I know I’m not the only one who feels like I’m getting visually assaulted everytime I drive at night. It was bad 10 years ago but now, it seems like headlight manufacturers have a deal with insurance companies and optometrists to make the lights as bright as possible. Is this ever going to stop or is there some kind of race in the headlight industry to see who can reproduce the power of the sun first?
Because consumer protection and regulation seems to have stopped being a real thing after Reagan. Since then everything good has been legacy agencies patching at the edges where they had authority (all gone now thanks to the Supreme Court - see Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo).
Buckle up. It’s only going to get worse.
(This is extra ironic because buckling up is only even a thing because of consumer protections. So I guess get ready to be thrown through a windshield.)
its just so american to only think in a timeline of presidents :) always gets me
i guess adaptive headlights were also invented by reagan
That’s because a significant amount of the regulatory agency leadership is appointed by the executive and follows their policy priorities?
Adaptive headlights only recently became legal in the US.
My apologies.
Deregulation happened completely randomly in a vacuum like a decaying lump of a radioactive element with no cause.
In all seriousness though… yes, ALL changes happen in a sea of social, economic, and political factors, but someone pulls the trigger, and it’s fair to point at the gunman.
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Trucks with 3 sets of LED lights blinding me all the time
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It’s all part of The Shittening
Because (particularly in the US) people have the attitude of “I know that it’s going to be shit for other people, but it makes me feel a little better about things, so I’m going to do it anyway”
That’s a very complex thought process. Let me unveil the real reason:
“whoah that’s cool”
That’s it. If someone made a pan-nuclear LED with the same brightness as the surface of an entire white dwarf, people would buy it. That’s where the thinking ends. Where the light ends up, other people, etc… Who cares?
“Other people exist?”
And bikes. The cyclists who in broad summer cloudless noon daylight still find the need to strap a quasar to their handlebars baffles me. I feel like buying the brightest array of LEDs and walking around with a backpack filled with batteries and just clobbering these fucking idiots right in the retinas.
Worse: bikers with a glaring headlamp.
Sometimes it’s a piercingly bright red taillight. It’s noon in summer you fucknozzle, WE SEE YOU. We don’t need to see you three time zones over. I wish I was physically capable of exerting great violence upon people because that’s where we are as a society.
The mindset of these people aggravates me, they’re in the same category as door hoggers: people who smack themselves in the way of bus, metro, or elevator exits… let people off first!
It’s not just cars. Also super blinding lights on bicycles, aimed too high. And the worst of all: straight at your face aiming super blinding lights from fricking joggers on park roads that have public lighting!!
Nah SUV lights that automatically lower their lights waaaay to late are definitely the worst. Especially when they use their high beams in a 30 km/h zone like the one I live in. All just because idiot drivers couldn’t give a fuck and let their car do everything for them automatically.
The majority of bike lights throw a circle/oval/flood pattern which means they have to be aimed high to be usable. It’s just a flashlight at that point. It’s easy to make a decent beam pattern but neither the manufacturers nor the buyers give a shit.
I point mine down so it illuminates the road in front of me, and slightly in the direction facing away from oncoming traffic. I also use the dimmest setting, and don’t have it in blink mode unless it’s foggy out.
The bicycles with nor just the headlights, but the flashing white lights to dazzle your vision. Genius. “Let me be seen by blinding you.” Right up there with motorcycles riding with their highbeam on. People cannot see you if you blind them.
The park is not an island. The rider risks his life elsewhere, and it’s a hassle to keep turning the headlight on and off every fave miutes.
Just like with a car, a cyclist ought to be able to aim their headlight to not blind others
If you’re blinding me as a pedestrian in the park, you’re also blinding oncoming drivers on the road, potentially endangering yourself
Blinding drivers on the road in the only way to get noticed, as the car lights are extremely bright and impossible to match.
What can any of us do about anything? Everything sucks ass and I have no idea what to do. Should I talk to my literal neo nazi neighbors until I’ve somehow successfully re-educated them? That’s fucking stupid and not possible. The second they turn around from our conversation, they see a television, in their own house, in all the restaurants, in every waiting room in the country, blaring FOX News.
Going over to a Facebook market place pickup, and seeing a dude with Fox just playing in the afternoon on a weekend. I was just like “you really choose to do this in your free time?”. I felt nothing but genuine pity. And I got a pretty cool green enamel sink for free, so I wasn’t about to say anything.
There’s been a few campaigns against this sort of thing: https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents
In the USA, the lack of proper technical inspections and adjustable headlight beams, is a problem with raised vehicles. WTF, riding a motorcycle against a raised POS Bro Dozer, with multiple light bars, is the closest thing to a blinding UFO encounter. One cannot see jack shit! In Europe, that pile of rolling bolts would not be allowed on the public roads.
This one time riding my motorcycle, the days adventures ran a little longer than anticipated. As night fell so did the temperatures. Coming down the mountain a 4Runner or Tacoma was behind me with their high beams on. The lights were so bright I could feel them on my back. I folded in my mirrors and accepted the free heat.
Because it’s the sole responsibility of the owner to repair the car (and sometimes passengers) when it hits a wild animal, and brighter bulbs are an inexpensive preventative measure. And you really can’t replace people.
Other people complain about the bright lights, but they get real quiet when you say you hit a deer and now you have to pay hundreds you can’t afford to fix your car.
It’s the same with ad blockers. People say they cost websites money, but as soon as you get ransomware they say that’s on you, you should have used an ad blocker.
It’s a catch 22. Those who are proactive are painted as the problem by those who won’t help those who aren’t and wind up owing or paying more.
That’s what we gotta figure out. Otherwise we’ll all just keep talking past each other.
So basically what someone wrote above: “what’s important is that me and my family and property are safe”. Fantastic way to live in a society with other people.
Other people complain about the bright lights, but they get real quiet when you say you hit a deer and now you have to pay hundreds you can’t afford to fix your car.
What are you saying? Why would other people get quiet about what’s bothering them because you have to repair your car? Why is that everybody else’s problem? You are aware that you could slow down at night to avoid hitting wildlife, right? Blinding other innocent people at night is not “being proactive”, and it’s in no way morally comparable to ad blockers. The people being subjected to this aren’t trying to harvest your data to make money on you.
So that’s what I’m saying. People are talking past each other, no one is accomplishing anything.
And yes, the lives of my partner and kids is worth more than your inconvenience. I’m sure your partner and kids are worth more than my inconvenience. That’s just how people are. Maybe you don’t have kids, maybe you have elderly parents you care for. Maybe you’re a lone wolf and you don’t have anybody, but surely you recognise that there are other people with people they love and value over the convenience of others, so the point stands.
I don’t like bright lights either. But I’m also not donating to some stranger’s GoFundMe because he hit a deer being a nice guy who put your convenience over his safety, and now he’s got a broken leg, smashed fender, thousands in hospital bills, and hundreds in auto repair bills. I’m a nice guy, but I got needs and I also got wants. Does that make me an arsehole? If so, then so be it. The question is, are you donating? You said “why is that everybody else’s problem” implying it isn’t yours. So you aren’t, either. You put the blame on the guy for not driving slower. You’re saying his safety is his problem. Okay, fine. Now you don’t get to judge how he fixes that problem.
But don’t get me wrong. It’s the Internet, you can say what you want. But talk is cheap. Or as we said in the 1980s, “money talks and bullshit walks.” All we’re doing is walking in circles. I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me. Therefore, the problem will not get solved, at least not between us. The silver lining there is that it is statistically unlikely that we will ever meet face to face, or on the road.
It is interesting, however, that you take the opposite position with ad blocking. True, they are not exactly the same thing, but it is a similar situation. And, like headlights, or slowing down, there are multiple solutions. But you passionately defend both sides of a similar argument when the subject changes. That should at least inform you that you are capable of reason, and that you can see that there are valid arguments on both sides. So, if nothing else, maybe you can at least appreciate that we will solve nothing by talking past each other. We’re tilting at windmills.
There was one moderately useful comment when I made mine: someone mentioned adaptive headlights. What they failed to mention, likely because it would undermine their point, is the cost of adaptive headlights. Ars Technica recently (week or two ago, I’m not gonna go dig for it) had an article about adaptive headlights. They sound great. They sound like they are the solution. In short, you get extremely bright light when you need it. When you have oncoming traffic, you still get stupidly bright light, but a smart array of LEDs makes sure none are pointing at the oncoming driver. Everything around them is lit up like high noon, but the other driver isn’t inconvenienced. That sounds awesome, but it’s also prohibitively expensive. The good thing is, cars will have this standard in a decade or so. Just like things like power windows and locks, power steering, and automatic transmissions became standard, so too will this. Then people will look back and call us savages.
the lives of my partner and kids is worth more than your inconvenience.
But not worth more than your inconvenience or you’d just slow down when you can’t see as well.
This is why we’re in such a mess now. People have been trained that society sucks and it’s every man for themselves now.
I know they have gotten brighter over the years but that’s not what’s been the biggest issue for me. To me it’s the fact these trucks keep getting taller, 3 feet ago it wasn’t as bad because the lights were closer to the road, now the headlights on these trucks are damn near eye-level.
Yeah I don’t understand why everyone needs a tank-sized SUV to drive their kids home from school. I’d love to get a small sedan sized truck with a normal car engine but the back is a truck bed, but those are long gone as an option in the states. When I was in Australia I saw these, they call them a ute.
For me it’s the white lights, they are to bright, but they work extremely well and I’m glad I have them. But I hate that other people have them.
Because we decided we hated to have our vehicles inspected. If we still did that these people would get violations.
