that actually have bad glare are Teslas, american pos car.
@ManakuskiAnd even newer Teslas have Matrix LED lights that work exceptionally well, on par with premium europen brands. Not a surprise, they own a german engineering company for a reason.
@Soordhin no they don't. They always blind me. They're awful in Teslas. Even the new Model Y manages to blind me when oncoming, i don't know why, but yeah. Only a Skoda Octavia does the same, but not as bad as Teslas.
6:08 Curves? You mean hills or elevation changes? When an oncoming vehicle is traveling up hill towards you, that is the absolute worst.. Especially with these bright as the sun headlights now. Bumps and curves are the least of my worries.
I've gotten blinded super bad when approaching railroad crossings on busy roads as well- some of them are up quite a lot and you're in the retina searing zone of the lights till an oncoming car clears the crossing!
Headlights straight up don't need to be that bright, especially the low beams. People got along fine with halogens for half a century. If the IIHS data says these insane lights reduce accidents, it means there are a lot of people driving too fast for how far they can see and who shouldn't be on the road. These same people will still go too fast for any other factor limiting their ability to react.
An issue we have had here in Japan for years, and which is only now starting to become known in the rest of the world, is just how expensive all of these new LED lights and technologies are to replace. I say replace because repair is functionally and/or fiscally impossible or impractical. If your vehicle has LED's and was made in the last five to ten years, it likely does not have bulbs, halogen or LED, that can be replaced. When something fails the entire assembly will have to be replaced, and that can involve a lot of labor on top of the insane cost of each headlight assembly. As an example, a friend's Subaru recently had a headlight LED fail. The assembly is going to cost him roughly $550 USD for the part and another $150 in labor. The same part in the States seems to be around $1200, not including sales taxes, and labor tends to be 2-3x the cost there. If you factor in auto-leveling, steerable, or these newer ADB assemblies... the cost will only go up from there. And much like LED bulbs for your home they almost never last as long as the manufacturer says they will.
My headlights are $1500 each and they're not even the special ones. In another few years, any simple front end bump could total the car if I lose both headlights and some body panels.
Especially with utility (trucks) getting bigger and taller. They blind me with my rear view and side mirrors when they drive behind me. Very dangerous.
I can't drive at night anymore now that all the headlights are blinding. How did we manage to drive everywhere in the '70s & '80s without stadium level floodlights on the fronts of our vehicles?
One of the first things I've been doing when buying a new vehicle is manually adjusting my headlights down a few degrees. You're welcome, oncoming traffic.
@xenos568 That's just the thing. They were adjusted "right" from the factory, but "right" blinds oncoming traffic. Adjusting them down a few degrees did nothing negative to my visibility other than significantly reducing the number of oncoming cars flashing their highbeams at me.
The new style light in Europe are horrendous. I would say they are as bad. I live I. The UK and we are looking at changing the new style lights because of the glare.
Couldn't we begin to alleviate this irritant by mandating headlights to be no more than a couple feet off the ground regardless of the height of the vehicle? Does this make too much sense to implement? Why can an intercity bus get along just fine with lights at bumper level and a pickup needs them 5 feet high?
Have you actually thought about this? The lights need to be high as possible and pointed slightly down, not down low where the don't illuminate anything except the sky.
no matter what you do to the headlight short of making it not as bright you will always blind people cresting hills. theres no need for low beams to be as bright as they are, i shouldnt be able to use the low beams to "xray" my hand to make sure i didnt break a bone.
@monitorvideos Came up on a police car last year, so I slowed down and promptly got rear-ended by the car behind me. They said they couldn't see because the cop's lights were blindingly bright. I believed them, since I was basically blinded, too. When the cops are making things more dangerous...
Doesn't matter since these still blind me all the time. It incentivises driving with high beams all of the time, yet it relies on the technology actually working as intended. And it doesn't. So now everyone will be driving with high beams and we will all be blind because, just like any other tech, it only works some of the time.
Im fine using halogen in my 00 and 06. I'm trying not to be part of the problem. Also i don't like the idea if adaptive lighting, its just something else to tear up and i can only imaging the cost to repair if something malfunctions.
Car manufacturers are obsessed with slashes and LED clusters in place of sensible headlights. The height of lights have also changed putting them in the eyeline of oncoming drivers. Lastly, the frequency of the light is brighter AND highlights moisture in the air at night, which exacerbates during rain making dazzling inevitable. How the hell government hasn't legislated to conform these lights for safety is beyond me.
the amount of times i've thought to myself "are those his high beam lights or his normal lights" and never found out the answer. some of them are just as bright as high beams it's absolutely insane
I always look for foglights on or seeing 2 lights on next to each other. So many people around here drive with misaligned normal lights or have their high beams on
Tesla cars are the worst. I honestly thought some people were retarded and using high beams
@Lycanrockin I still flash people with supernova headlights if I see their foglights are on just to send a message.
I have flashed my lights at oncoming blindness, only for them to switch on their actual high beams, which were even worse. It's insane. I wear polarizing sun glasses for night driving now, to try to block glare.
At that point I just turn on my brights and say we’re both going blind. How much worse can their brights be if I’m already blind😂
European here. Is anyone blinded by the LED headlights of cars through the side mirrors? I'm going crazy they're so bright. I find it especially dangerous on the motorway as I cannot judge how far the upcoming car is when I need to overtake.
Definitely. Also a big problem.
People dont seem to know how to adjust their height. All SUVs have lights up in the sky, all of them and if you drive a low driving position car your're blinded constantly. The worst if when they come you from the rear in dark, constantly blinded from the mirrors but not only that your cab is so heavily light polluted you cant see shit.
I would have kept halogens but hell its impossible to drive at night when theres bastards with 10x the light output at seemingly near UV wavelenght light welding your retinas hours after hours night after night... Warm tone auto leveling projector/lens LED headlights are fantastic, one can see well and the oncoming traffic doesnt get blinded
Theres all the great technology out there, its cheap yet the auto makers want a while grand for one shitty headlight thats so full of flaws they should be banned
Also an european. Oh boy does everything blind us here. Many manufacturers are still figuring this matrixLED stuff out, so the lights kind-of-work-most-of-the-times. But far enough from prefect so that every third car annoys your eyes. :)
These things wait until the absolute final millisecond while approaching - when your finger is ready to flash them back - to block the light off from your car's spot.
Brightness-wise, Peugeot was one of the worst offenders with their lights a few years back. Their 4008, 5008 & 508 are unbearable even during the day.
(Off topic) Also - the automatic brights are the worst thing ever. Never do these understand that the car in-front is close enough already. Nor do they act fast enoguh coming around the corner ("Good old times" when people had courtesy to switch the brights off before coming around the corner- when a human eye sensed some-one-else's lights approaching).
Also these turds activate in cities and such.
Don't "accept" fog lights as oncoming traffic...
Thank you guys for bringing up a topic I felt I too needed to rant about. :)
Also a tip - I've found that my cars rear fog lights (Yes there's a pair) work as anti-automatic-brights for the car on my tail. (May not be an ethical approach... & can't be done across the Pond.)
Love my led and dimming mirrors 😂
I've been talking about the blinding headlights for years, and I'm young. My dad has it even worse because he struggles with driving at night already, and the bright headlights make it even worse.
everyone struggles. night time on wet, unfamiliar roads is just shit, for everyone these days
yup, night driving is complete garbage... luckily FSD is almost here.
@ryshaskdon't bet on it, FSD could just as well be decades away if ever.
@ryshask FSD will kill you
Im so sick and tired of projector leds I need to fight the urge to key cars.
It's so bright that even the reflection off buildings and the road itself glares to my eyes
As a pedestrain where vehicle should only be using low beams I notice the same think.
It is so bad they have me saluting Hitler. You know raised arm & hand to block the offensive light pollution.
Your headlights are incorrectly adjusted if reflections are blinding you. Even the brightest OEM headlights do not cause glare when adjusted correctly. They do not come adjusted correctly from the factory (but they say they do).
You can try polarising glasses to reduce glare off of surfaces quite a lot. Look into it :)
Even with low beams, all you need to do in a populated street is go over a single speedbump, and everybody hates you because of your blinding lights.
A bad speedbump can make me blind people on the second floor (first floor after ground level), _in their own homes._
Wild that this is legal.
@Volvithever conside the thickness of road paint? I've seen some that is almost 1mm thick. Given the USA DOT regulation that headlight can light out to 820-feet - even road paint can cause an up angle in headlight beams.
Never mind stones, shells or litter.
“I need to see more of the road”
That’s great, but just wait until the person your blinding can’t see the road and so crashes into you
This is precisely when I'm blinded, I slowly steer toward the offending vehicle and mash that GO pedal!
Exactly
The most dangerous aspect is driving on a city street and being completely blinded so you cannot see someone exiting their car on your side, or crossing the street, and you hit them.
been saying this for years. Greetings from europe
So what you’re saying is that when someone sees a bright light, they will want to turn and drive directly in to it? Explain your logic.
Holy cow. I'm so glad it's not just me. I've been noticing this a lot lately and I thought I was just getting older or something. People are installing stupidly bright headlights and making it a pain to drive at night. Then it makes other people more reluctant to turn off their high beams. It's a real safety hazard, especially in deer country.
Yeah I live where a LOT of people have installed the drop in LED lights in their older vehicles to help see at night (no street lights, + deer and moose).
When those vehicles are oncoming it "fogs" the whole roadway with light and I just have to look down and at the road markings and hope nothing is in the roadway in front of me.
I sincerely *hate* that aspect of coming up on a car with bright lights! It doesn't bother my eyes quite so much but sitting there with nothing to do but hoping a deer isn't in the wrong spot at the wrong time always worries me.
best video ever
Yep. I drive a semi and when I’m in small towns on a two lane road (two lanes going in opposite directions) some drivers are driving with their high beams on. This makes it damn near impossible to see where I’m going. Then there’s the pick up truck people that think it’s a great idea to add those LED bar lights that shine brighter than the sun.
I'm in the same shoes. I thought I was growing old and more sensitive to light - turns out, it's not that simple! Good to know. Shame I'll be in the ground by the time all carmakers were forced to do those adaptive headlight systems.
61 years old here.
I FULLY remember the days before all of this.
When you could take a long drive at night with no issues.
Now,I literally plan my life around avoiding night driving if I can.
Yep same with me, despite having my bike and car fitted with Touring lights it is meant for rainy days / very dark places. Dang those people who seem to keep their additional lights on even on clear night 😡
I remember the days when people weren’t assholes.
PepperRidge Farm also remembers.
Most of the blame is on the Boomers followed by the Xs. Weird how my grandma was older than both of those generations but she was hard to deal with yet nice.
@johnbrubaker2033 You must be the first human.
I think these people need glasses, I see them using xenon lights at night doing nothing but blinding every one
People have to let their eyes adjust to the dark. But everyone wants to drive a car with lights so bright they could land a plane with them.
This
Ironically this doesnt just apply to driving. Like, a room gets "dark" (aka a bit less than noon clear summer day outside light level) and people just instantly turn on the light instead of waiting for bloody five seconds and theyd see the same.
I actually suffer a bit from this since I have oversensitive eyes and too much light (especially older flourescent lights) promote migraine...
Yes, and contrary to what this video says, it is a problem in Europe as well. It doesn't matter that these state of the art adaptive LEDs shut segments not blind. The general amount of light is higher anyways. As a result, your eyes adapt to brither environvment and when you're driving a car that is not new, and still has halogens, you suddenly feel as if your lights went off.
Some research indicates young poeple (those old enough to get a driver's license) might quickly readjust to night (or something like it) vision in under 2-seconds, but older drivers (say seniors) will take 8-seconds or more.
Related, with blinding headlight is it possible to judge how far an oncoming vehicle is away? Porsche use to have a problem with this on one of their vehicle designs years ago causing an increase in car crashes.
Some parking lots are so lit up,
it is like several military magnesium flares are being used it is so bright
Sometimes I swear people have a fetish for bright light or something
@RunToEternityI liken that type of parking lot lighting to statium lights. But I think your magnesium flares comes closer to the light intensity.
In addition to the ultra bright LED headlights, strobing brake lights also piss me off.
i find the strobing brake lights to be more distracting, very annoying. not the way to make people pay attention.
Strobing brake lights in most countries indicates a panic stop situation. The ridiculous strobing brake lights in the USA that strobe at every braking cycle are not only illegal, but completely a waste of money.
@haroldbeauchamp3770I’ve seen them on the back of emergency vehicles but they have no business on basic passenger vehicles.
@Domino狐Yeah, those ones.
They are meant to strobe only when braking hard, i.e. when the ABS kicks in.
Aussie here. I drive an NB MX-5 (Miata). I’ve had it since 2003, and had a 1990 NA MX-5 before that. I never suffered from blinding headlights until about 15 years ago when these LED and Xenon lights became ubiquitous. Yes, my seating position is low, so I’m blinded by almost every vehicle, but as I said, it’s only a recent phenomenon. I don’t know how they were ever allowed on vehicles. Even bright LED daytime running lights give me ‘snow blindness’. I’m even blinded from the headlights of vehicles shining on my side mirrors, and reflecting back into my eyes.
New owner of a 2002 NB, can confirm...when you sit that low everything is blinding, even motorcycles. It was pretty insane the first time I drove it at night, I was so used to my late model Subaru's as well as every other car I've owned for the last 12 years that I was concerned I wouldn't be able to see anything with the Miata's headlights. Surprisingly, I was able to re-adjust to the "old" headlights quite well. I also had to remember to use the lever on the rear view mirror when cars with bright lights are behind me.
@JohnSandovalesqAs an MX-5 owner for 35 years, I can tell you it’s a new phenomenon. 15 years ago, before these new bulbs, the halogen lights on even large 4WDs never, ever caused me an issue.
Same and I don't sit low I'm in a van and before that a Toyota truck and I just don't drive of a night now. And like you I'm affected even in daylight now it's crazy. 👍
There's the problem, you're not a true blue Aussie as you'd have a dual cab😂.
Same here in my low seated honda civic
I can't believe how these modern vehicle lights can be so damn bright and legal. I despise them. Specially on stupid trucks.
In America, they are NOT legal - but no one is enforcing it.
And I thought it was just me getting older. I really don't enjoy driving in darkness anymore, at least not when there's traffic.
what about above average trucks?
@NomadHatch What is crazy is most are built in the vehicle from the factory! So IF they were truly illegal, then the car manufactures should ALL be arrested!
From what I can see driving at night, it’s the stupid punks who like to change the lights all over and under their trucks! Who the heck thinks it’s a good look with colored lights inside fender wells and under trucks? Ever notice the trucks blinding you have goofy looking wheels sticking way you past their fender wells and no sidewall to their tires? Y
German here. Those matrix headlights aren't the solution. They still require the system to detect and determine you to be a subject worth lowering the light intensity for. I get blinded all the time, as a pedestrian, cyclist, motorist in the mirrors.
Orange headlights FTW! The Halogens were great. Just replace them with LEDs of the same colour temperature.
No fancy camera system, no computer, no problem!
Yes, the real reason why you can’t see a damn thing is precisely the color temperature of street lighting and car headlights. Cool light perceptually creates more contrast, and increasing its intensity only makes that contrast stronger. Sodium-vapor street lamps and the classic H7 car bulbs had the right temperature and intensity.
We don't need a complicated and expensive technology, we just need dimmer lights.
We live in the era of "fixing" things that aren't broken because our society is build on infinite progress, even though we reached the peak a while ago
@bengnomino Sodium vapor street lamps... When they started replacing them with white LEDs in the area where I live, it became much more annoying to drive at night, as on the yellow streets you could tell from far that a car with a whiter light is approaching from the side, but the white street lamps completely masking that.
Occams razor?
I don’t even like driving at night anymore because it is so difficult to see the road, pedestrians, bikes due to how bright oncoming traffic headlights are now. It’s dangerous.
Municipalities don't place enough street lights on the roads, too.
I frequently have to either hold my hand up to block the headlights so I can see the road or I have to look at the fog line on the side of the road so I don't end up driving into a telephone pole. It's time for some class action lawsuits
@RecordnRtistplease don't even get me started on those stupid LED streetlights, like if light pollution wasn't bad enough already
Retroreflectors should be standard on every marked road. They are visible even in rain.
well, even those electric bikes today having terible bright lights that they blinding upcoming cars, they think its safe but its the opposite
Here in the states, I've noticed a trend that people who drive around with their high beams on all the time have ridiculously dark tint on their windshields. It's so bad that I have to shield the left side of my face to make it past oncoming traffic.
Which is why it's illegal to have any tint at all on the windshield, front passenger window and driver window here
@Anankin12yup. When I was a kid I was so jealous of Americans for being able to mod their cars like crazy. Wanna slap a V8 in your Toyota? Hydraulic suspensions? 26in wheels? No problem mate. But now I realize that also comes with serious downsides lol
The tinted windshield trend is really starting to take off indy area as well
Yes this is very common now to encounter people who do not switch to low beams. It is a trigger for road rage as well. Even after flashing your high beams back at them, they still don't lower theirs.
I have windshield tint now because the benefits of not being blinded by oncoming cars outweighs the cons of less viability. Also I have off-road lights on the front and rear of one of my vehicles (never on while driving of course), but if it’s nighttime, and I see a high beam driver and there’s no other collateral damage cars on the road, I turn all my lights on at once including my high beams . It’s incredible how quickly people turn off their high beams 🤣
the Elephant in the room: SUVs
And monster utes.
i drive a lifted truck, i get blinded more by cars with miss aimed lights. every vehicle needs the aim level checked.
Pickups with all those auxiliary lights.
@Hardcover_Actualok, but you drive a lifted truck, you are blinding literally everyone else on the road
@Hardcover_Actual With a lifted truck, unless you've gone through the factory procedure to re-aim your beams, you're completely part of the problem.
Pickup drivers jacking up their trucks until their headlights blind everything in front of it pisses me off.
Yeah that should be straight up illegal.
Truck driver here. The company gave me a brand new Renault D-wide with 0 km on it. I was surprised by how bright and powerful the headlights are even with the standard low beam - at night, I can see everything even too well. But on the other hand - on the highway, and especially on unlit roads, I often get flashes of high beams from oncoming drivers... and how can I explain to them that these are the factory low beams? And there's nothing I can do about it... I don't flash my high beams myself to answer, because I know it could completely destroy their retinas... I just keep driving, mentally apologizing (even though what's my fault, personally?)
Just flash them real quick. They'll know then.
The low beams more than likely need to be aimed downward a little. see it on almost all new factory led headlights.
As another said, they have adjustment screws. Just need to find said screws/bolt heads and screw them (in our out) to lower the beam angle
_"even though what's my fault, personally?"_ -- does the commercial trucking industry not have rules and philosophies similar to those found in maritime and aviation? The captain of a vessel or airplane has the final say and responsibility in all matters related to the operation of the vehicle.
Now, corporations can and do create a barrier to honest and effective application of a rule like that. Fishing vessels have been lost, passenger-carrying airplanes have been lost, because a captain was pressured into some unsafe situation by their corporate overlords. But I would guess in such situations, the captain themselves would be the first to say that they should've pushed back, regardless of the cost in terms of their employment.
It's all hypothetical ethics. Until it's not.
At the very least, probably worth exploring getting maintenance to make adjustments to the headlight angle, as suggested by other comments here. The most professionally dedicated driver would refuse to operate a truck they know is unsafe.
The new low beams on new cabs are insanely bright.
German here. Ive been often blinded at night for quite some time now. And it's not the older cars with retrofitted LED-turned halogen lights. I'm mostly blinded by newer cars with factory fitted LED-Lights / Laserlights etc.. Mostly Mercedeses, Audis, BMWs... Even Tesla's. My brother has a German spec Tesla Model 3. One day we were at a family gathering at a restaurant. I came with my 125cc scooter, my brother with his Tesla and when we left it was already dark outside. When he drove directly behind me I mostly couldn't see what was in front of me because those Tesla LED-lights blinded me so badly in my sidemirrors. Nothing modified. Blinded by manufacturer spec, it's unbelivable.
tesla is the worst garbage on wheels. they are the worst with headlights
Motorcycle mirrors are adjustable or just sit up a little taller and they don’t line up directly at your eyes lol.
@PapaWheelie1 So I adjust them so I cant see behind me? You literally don't seem to know how mirrors work... Please don't give safety advises or learn to adjust mirrors yourself first before commenting...
@ghinio3675 - I’ve got hundreds of thousands of miles on motorcycles. You adjust them down when the lights are shining into your eyes. Seeing what is in front of you is more important than seeing the headlights of the car behind you in that case.
@PapaWheelie1 But this is not how it should be. Adjusting my mirrors so I dont get blinded? It's not my fault is what I'm saying.
6:34 : The IIHS report states that highly-rated vehicles have 19% fewer nighttime crashes. But this misses the whole point: it's not the subject vehicle with the blinding headlights that's likely to crash , but the oncoming vehicle whose driver is being blinded, which the report does NOT account for. Typical bureaucratic mush.
Yes fuck the bureacrats and we all turn off our light completely. will be much safer and no one will find us
Actually I can totally see this as a legitimate error. Kinda like the whole "airplane" simulation thing where an airplane got back and you're supposed to put armor on it depending on where it would be most effective.
The planes where there was actual viable evidence for armor upgrades were never recovered since they crashed, falsifying the data.
TLDR: They easily couldve made a mistake gathering the data and understanding it, rather than it being beaurocratic mush
@KryptoKn8Also of note, they're testing the single-vehicle crash rate of these vehicles. It's actually a given that better/brighter headlights would reduce the odds that a single vehicle encounters conditions that would cause it to crash
A similar effect causes large, heavy vehicles to be highly rated as 'safe'. Not for pedestrians or other vehicles.
Europe incorporates these effects and it might be why countries like Great Britains have 2.6 traffic related deaths per 100,000 while the U.S. is over 14 per 100,000.
@KryptoKn8 The youtube algorithm gave me that gem a few days ago of that exact survivorship bias example😯
"During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The Statistical Research Group (SRG) at Columbia University, of which Wald was a member, examined the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions and recommended adding armor to the areas that showed the least damage. The bullet holes in the returning aircraft represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Therefore, Wald proposed that the Navy reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, inferring that planes hit in those areas were the ones most likely to be lost. His work is considered seminal in the then nascent discipline of operational research."
lights are so bright I cannot gauge distance, velocity or if a car is even moving towards me on a road anymore. It is also incredibly blinding and distracting but the more dangerous part is not being able to distinguish another driver's movement.
Bright LED tail lghts are a problem as well. One time I was stopped behind a Prius at a stop sign in a dark neighborhood for about a minute. Those brake lights were so bright, when they drove away I could hardly see!
Yep - I've just noticed this at the start of the 2025 winter. Mine was on some kind of silver SUV. Rear lights were so bright i had to hold my hand up to block them... and I still had the after-image burned into my retinas.
Yeah i was in a McDonald's drive thru & a Peugeot 3008 the brake lights are like looking at the sun.
And the led rear lights are so bright you can't see the indicator illuminated!
I have been seeing that in the last few months. I wonder if the owner is even aware of that. I bought a Jeep couple years ago that had way too bright lights, I took them out, out of courtesy of my fellow drivers
Yeah, image of their brake lights burned in for the next 10 minutes. I know that feeling
Yes they are extremely stupid, is like getting hit with lasers, bring back the 90 and 80's, i can't remember this been a problem.
1. Blinded by lights
2. Gets taller vehicle with brighter lights
3. Blinded by lights again because everyone got taller vehicles with brighter lights
4. Repeat step 2
On a serious note I have no clue why the US didn't just use the SAE standards
Especially since (if i'm not misinformed) SAE stands for Society of American Engineers.
@ovekarlsson777 Society of Automotive Engineers
Becuz amurkan freedom. I mean industry lobbyists.
Now in my sedan my rear view mirror is lit up like the sun and I can see my own vehicle's shadow in front of me from the million lumen headlights of the car behind me. Then a car appears in the oncoming lane & even trying to just track the white line on the right/shoulder I can't see a fucking thing & just pray I'm not gonna sideswipe one of the parked cars.
These bright lights only became a problem in the last 10 years but my god they piss me off on the daily. I swear my high beams don't put out as much light as some of these cars on low.
That’s kind of the American trademark … spend years debating how to fix something the rest of the world solved ages ago, then finally approve a version that isn’t compatible with anyone else’s standards. It’s not that we lack the technology; we just can’t seem to agree long enough to use it effectively. Until the agencies and lawmakers stop treating every improvement like a political negotiation, we’ll keep being “different” for all the wrong reasons.
And part of the problem isn’t even just the lighting tech, it’s that everyone’s driving taller and wider vehicles now. The higher the headlight, the more eye-level glare you get. A lot of people buy trucks and SUVs just to commute, not to tow or haul, and it’s changed the whole lighting dynamic on the road. It’s wild that American automakers barely make efficient, well-proportioned cars anymore, like we collectively decided “bigger” automatically means “better.” The culture in America is just damaged and flawed beyond redemption at this point. General Motors and Ford are heavily; SUV, crossover, and truck base car companies. Besides the Mustang, Ford doesn’t even offer a car. I believe the only sedans General Motors offers are Cadillacs.
_When gas prices get expensive again_ there’s gonna be a lot of hurting individuals in the United States.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one that hated LED headlights, they blind the fuck out of me and I can't see anything ruining my night vision. Someone complain to the transportation secretary already!
I like my factory LED headlights because I can see better, but I hate when other people have them. lol
Same with new street lights, stupid LED is freaking brighter than the sun lol at night time, they need to start putting some serious filters to this lights, you could literally go under this lights and find ants, i moved from a city here in California that replaced all of their lights with those new ones and the whole thing turned in to a giant parking lot of a city.
I have been shopping for auto dimming glasses to wear at night to help solve the problem but I have not found any yet. It seems it’s hard to go from clear to dark quickly. It needs to happen in a fraction of a second.
I wish I had auto dimming mirrors on my car, otherwise you just have to use sunglasses at night i guess
one of the problems is that people use any crap they can buy on amazon. they use corn led bulbs that shoot light everywhere so they cannot aim the light properly. they use it for fog lamps and main beams so at night they are illuminating more the sky than the road and blinding everyone. some even put some led bars as if they were driving in the jungle. they simply do not care.
2:50 for anyone wondering there technically is a 6,500 lumen limit on headlights, personally if it is true it's clearly not enforced.
The lumen limit is enforced in Europe, because here vehicles must be inspected every few years to every year, depending on age of the car. About blinding: Don't look at the incoming lights (or mirrors, if you see light coming from them. Look to the side of the road. That's where the parked/stranded cars and pedestrians/cyclist are. I've had eye surgery. I got thinner glasses, but also easier blinding. Another possible reason is dry eyes or cataract. Both cause halos and blinding. Have your eyes checked. Less light on the road is NOT better!
@markkulehtinen4733I have astigmatism, nothing helps at the moment.
The limit is different for every state.
I absolutely hate driving at night now
The products people buy is the problem.
100% feel that...
and don't even get me started on driving in the rain...at night...and as someone with an astigmatism...night driving is already bad enough x_x
I also did, till I changed my bulbs to LED as well. In typical halogen prism headlight. If you can't beat them, JOIN THEM!
The problem with after market bulbs is they try to give this high lumen rate but the beam is never focused properly
People just put LEDS into reflector-type headlights, and THOSE scatter light. If you go LED, get a projector type headlight.
You can focus the beam all you want, but as soon as you put it on a taller vehicle, it's going to be a problem for a standard vehicle. Focusing doesn't magically make the beam innocuous.
yes i tried to replace my mom's headlights with LED but never got it to not dazzle when you look at them from the sizes. the optics don't match.
It's not just after market.
All German cars but especially Audi 'Chelsea-tractors' (SUVs) are the absolute worst.
It's illegal to retrofit vehicles not designed for HID lamps in WA but nobody cares. They all do it anyways and now many drivers with traditional halogen lamps drive around with their high beams on all the time to retaliate.
Blinding is shite here in Europe aswell,. especially if you live in a country with long dark winters, and roads with incoinations, some cars worse than others. If you have a low car its even worse.
Agree with all of this - uneven roads and wet headlights are the worst - and as for cars - Elon - your cars are the worst - sort it out
A lot of it is the high kelvin. White/blue light is high frequency so bounces off everything and causes loads of bright reflections. Yellowish light doesn't and also cuts through rain and fog much better.
I noticed this when I drove in Sweden.
@JIMMYHIBBS1they are built like hot garbage. Headlights come misaligned from the factory. And their Adaptive high beams fails to detect cars half the time due to crappy camera based software meaning they just high Beam blast you.
@OutOfNameIdeas2i absolutely noticed that, since we dont have flat roads around here it means constant beam in the eyes since it doesnt know what its doing.
Lifted truck behind me just last evening had his brights on so much so, the interior of my car was totally lit up. I made a turn blinkers and brake lights functioning and he still blew his horn at me. I can only presume his high-beam aftermarket lights washed out my car's rear lighting.
Or, more probably, the guy or gal's an asshole.
It's not just even at night either. I'm being blinded by these things in broad daylight.
Interesting.
I live in an area that's very sunny. It's crazy how some headlights are still too bright during the day.
When did headlights start automatically coming on an hour before the sun sets? I mean, I know it is mildly darker at that hour but it seems like the settings are really jumping the gun now.
Most cars' daytime running lights are actually the high beams at reduced power. When aimed directly at oncoming traffic, they are easily too bright regardless of the lower power level. The best solution would be for all (low beam) headlights and tail lights to come on when the vehicle is in gear, regardless of ambient light conditions. There is literally no good reason not to implement this solution.
@coronos3284 I agree. I've said for years that airliner manufacturers should eliminate the flap handle. Just make flap and slat extension a product of airspeed. They could also save HUGE amounts of weight by eliminating the thrust reversers. Just make bigger brakes. There is a LOT of needless complexity by having thrust reversers.
the thing that amazes me is that the people with these ridiculous headlights i guess never see them on someone else's car and think "well maybe this isnt a good idea if thats what theyre like."
I think people never quite realize what lights they are buying. It's rare you test drive a car at night.
we need warmer lighting, even the street lights are blinding me nowadays
Yea all the lights are being replaced with the white light which I hate. Streetlights use to be a soft orange now there a bright white and it’s so blinding
@ryans413 and those LED blue light doesn't cut true fog or rain etc, as well as halogen
Yep, blue light messes with your eye's night vision. I started wearing amber-tinted "night driving" glasses whenever I drive at night because I hate modern lighting.
ye
Surely it's just cheaper than the warm lights, usually done by people who aren't driving or living in the same area, right?
11:21 + the planned obsolescence....
6:30 Well of course!!! It's the other car that crashes!
"but they had halogens so that must make halogens less safe" its literally survivors bias. and its intentional why else would they test these lights in near lab conditions as far as possible from realistic world as possible, hell they'd get the same result if they just stapped the headlight to a bench and looked at the wall the beam hits and say oh its not shining light over 3ft so it must be fine in all conditions.
HD Nightvision Glasses have entered the chat.
This might be the only answer, if these really work.
I have seen threads on Reddit where truck owners confess they buy these ultra bright light to “own Prius drivers” on the road.
Oh god!!!
They say the same thing about diesel trucks modified to "roll coal". But I had one of them do it to me and I have a Ford Escape.
I don't want to say anything negative about the average pickup truck driver, but I sure think it.
Anything but their big ass truck is a Prius
When I see those truck owners that song, "You're a dumb***" comes to mind.
Yellow tinted glasses are truly life saving for this, can recommend!
European here.
Adaptive headlights sound good in theory, but in practice they fall completely apart. They can't deal with curves or Ridgelines and that results in your retinas getting fried before the oncoming car registers you.
The SUV plague has only made that worse since the lights sit just high enough to hit normal cars rear view and side mirrors.
Anything other than dead straight on results in you going blind.
This. Typical case of the grass is always greener on the other side. Matrix headlights are annoying both behind and in front of you. I hate when the matrix headlights of the car that is following me basically flash my mirrors every turn because it can't follow the position of my car properly. Or when objects on the side of the road illuminate out of the blue, because the car behind me decided to do so. It's very distracting and annoying for everyone on the road, except for the driver of the car with such headlights.
This guy is so right!
Also they cant deal with the railing on freeways, so they blind oncomming cars cos it dosent register them.
Figured as much, I sat and watched my mom's Murano a few years ago decide when it needed to switch from high beams to regular lights out on some back country roads in pitch black with no street lights around and man did that thing blind some poor people
@henrikrasmussen7340 Ugh yeah.
Especially SUVs sit just right to poke over the standard height concrete barrier we use over here.
They cant see me but im getting blinded all the time.
@toaster98 I have ordered a highpowered flashlight. :)
Equality :)
Blue eyed human here - yes, modern and improperly aimed led headlights have unleashed the scorching fires of hell into my eyes at night👹
Your statement is perfect, I don't care about brightness, just where the lamp is aimed!
I passed a car once with lights so bright all I saw was white it took up all my vision I was afraid I was going to crash my car. I couldn’t see the road I couldn’t see my dash I couldn’t see anything. It was like I was looking directly into the sun.
perfect for another blue eyed human myself we cant tackle the sun that much as brown eyes and now these shits??? also i apparantly have that condition thing or whatever the fuck its called that makes it so that when something is bright enough(doesnt need to be that bright but i think ive got not so serious one) i see the light doing the thing that black holes do when they are finished eating ejecting a fucking quasar which hilarously enough is the brighest object in the whole universe as a shit ton of light gets ejected two ways like a perfectly straight stick just search up a quasar or black hole quasar you will see what i mean on how the lights act in my eyes
Blue eyed here too. I'm constantly flipping my rearview mirror down when driving at night because of people with blinding headlights are behind me. I've even worn sunglasses at night when it was raining because I couldn't see with all the glare.
Love how part of that rivian clip the car is shining high beams into half of the truck it's following for a bit even though it's not that far away, poor system.
And those pedestrians will be blind for the next ten minutes.
European here, its important to note that there ARE aftermarket LED bulbs which do in fact simulate the behavior of a halogen bulb filament and retain the correct beam pattern. There are also road legal certified models like the Osram and Phillips LEDs.
Those however are expensive, so most people buy cheap Chinese retrofits and give LEDs a bad rep.
Yea, those compliant LED replacement really works, you can tell if it's good if it doesn't require readjusting the headlight, it just throw out almost the same beam pattern as it has all the focal point of light source be exactly where halogen version of it would be.
I have chinese LEDs on non projector lights and even those aren't blinding and have a very good pattern so i genuinely have no idea how people manage to fuck it up
American here, I bought the road legal Philips bulbs in 4300k specifically due to their legal status (in Europe, leds are not legal in the US, just goes in enforced). Something like $240. Still obnoxiously bright.
Road legal aftermarket LED light sources have to be tested and approved for each type of headlight, which drive up costs and make it hard to find road legal LED light sources for less common vehicles.
@johan.edlund exactly. The behaviour will depend on projector and other elements. It is not possible to emulate with leds the ligth emision of an halogen filament.
YES!!!
I had the worst time driving home at night in the rain the other night. Fkn dangerous. Some peoples vehicles headlights should be illegal.
They technically are - but no one's enforcing it
I have also noted that brake lights became also very bright and in many cases they also make you blinded
oh well, at least if someone directly before you brakes, you shall too
and headlamps are turned on 100% of the time, whilst brakes way less
Never ever saw that. But, bright brake lights are good to make people pay attention.
I've only ever seen it as a brief discomfort. Everybody else is clearly having a much harder time lmao
So many drivers just drive around at night oblivious that their high beams are on or headlights are turned off completely these days
Yea it’s one or the other they think the blue light on the dash means the headlight are on or they drive with no headlights on which that one I don’t understand how can you not tell your lights ain’t on. Or the people that drive with one working headlight how can you not tell the other headlight ain’t on. It baffles me everyday.
Or some few out there nighttime driving without any lights lmao.
I blame the new trend of always-lit dashboards. You get in a 90s car and if you drive in the dark without headlights, it's obvious, you can't see how fast you're going, the dash is pitch black. You get in a 2010s car without your headlights? Easily see your hyper-brightly-lit gauges or, worse, LCD screen on the dash, and aside from being slightly brighter than it should be, looks hardly any different. But what of the headlights themselves? Surely these people must notice it's dark in front of them? Ah, but nearly all new cars have daytime running lights now! So the *headlights* actually are on, it's the *taillights* that aren't. From the driver's perspective, the only difference is the position of a switch and the brightness of the dashboard. And we wonder why people don't realize.
Any car with DRLs and a day-lighted dash board ought to have either auto headlights they can't permanently shut off (like most GM cars) or just run the taillights all the time like the DRLs. The fact they sell cars where the difference between headlights on and off is too subtle to be apparent is just stupid.
I once helped a young couple install replacement bulbs. When I asked them to turn on their headlights, they immediately turned on the high beams, not realizing that there were low beams. This needs to be a driver’s test item.
Agree with your sentiments. It boils my piss when it's heavy rain/spray/darker conditions and the tail-lights are not illuminated. Drivers are completely oblivious to this fact seemingly happy in the knowledge that their (front) running lights are on. Bloody dangerous and should be addressed more on all types of media imho.
Also most if not all states have headlight adjustment statutes on the books, but they never enforce them anymore.
They don't enforce a lot of things these days.
@carlosoliveira-rc2xt They enforce only what is profitable for them or useful to their narrative. The rest of us are on our own.
Some do. But mostly, cops just don't care to enforce the laws because any ticket like that usually gets dismissed in court.
@frisbee544I never understood how just because it might get dismissed in court as a reason to not enforce the law. It seems like a Cop out. Pun intended.
I hate LED headlights. It makes me want to not drive at night more than I already don't.
Yup !!! and some of them (actually ALL of them) have a blinking rate, and some are so noticable its torture ! I have to block my mirror when one is behind me. For the rest, Night-Time Driving glasses with blue-blocking (yellowed) lenses help A LOT Got mine on ebay
@mtlicqThose yellow tint glasses help with how blinding LEDs are, but they reduce visibility at night.
@User24x Au contraire, mon ami,. Those glasses INCREASE visibility. They reduce the intensity of bright lights that would "blind", AND your pupils can stay a bit MORE dilated, letting you see more in the rest of the road.
@User24x Also, less squinting, less need to blink, plus less fatique for the eyes.
@mtlicq They REDUCE strain on your eyes.
Today i learned something within 1:20 of this video "High / Low" Headlight refer to the actual beam direction on old car but today it just refer to how blinding the light is :D
as a european, I can say, that these problems won't be solved solely by allowing the matrix LED headlights.
a lot of people just ignores the fact, that the headlight needs to be calibrated properly. even worse, anyone with a screwdriver or hex key can adjust the base calibration of the headlight, physically, "yeah I'll see further with adjusting these screws a little" - yeah, buddy, but blinding everyone else...
and there are the lifted trucks.
and there's the issue with the used car market: a failed/cracked matrix LED headlight is extremely expensive to replace. people will buy aftermarket headlight units to replace them, or convert back the car to regular LEDs. (no moving parts, no fancy light show)
so what's the solution? mandatory technical inspection every year, or every 2 years, they check the headlights too.
in the netherlands and germany and several others there is a mandatory 2 year inspection of cars, for safety and they do checks the lights then, problem is people with smoked lenses mount the legal ones for the inspection, and after that mount the illegal smoked ones so you can bareley see the back lights and indicators, same for adjusting headlights correctly for inspection, after they put them back to blinding people
Yeah and when you get caught you get fined and taken your drovers license away.
Unfortunately, we tend to have to regulate that kind of behavior with threat of punishment, at least in the US. If someone is found to have messed with their settings such that the beams are a hazard to other drivers, it could be considered attempted assault. If they're in an accident or are found to be the cause of an accident by being IDed at the scene, especially with surveillance evidence, they could be charged with willingly committing whatever happened to the victims, including manslaughter. This would keep most people in line, but anything less and they'll just keep ignoring the little voice in their head that's telling them people could get hurt.
In the UK there is an annual government test once a car is 3 years old, without which it cannot be taxed or insured so is not allowed on the road. This 'MOT' test covers brakes, lights (that they work and are adjusted correctly), steering, exhaust emissions, seat belts and various other safety aspects. Even so, I do get occasionally blinded by some of the more modern cars on the road, presumably under three yeasrs old!
calibration doesnt fix blinding on a crest of a country road. low beams should be halogen theres no reason for ultra bright lowbeams.
Driving during night in this day and age is atrocious.
Not only are the low beams extremely bright as mentioned in this video, but people are really bad at turning of the high beams in time and are also turning them on way too early.
Not a lot of brain power happening there that's for sure. I wonder if it's the people who are still alive after all the jabs.
That sounds a lot like that automatic high beam feature many new cars nowadays have
People are just getting stupid. Last night, I saw 2 high beam people, 5 near crashes, and 1 probably drunk lady. All in less than 4 miles.
@Kostas_Dikefalaios These are the same base technology as ADB. They take a few seconds to react even on straight road, and rarely get it right around curves and hills. ADB is the same in this regard.
Considering how expensive a headlight assembly is without ADB, I shudder to think how much one will be with it.
I don't want to spend more money (ADB) to solve a problem created by spending more money (brighter lights), especially when the right solution is just use dimmer and cheaper bulbs.
@elizabethjamespack8541 Exactly! More expensive tech to solve a problem only created by expensive tech.
That sounds like a ton of added complexity and headache and cost
It sounds like a boost to revenues for the car companies... but from all reports it still doesn't solve the problem. The real engineering solution is just to use a dimmer bulb.
European here. Those new headlights might be an upcoming thing. But it's not something we feel the effect of in general. We are still getting blinded like crazy every night. I have a feeling it's not going away any time soon.
Yeah the percentage of vehicles that are actually on the road with those systems is sill quite low.
I started using yellow tinted glasses and have a small mirror that I put up to block the light coming at me while reflecting it back at them.
Ya .. I adjust the side mirrors to blast the light back at the offenders. Makes for more movement by myself to use the mirrors but at least it makes night driving a little less painful. I also do tend to camp out in the passing lane if not much traffic around and right lane is clear. They can pass from the right when needed if I don't feel like moving over ..
I have been driving in England for the past 43 yrs and everyone of my cars had standard halogen bulbs. They where good enough through every season then and now. New car headlamps are blood dangerous and make me angry.
Plus they're bloody expensive. About 10 years ago I priced a new car, and LED headlights were like a 2000$ option, or something crazy like that. I suppose their price might have come down since, but the point is pretty much every car has them standard now, you're kinda forced to buy them.
I'm not a car person and I don't drive, so forgive me if I mess up with the terminology, but I do get ferried home late once or twice a week after an evening shift by a friend and we've found that the last 5 years have been a drastic change, it used to be we'd only get blinded by someone too scared of the dark on a country road or unlucky timing crossed a humped bridge. Now it's like everyone is on full beams and those that don't turn down their lights force my friend to slow way down to be as safe as possible while the light ghosting fades from his eyes.
An even crazier thing is he's demonstrated that these ultra bright lights are pointless, as you don't really see much better with them compared to older lights, and for best visibility on country roads, just the side lights let you see clearly for a couple hundred meters, but since it's not legal to drive with just them on at night, we're all forced to blind each other instead!
8:33 no one is checking? Portugal here, we need to get the car inspected every couple of years if its old enough and then every year if its a tad older than that (I forget the exact spans)
The thumbnail clearly shows europe and the US
The thumbnail clearly shows Europe and the US
Yeah, this is all over the EU. They also specifically check the lights and the setting of the lights. You must put them to 'zero' and then they slide some mirrors in front to see if the lights are not shining too high.
Another European here: these matrix headlights are absolutely not the solution. It sounds great in theory, but in practice these things suck at correctly detecting oncoming vehicles in everything outside a completely straight and flat road.
Plus now the people driving those cars don’t even realize that they are blinding everyone else (and often don’t know how to disable it either), so the old trick of quickly flashing your high beams to remind them to turn theirs off doesn’t work anymore. It’s worse than ever before.
Wait, cars with matrix headlights are just in high beam mode all the time?
I have been on my motorbike when a mercedes with it's very bright led lights blinded me so bad, I had to pull over and stop because of the glare
I knew I wasn’t the only one that noticed this. It is straight up even more dangerous to drive at night now. I noticed this problem in the last 5 years. It used to no be like this. And as a driver of a subcompact it is hell getting blinded by lights at night.
The amount of times I say to myself thanks for blinding me or turn off your high beams while I’m driving at night is alarming. I’m noticing it way more now.
@ryans413same
I love it when oncoming headlights make the road disappear......
I had a compact commuter car (Toyota) for many years and got sick of sitting at intersections with headlights shining through my entire car at stoplights where I couldn't even see or use my mirrors or what my kids were doing in the back seat & tailgaters which would be driving with their high beams on behind me at night and I couldn't see what was going on around me. Easy trick that doesn't require permanent modification is to use a suction cup mounted reflective sun visor in the back window (reflective part facing back) and just cover the bottom portion of the window while keeping the top portion open and visible as to not obstruct the entire window, and to re position your mirrors so the light shines backward but you can still use them when needed by just shifting your head. Not every time but allot of times people would pull up behind me and after a moment or too they would dim their headlights and even shut off their fog lights, not because they were necessarily being courteous but because they were now catching some of that light shining back at them. Works great when you have to rent a small car for road trips too. Hope that helps! :)
I like your thinking.
I had this thought for my car. Considered looking for a one-way mirror just to send some of that light back towards oncoming drivers.
I thought about doing something similar, but it could cause a crash because they end up blinded suddenly, so it could backfire.
Nearly ran over a pedestrian because i was blinded by high beaming a-hole. It was during dusk, and in group of oncoming traffic full of high beaming LED can really take away your field of vision. It's ridiculous.
This is what need to be regulated, not some BS mufflers and CARB mandates on aftermarket parts.
I hate white cold lights, I miss the old warm halogen bulbs. Much less harmful to the eyes in pitch black conditions.
And you also see nothing. So cool
My dad's truck thankfully use dim but yellow lights. Many vehicles in the 2000s and before were using lightbulbs to be used for yellow/tungsten light. But with the electric vehicles say Tesla for example, all of them are using LED white lights, akin to that of hospitals, and video lights. If you have ever stared at a video light for a good hour or two, Those are exactly what you're staring at. For me I got used to it, but the ones in the rearview mirror, yeah, they're bright. BUT, it's this reason I can just tilt the rearview mirrors just enough to move the light more upward and away, than straight on.
What's maddening is that LEDs can mimic those tones no problem but stores usually just carry the cheaper blinding white version.
The overly cold white doesn't properly cut through mist, fog and rain and just scatters into a wall of light.
@FreeRadicalX Yep. It requires a dedicated search to find good yellow fog lights that aren't cheap Temu crap, but it's worth it. My headlights are LED 5500K white but my fogs are now a very pleasant 3000K yellow. Get out there in the evening with a screwdriver and adjust them to overlap just right about 20-25m in front of the car and we're good to go. Yellow up close for great contrast and shadowing, whites pushing out a mile and a half to light up reflective features and large objects. Works well and I don't get flashed by oncoming traffic, so I'm pretty sure I'm not endangering anybody else.
Reminds me of an (adapted) joke: The car with the brightest lights has never been involved in an accident, but it’s seen hundreds!
It's an arms race. With the aftermarket bulbs, if someone gets blinded, and it pisses them off, their reaction is often "I'm gonna get _me_ some of them bulbs and blind _me_ some mafackas!". As Ghandi said, eventually we all end up blind and toothless.
you said the quiet part out loud!
I've never understood that logic, someone else is causing problems for everyone so I'm gonna do that too?
At least with direct revenge it's aimed solely at the one that wronged you.
@ShaimingLong Bingo. Some people just like to do stuff that people "hate"... those same people will then probably call _you_ a "hater". Ever see those ads? e.g.:
_Amazon hates this, but they can't stop you!_
@kentuckybowl-o-sticks It's one thing to be a contrarian, especially when being so won't make a difference to the big billionaire corporation - but I mean on the individual level it makes no sense to me.
For a personal example, a 60 year old woman moved into little block of flats I live in, effectively chased out of her old house by young, noisy families settling down next to her.
She was desperate to get somewhere quiet and took the downgrade of living in a flat, yet since she moved in she's consistently been the noisemaker, blasting out her cinema TV system until 3am most nights and she justifies it with "that's what everyone else did where I used to live, so I might as well enjoy myself now."
She fled from people doing what she's doing now and it's fine for her to do it because the people she fled from did it. It's logic I can't wrap my head around and yet "but someone else did it first!" is such a common justification for doing something stupid or awful.
Sorry for the long winded reply!
@ShaimingLong Yep... she's just like the people who bought blinding bulbs because they didn't like it when others blinded _them!_ Go figure...
Why not just turn up the volume where she _used_ to live to drown out those who were irritating _her???_
I have a 90s chevy truck, the headlights look like flashlights compared to new cars, but when youre on a backroad without a ton of traffic and have them aimed right, they're more than enough.
That's because you have night vision. And the bright light ruins it!
Most people think they need to see 1 miles ahead to drive and use high beams on the highway which is ridiculous.
Exactly. My 2012 Silverado is the same way. The headlights are more than bright enough in the woods, or in the city.
as a long hauler... i absolutely agree with this. also emergency lights are super dangerous. your driving through the night for hours and then you come across a police car with a thousand super bright LEDs flashing in every direction. for several seconds you are as blind as a bat. you can still see the ghost images for a minute or two after you pass them. street lights in the middle of dark roads is also bad. again your eyes are adjusted to the dark then you come to an intersection with blinking LEDs and bright street lights. your eyes adjust and then it's right back into the pitch black.
I have no issue eith officer safety but damn you can see those cars from the space station
One of these days I'm gonna swerve into oncoming traffic at night like a deer because of the headlights.
There needs to be laws converting back to a softer more warm white light. I still have great vision at 50 but these headlights make me think I have 90 year old eyes when driving at night 🇨🇦
My eye sight has started degrading :( I am 48
0:11 "People who camp in the slow lane."
Isn't that gripe about people camping in the fast lane?🤔
Yeah, he misspoke.
11:32 so lets add even more technology that is going to further increase the cost of a vehicle which it turn is will make it even more of a case of "not everyone can afford a new car".
Exactly! It also massively effects the cost of the car long term. Headlights are easily damaged, even in accidents where the airbags aren't deployed. They also need to replaced commonly because of water intrusion and UV damage.
Nothing is going to make people run to the aftermarket faster than seeing an OEM headlight replacement is thousands of dollars!
@Chris-oj7ro Yep
why dont we go back... halogen low beams led high beams. simple solution.
What an extremely informative and entertaining video, thank you 🏆
Active matrix/autodimming headlights are not the answer. I live in the UK and a LOT of our A roads and B roads are windy, hilly, single carriageways where the fancy headlights simply cannot react fast enough. Even a millisecond of these blinding headlights coming round a corner in front of me is enough to temporarily blind me, and by the time my night vision returns I've covered 50m or more. If a bend is coming up I often have to just slam on my brakes to make sure I've got time to see the corner I need to take. Driving in the UK at winter has genuinely become something I dread because I know I can't avoid driving in the dark, and I KNOW it's just a matter of time before one of these blinding encounters causes me to carreer off the side of steep valley road.
what's insane is that it's going to take multiple people dying in accidents being attributed to blinding lights before anything is done about this insane trend
@NomadHatch You have to track the data to even notice a trend. I suspect it's happening already, but no government or car manufacturer cares enough to even track the data.
I made the mistake once of looking into my side rearview mirror and was instantly blinded by an insanely bright headlight. It was so bad it etched a dark spot into my vision and I proceeded to get a mind splitting migraine after. It pisses me off to no end
"camp in the slow lane"
That's what we want. Must have meant passing lane.
Director here. I can't believe we didn't catch that, you're 100% correct
Nah, must just be a Floridian. Here the "slow" lane is where everyone passes the left lane campers and middle lane hogs that don't understand the concept of a multi-lane road, so camping in the slow lane is actually impeding passing traffic.
I wish I was kidding.
I've adapted my night driving to using sunglasses and angling the side mirrors out just a bit.
As a european I can tell you that the problem persists even with adaptive headlights. The adaptive lights dont always recognise upcoming traffic or out of the ordinary situations.
IMHO the US is actually on the forefront of regulating headlights in a safer manner than Europe does. (And yes that does mean european cars have better nighttime visibility)
as a european you should know laser led is bad for eyes
I have found that by the time those systems recognise you, you have already had your vision blinded.
Here in Australia they have wattage limits. The issue is it's not policed anymore and those head lights still under those limits are 10 times brighter now. Old laws need to be updated.
Briefly blinded is not worse than constantly
Never been blinded by those adaptive LED lights, idk why many have problems with that.
10:44 i thought you were gonna say TESLA cuz my model 3 has been doing it for a year now lol
Same he probably doesn't want to give Elon a W. My 2021 Model 3 has it.
Yeah, but they don't really work. They still blind people on hills and curves. And even on flat, straight roads, the lights still take way too long to react.
Brakelights are getting way to bright too. Standing at a stoplight I can sometimes almost not see the traffic light due to the massive glare of other car brakelights.
Yes, people should use their handbrake when stopped in traffic, not keep their foot on the brake pedal to blind those behind them.
pickups are the worst by being taller.. lights are directly in your face..
When someone tailgates me with their lights like that i slow down, Let them change lane and get in front, then its my turn 👾
🤣😂 modern problems, modern solutions
Too bad standard (stick shift) transmissions are so uncommon, especially in new vehicles. When I would drive on an interstate on the great plains I would get some yo yo tailgating me IN THE RIGHT LANE when we were miles away from an exit, and the left (passing lane) was wide open. In a stick shift I would take my foot off the gas, and watch them in the rear view mirror. Since automatics don't slow down as fast I wait till I see their car "bowing" then I accelerate up to the speed limit. They often race up while I take my foot off the gas, making them brake a little harder. Two or three times of that they race around me and are on their way and after about a minute I never see them again. The beauty of this method is that you brake lights never come on so they don't know you are "break checking" them, which means they don't feel obligated to "punish" you. Alternatively, I drive about 1 mph (1.6 kph) BELOW the speed limit. That pisses them off as well and they race around and leave me alone.
One of the problems is there are lamp height regulations that people ignore when they jack up their trucks by 2 feet and put the lamp directly in your line of sight.
Iirc, it's banned in Canada.
Absolutley
The problem is called "leveling" a truck. What cracks me up is when these guys complain that the truck vibrates on the highway after they do that and blame the OEM. LOL. Idiots. (look up U-joint mis-alignment...)
Lifting a truck would be fine if the arseholes would spend a few minutes properly adjusting their headlights for the new height/leveling.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. 98 percent of the people in the world think they are starring in their own movie. Despite what they say or think that's the reality of it. These are the selfish pricks who know their head lights are really bright but don't give a flying F because they think we all exist for them.
Didn't Tesla enable adaptive beam headlights with cars with the matrix headlights last year?
Yes, they did. Both Rivian and Tesla have enabled them.
yeah but that doesnt solve the problem when cresting a hill and getting greeted at the top with the brightness of a flashbang. just ban led low beams. you dont need that much light with low beams.
Yeah. They don't work.
As someone who travels to Europe frequently, adaptive matrix headlights are not the game changer you think they are. The headlights are still indescribably bright. The only benefit of these headlights is that it darkens the pixels of the oncoming vehicle. However, to the oncoming vehicle all this does is reduce the glare. It does not make the lights any less blinding by lighting standards. It’s still an incredibly bright light approaching you, albeit with slightly less glare.
And they are still on a minority of the vehicles there. He makes it sound like people in Ethiopa are driving around without ever getting glare lol
@mediocreman2 At least people in Ethiopia are happier.
If you are being blinded by matrix led lights, you need to see an optician or a doctor. Personally i have astigmatism, but recently got new glasses. I don't get blinded by lights in the night. The only shit cars that actually have bad glare are Teslas, american pos car.
@ManakuskiAnd even newer Teslas have Matrix LED lights that work exceptionally well, on par with premium europen brands. Not a surprise, they own a german engineering company for a reason.
@Soordhin no they don't. They always blind me. They're awful in Teslas. Even the new Model Y manages to blind me when oncoming, i don't know why, but yeah. Only a Skoda Octavia does the same, but not as bad as Teslas.
I miss the floor button high beam control switch. Anyone else?
👇
my truck still has one :P and triangle windows!
Hey yeah! I forgot about those! Gave your left foot a purpose in an automatic.
6:08 Curves? You mean hills or elevation changes? When an oncoming vehicle is traveling up hill towards you, that is the absolute worst.. Especially with these bright as the sun headlights now. Bumps and curves are the least of my worries.
I've gotten blinded super bad when approaching railroad crossings on busy roads as well- some of them are up quite a lot and you're in the retina searing zone of the lights till an oncoming car clears the crossing!
Headlights straight up don't need to be that bright, especially the low beams. People got along fine with halogens for half a century. If the IIHS data says these insane lights reduce accidents, it means there are a lot of people driving too fast for how far they can see and who shouldn't be on the road. These same people will still go too fast for any other factor limiting their ability to react.
I hate driving older vehicle with crappy lights. It’s like they designed them to be as bad as possible.
An issue we have had here in Japan for years, and which is only now starting to become known in the rest of the world, is just how expensive all of these new LED lights and technologies are to replace. I say replace because repair is functionally and/or fiscally impossible or impractical. If your vehicle has LED's and was made in the last five to ten years, it likely does not have bulbs, halogen or LED, that can be replaced. When something fails the entire assembly will have to be replaced, and that can involve a lot of labor on top of the insane cost of each headlight assembly. As an example, a friend's Subaru recently had a headlight LED fail. The assembly is going to cost him roughly $550 USD for the part and another $150 in labor. The same part in the States seems to be around $1200, not including sales taxes, and labor tends to be 2-3x the cost there.
If you factor in auto-leveling, steerable, or these newer ADB assemblies... the cost will only go up from there. And much like LED bulbs for your home they almost never last as long as the manufacturer says they will.
My headlights are $1500 each and they're not even the special ones. In another few years, any simple front end bump could total the car if I lose both headlights and some body panels.
Especially with utility (trucks) getting bigger and taller. They blind me with my rear view and side mirrors when they drive behind me. Very dangerous.
I can't drive at night anymore now that all the headlights are blinding. How did we manage to drive everywhere in the '70s & '80s without stadium level floodlights on the fronts of our vehicles?
Everything seems to be bigger, brighter and noisier in the last decade. Makes me just want to stay home and draw the blinds.
One of the first things I've been doing when buying a new vehicle is manually adjusting my headlights down a few degrees. You're welcome, oncoming traffic.
You're the goat :D But seriously just checking if the headlights are adjusted right makes a huge difference
Night time speed limit.
Reduce headlight power.
Slow down.
Cheep and simple , no high tech to fail.
There is a switch to do that you don't need to manually do it
@cun7sathome switching to dim wont matter if the headlamps themselves are pointing up to much.
@xenos568 That's just the thing. They were adjusted "right" from the factory, but "right" blinds oncoming traffic. Adjusting them down a few degrees did nothing negative to my visibility other than significantly reducing the number of oncoming cars flashing their highbeams at me.
The new style light in Europe are horrendous. I would say they are as bad. I live I. The UK and we are looking at changing the new style lights because of the glare.
As horrendous as double glazed windows and mixing water taps, I guess...
as bad as low light led street lamps
@MetalheadAndNerd nice one, UK has their own set of funny rules.
@lemcakes32422low light led lamps are fantastic, what do you mean?
Thanks for the video!
9:20 matrix LED is even worse than standard LEDs. It's like a thunderstorm behind you.
Couldn't we begin to alleviate this irritant by mandating headlights to be no more than a couple feet off the ground regardless of the height of the vehicle? Does this make too much sense to implement? Why can an intercity bus get along just fine with lights at bumper level and a pickup needs them 5 feet high?
Have you actually thought about this? The lights need to be high as possible and pointed slightly down, not down low where the don't illuminate anything except the sky.
no matter what you do to the headlight short of making it not as bright you will always blind people cresting hills. theres no need for low beams to be as bright as they are, i shouldnt be able to use the low beams to "xray" my hand to make sure i didnt break a bone.
new police lights are extremely bright too and super distracting with their animations now. it’s no wonder they get rear-ended on the side of the road
It's deliberate - the correct response is to slow down.
@monitorvideos Came up on a police car last year, so I slowed down and promptly got rear-ended by the car behind me. They said they couldn't see because the cop's lights were blindingly bright. I believed them, since I was basically blinded, too.
When the cops are making things more dangerous...
Yeah, those new headlights are a MAJOR problem for me.
9:40…man how much will that add to a new car..?
A lot I'm sure. Probably impossible to repair too.
Doesn't matter since these still blind me all the time. It incentivises driving with high beams all of the time, yet it relies on the technology actually working as intended. And it doesn't. So now everyone will be driving with high beams and we will all be blind because, just like any other tech, it only works some of the time.
They’re rubbish. And only work on flat straight roads, towards nearby traffic only. UK.
And forget cost; many LED units are a ‘replace the whole thing’ for the past few years anyhow. £500 per unit isn’t funny.
Only about two or three thousand dollars. Plus profit, of course. And don't the car manufacturers deserve more?
Im fine using halogen in my 00 and 06. I'm trying not to be part of the problem. Also i don't like the idea if adaptive lighting, its just something else to tear up and i can only imaging the cost to repair if something malfunctions.
Car manufacturers are obsessed with slashes and LED clusters in place of sensible headlights. The height of lights have also changed putting them in the eyeline of oncoming drivers. Lastly, the frequency of the light is brighter AND highlights moisture in the air at night, which exacerbates during rain making dazzling inevitable. How the hell government hasn't legislated to conform these lights for safety is beyond me.
perfect example that the gov doesn't care about us
blinded by headlights at night?
I get blinded by them during the day