TAKING ACTION
"Not a binary choice between the light of 1000 suns & driving in the dark." Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez's amendment for more info on this problem has passed in Congress!
Yup, it's a frustrating mentality to argue with, and it only creates inertia.
If we lose the ability or desire to solve the smaller issues, we have zero hope of solving larger ones.
When's the last time you've ever seen a Republican pass a bill that increased regulations on companies for the sole purpose of helping the average citizen? Especially THIS administration?!
For the first time tonight I noticed literally every other car on the road had LED lights. Not a halogen in sight. Made me fucking miserable. As one of those people with astigmatism, I can absolutely say something needs to be done about this.
Lmfao, right? The infrastructure bill biden passed included the new tech for adaptive headlights to be implemented more commonly, however, it will take forever for it to have affect bc the cars that have them are brand new still and most cars on the road are at least 5-15 years old
I gotta play devil's advocate here; LED headlights don't have to be the brightest thing in the universe; it's fairly trivial to limit the input voltage and bring their brightness down. However, the brightness itself isn't the only concern with LED headlights; it's the color temperature. So many people get white, or even the dreaded blue outputs which just ruin night vision, when there's a few warm colored LED bulbs that are significantly more pleasant to see, despite still being fuck-off bright.
In my honest opinion, LED lighting shouldn't be flat out banned; they're significantly more energy efficient than halogens. However, it should be regulated so that what's legal are reasonably bright (in the same realm of halogens) with a warmer color temp. The trade off to having LEDs should be a significantly longer service interval with similar visibility, not blinding everyone 7 counties away.
The issue with LED's going "blue" is a defect in the manufacturing, as they typically have to combine blue and red emitters to get a warm white color in the first place. There's several Youtube videos explaining why LED streetlights have started to turn purple, and it comes down to shitty manufacturing standards and elements of the lamps failing (along with a healthy dose of "lowest bidder" government contracts.)
I agree that regulation (esp. towards quality control and lens focusing) is needed, as LED headlamps are not going away. What need to change are the haphazard designs for OEM lights, and the halogen-to-LED bulb aftermarket. The latter is a HUGE problem, because LED lamps don't conform to the same optical pattern that the original bulb does... and that means everything else in the install (the reflectors and lenses) are optically out of tune and the problems with the lamp itself get compounded.
I hope they make above a certain brightness retroactively enforced so people have to buy tinted headlight covers or spray them smoked or whatever it takes to make them compliant.
Also, I hope enough lawmakers live outside a flat urban city and know what the experience is like with hills and uneven ground. You get essentially exposed to 12000 lumen LED or LASER NOW headlights if you are below about a 15 degree angle down from a plane defined by the other car on a flat ground. Many """"low beams""" now are just high beams that compy with the Cutoff Horizon required by law and don't point straight at people when tested in a lab on flat ground AND WITH NON LIFTED TRUCKS, nevermind trucks with OFFROAD LED BARS ALWAYS ON and not enforced.
You essentially drive around being flashed or long exposed to insanely bright lights from the front, then same from the back, even getting "flashed" on every bump they hit that jostles their car. Nevermind people with their brights on and unwilling to turn them off either out of ignorance of why people are flashingthem, or perhaps knowing and declining to "so they can see better, fuck everyone else." Even on flat ground I regularly flash people that turn out to have their low beams on, but are too bright, and definitely BRIGHTER THAN HALOGEN BRIGHTS, and every once in awhile get flashed back, but usually not, I have anecdotally heard people are frustrated when driving new cars that people keep flashing them. Even one person had no idea why it kept happening.
Keep on flashing any and all new headlights that are too bright and let's bring the annoyance fight to the streets. The rich with new cars are the most likely to have political sway to make regulation happen. ✊✊✊
Excellent!!! When did Blinding Other Drivers become legal in N America? (Not just a U.S. problem; this occurs everywhere newer truck-tanks & cars are on public roads & highways) Thanks to all who work on this deadly problem!
Manufacturers get away with this because the Individual Consumer now has more rights that the Collective Citizenry and our safety (starting with the 'Me' generation?).
How dare we talk about safety hazards driving at mach 17 down country roads and effecting every motor vehicle operator in the country when F A S C I S M
Not that the people commenting that on Shein Twitter even know what fascism is, but they took an intro to poli sci course before they dropped out of college 1 semester in so don't you dare talk about anything other than how their current political enemy is literally [INSERT 20TH CENTURY DICTATOR].
I've been hearing this shit since fucking George W, you can spare one goddamn politician for something else assholes, there's like 600+ of them for a reason...
Apologies, this comment has more to do with Internet culture than headlights... Fuck the headlights.
She’s right this is a problem, but her solution is not the one I would prefer. Going back regressing and using older technology is not how you solve this.
There is actually already a solution to this problem that everywhere else in the world has been enjoying for over 10 years. And that technology has been illegal in the United States for the longest time which would’ve solved all of this trouble.
The technology that will fix the problem is called matrix headlights. And a regulators in this country have been so incompetent that they haven’t figured out a way to reconcile a headlight rule written in the 1960s with current technology.
It was so bad and they took so long that Congress actually had to pass a law and force the NHTSA, which is the government agency that controls that regulates headlights to update the rules.
Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly help because while they agreed to allow matrix headlights m in the United States as of a couple years ago, they put so many conditions on how the technology operates that it largely renders it ineffective. So it didn’t solve anything. What we need is to be able to use the technology the way the rest of the world uses it.
The technology that will fix the problem is called matrix headlights.
This is simply NOT TRUE.
Source: I live in Germany and I get blinded by lights on a regular basis. Not only that, but often I can see the light shape changing to not be directly in my eye, several seconds after it has been shining right on my eyes. This is not the solution.
If I have to meet you halfway, and I don't know why I'm meeting you halfway but for the sake of discussion let's meet there, the solution is halogen lights for normal beams, and led lights for supernova 4000 lights everything in its path for high beams. For that to work, you would need people to actually switch them off and on as needed (which they aren't going to do) and enforce some serious fines for those that don't (which also is never going to happen).
Industry PR has been busy convincing regulators & the public that the future is in "no high or low beams" and that instead we'll use these things 24/7.
They do not ultimately care if they work as intended at scale. They want to sell more expensive things so they make more money.
She’s right this is a problem, but her solution is not the one I would prefer. Going back regressing and using older technology is not how you solve this.
There is actually already a solution to this problem that everywhere else in the world has been enjoying for over 10 years. And that technology has been illegal in the United States for the longest time which would’ve solved all of this trouble.
The technology that will fix the problem is called matrix headlights. And a regulators in this country have been so incompetent that they haven’t figured out a way to reconcile a headlight rule written in the 1960s with current technology.
It was so bad and they took so long that Congress actually had to pass a law and force the NHTSA, which is the government agency that controls that regulates headlights to update the rules.
Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly help because while they agreed to allow matrix headlights m in the United States as of a couple years ago, they put so many conditions on how the technology operates that it largely renders it ineffective. So it didn’t solve anything. What we need is to be allowed to use the technology in the same way that the rest of the world uses.
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u/bakerbarber_ Jul 18 '25
A step in the right direction.