this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?
my issue isn't really with the brightness, it's the height. Don't get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.
My point exactly. The brightness is great, when it works in your favor. But when a modern car sits at such a height, where the low-beams shine directly over the top of my car, it's obnoxious
That, and people don't know how to adjust them, or are unwilling to. My parents' cars have a dial to adjust the headlight angle for when carrying weight in the back of the car, or when towing, but they never touch the setting.
I miss that in my old car. When I'm drivng around in the city and don't rally need much headlighting I'd angle them all the way down. When I'm in a dark area where there's enough people that I can't use my brights I'd just angle them up. My current car has stupid self leveling headlights so I don't get any of that fun :(
Especially when people fuck with the ride height on their trucks. They almost always end up with the front higher than the back, relative to it's stock setting. Then don't bother to adjust the head light angle to compensate.
Then, on I need a massive light bar on the top of my truck. Never mind that I never take this thing off road or do any work with it. It looks cool and it's bright and shiny.
Fuck off. Can we just tax these things properly and not v give them a lower tax rate since their classed as commercial vehicles. No one buying these massive boats uses them for more than going to home Depot once a year to buy some leaf bags.
/Rant
I don't know the white point on some of the LED headlights is extremely taxing to look at at night.
My car has adjustable headlight height and I love it. I put em all the way down because they’re stupid bright.
I hope European-style adaptive headlights become the norm in the USA eventually. Some higher-end cars have a matrix of LEDs instead of one bulb per headlight, and they can programmatically dim just some of the LEDs. If you have your headlights on but there's a car in front of you (or on the other side of the road, whatever), the high beam will dim just the area the car is in. This happens automatically while you're driving.
This is an option in some European vehicles (or may be standard on high end ones) but they have to explicitly disable the feature when exporting to the USA.
The USA did approve something relating to this, but it must not be sufficient since the European manufacturers are still disabling the feature in the USA.
From personal experience in Europe, I can tell you that it sounds great in theory, but it's horrible in practise. I get routinely blinded by headlights here and I feel like it has only gotten worse with the advent of LED headlights.
Not all manufacturers use adaptive headlights, and on some cars it's only available as an upgrade whereas there's a lot of people driving base models.
Interesting, I have those on my car and I actively avoid using them.
It can't cope with anything more than a simple scenario (dim around car in front, deal with on coming car in other lane). If you also have pedestrians and vehicles on side junctions, then you burn their eyes.
So, I'd assumed it was a US feature (straight, wide roads) brought over here
SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN
Damn, why'd you have to bring up the sun again?
IT ALL GOES BACK TO THE SUN
That and buttons that are almost as flat as touchscreens.
I want my clickety-click Fallout and Star Wars rugged industrial feeling.
Its worse in the rain and even worse still in the snow.
And for some reason my state still doesn't have properly reflecting paint, so everyone drives with their high-beams on because otherwise you can't see the lanes. The net result is that nobody can see anything because they're constantly being blinded by oncoming traffic.
It sucks all the way down...
Never had an issue with them but then I live in Europe, where auto-adjusting/adaptive lights aren't just legal it's a requirement if you want to make the headlights permanent high-beams.
I wish adaptive lights were legal in the USA. Manufacturers like BMW have to disable the feature at the factory because their implementation isn't approved for usage in the USA.
U.S. Car Buyers Will Finally Have Access To Adaptive Headlight Technology, As NHTSA Issues Updated Rule
I saw this, but apparently the European ones don't meet the US guidelines, and the Euro manufacturers aren't yet redesigning and recertifying their headlights to meet the US guidelines. The two brands I was looking at (BMW and Porsche) both still have this feature disabled on their 2025 US models.