A new community where people can just vent about or actually do coordinate action against the pest of ultra bright LEDs.
I came back from the mall, they had one of those little trains for kids. The locomotive had two incredibly bright 6000K (blue-white) headlights. What for? You’re in a mall. It’s lit. You’re going 2 km/h. It’s just cheap one size fits all Aliexpress junk. Not a single thought went into the selection of these abominations.
I thought it was just me getting older and my eyes getting worse, but headlights have really gotten ridiculous in the last 20 years or so. Related pet peeve is people walking at night in dark clothes, not even looking up when they cross the street.
I thought the same, until my teens started driving. Both of them complained they can’t see in the glare and ask me to drive at night sometimes, LoL
The hell of it is, its even stock vehicles now. So many new models have these crazy bright headlights. I know it can be done right, so how about we start having the safety bodies dealing with this bullshit at the manufacturer level?
I personally think headlight brightness peaked just before LED became mainstream. Through the mid teens companies were installing projector headlights. I had a 2014 Corolla with projector headlights so bright that I got non-stop flashes from opposing drivers.
Newer LED headlights are often matrix headlights. See the entire road like you’ve got high beams on, except the oncoming car’s area is dark. Best of both worlds if implemented well enough. You can still turn off the high beams so that if the system stops malfunctioning, you have something equivalent to normal LED low beams.
My car has standard bulbs but with lenses that pivot to achieve the same effect, but I’m dreading the day that one of the servos breaks and my car starts looking like Forest Whitaker
Found the euro …. Is that even approved in the US yet?
What about overly bright LED signs? Like billboards or business signs? Those things also suck.
Or LED’s in modern electronics. I have a wine fridge that insists on telling me its temperature in the brightest possible blue segmented display. And apparently, I must be informed of the temperature at all times because I cant turn it off. Blue LED on the subwoofer brighter than the sun. I had to put a yoshi plushy infront of it to block the light. Wireless phone charger next to my bed… you bet that puppy needs a bright ass light to light up my sleeping area… FUCK! Electrical tape is my best friend today, I use it to cover up any of these stupid LEDs now.
This is why I have a lot of black electrical tape covering a lot of petty lights throughout my house.
Also noises. A lot of household machines like a microwave are unnecessarily obnoxious with noises, with little to no options or choices for it.
My samsung microwave has the need to beep 10 fucking times. Shut the fuck up already. God damn it. Instead of giving us the options to turn off these noises and lights, we are given other functions we never use.
Gaffer’s tape is better, it doesn’t dissolve into a sticky mess.
The real stuff (the kind that doesn’t leave residue) can get expensive as hell though.
And we drive all LED elements at 100% of their rated value, no matter what. there used to be a Youtuber that rewired electronic things and dimmed all the lights as he was going through them, it’s been ages since I’ve see him tho.
There’s a load of cars with headlights that are overly bright, but there is an even bigger epidemic of idiots driving around with high beams on as part of regular course.
In the city there is no need for those, ever. Let alone always being on.
it’s hard to tell the two apart these days because many cars have regular headlights that are as bright as normal high beams. there have been a few times i’ve been mad at someone behind me with their high beams on, and then they flash their actual high beams because they’re mad at me for not also speeding while blind
god, driving at night used to be so fun, now it’s ruined
I don’t disagree. There are plenty of led upgrade kits that are way too bright regularly and also probably misaligned causing them to be double bad. Brighter than normal and aimed directly into your eyes.
I’m with you though, driving at night used to be a lot different and more enjoyable than it is today with all these extremely bright lights pointed at your eyes.
because many cars have regular headlights that are as bright as normal high beams
You seem to have no grasp of how car headlights work, because almost every single car that has ever been produced has high beams that are as bright as their low beams
My problem is that I drive a low car (Ford fiesta) and most other cars are taller, this makes them way more blinding.
Our problem is not that we drive small cars (I drive a Focus). It’s that newer vehicles are enormous, usually for no reason.
Nearly every time I get on the highway, I’m tailgated by someone in some newer massive SUV where the headlights are at the same height as my rear view mirror. I don’t understand why those vehicles are allowed to operate on the same roads as me. They aren’t safe. By default, stock, out of the factory, they blind the other drivers in reasonable cars. I can’t imagine what getting into a wreck with one would do to my car (and me in it).
Oh, there is a reason, and it’s the fucking NHTSA. Those absolute fuckrockets mandate proportionally stricter emissions standards on smaller cars than larger cars. They base it on the area of the rectangle formed by where the tires touch the pavement.
If your car can’t quite pass emission standards, just make it a little wider, a little longer, and you get a looser standard.
Repeat the process for a few model years, and now 2025 subcompacts are larger than 1995 sedans.
Fuck the NHTSA with a rusty bayonet.
Same, and they might even have properly adjusted headlights, but as soon as they tilt up (e.g. due to a speed bump), the flashing lights make it look like they are sending me a light signal. Usually takes a few seconds until I realise they just hit a speed bump.
Dude YES. 20 years ago driving in the country you see some high beams in the distance and people would go back to low beams as they get around a corner or crest a hill when they see other cars.
My commute is through a lot of schools and parks and pedestrian crossings and it’s somewhat poorly lit, so everyone has high beams on regardless of traffic but as a result I can’t see shit. If there’s oncoming cars stopped and a pedestrian tries to squeak through I literally wouldn’t be able to tell.
It’s gotten so bad, either people have their brights on all the time or they’re not adjusted properly. In either case headlights DONT HAVE TO BE SO BRIGHT.
I’ve noticed quite the influx of highbeams in recent years. I simply can’t understand why though. Stupids wanting to see better, by making other’s vision worse? Western Canada here, and I thought it was just me taking notice. Fuckn why??
I mean I guess I’m stupid but I straight up can’t see if there’s oncoming traffic and my brights aren’t on. Doesn’t go for every oncoming car (if its lights are reasonable then I have no issues) but the vast majority of cars have newer, hilariously bright headlights that shine in a way where my normal lights simply don’t seem to cut it.
High beams and fog lights on a beautiful sunlit day.
Meanwhile I’m out here driving a 20 year old car with correspondingly dim headlights and need to have the highbeams on just to be able to see anything when there’s oncoming traffic. My normal headlights are fine when there’s nothing coming the other way, but that’s not really how that’s supposed to work lol. Kinda defeats the purpose of ever turning the brights off! I swear any newer car’s normal lights are brighter than my brights
need to have the highbeams on just to be able to see anything when there’s oncoming traffic.
Let me get this straight: you are turning on your brights when there is oncoming traffic?
I don’t see how running high beams held you see when there is oncoming cars with brighter lights. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that older cars are smaller and lower?
I am not disputing new cars have higher brightness on regular lights, that absolutely is true. Though running high beams throws light both forward and up toward the oncoming drivers eyes.
Unfortunately I don’t know the physics, maybe something to do with how lights scatters through the windshield? Idk, all I can tell you is my repeated experience: turning the brights on definitely helps with seeing through oncoming traffic. But you are right, my older car is both smaller and lower, so I’m sure even the modern cars with lights aimed downward are more likely to shine directly at me
100% this; I’ll see the same make a model go by, with LED lights, and it will be fine one time the next time I’ll be like 🔥 MY EYES 🔥.
If all LED headlamps followed a new polarization standard, things could be very cool. As an example, let’s say the headlights could only shine horizontally polarized light and the windshields could only pass vertically polarized light. That means that one could see every thing very clearly because you wouldn’t be blinded by the cars coming on the opposite side. Your light would illuminate everything in from of you, which would then reflect non polarized light back at you plus all other light reflections from other sources like street lamps. Houses could be fitted with the same filter film as older cars. Similarly, people could wear polarized glasses and get the same benefit.
Yeah but see that would require the government to do something, and right now they can’t even tell their asses from their elbows. Oh and they’re cutting at least half the jobs. Because eFiShAnSeE.
Maybe guns are the solution. Just gotta aim for the LED’s! Lol.
In North America we can’t even get signal lights to not look different than break lights. I hope Europe has better luck.
Edit: that sounds like an awesome idea
I agree with you. Our king Elon tried to make our cars automatic. Our felon president trumpfus will be banning electric cars and orange lights because he doesn’t like to be called orange face.
But yeah otherwise not too crazy of a solution.
It would add to the price, which would suck, but I’d love to see some sort of HUD assist system. Even if it was a wire frame or something that appears as a HUD on the windshield. Not bright enough to blind you or be in the way, but enough to see. User could adjust the color (within limits to maybe not negate the system). To me, we don’t take enough advantage of HUD tech and different types of vision that a computer could do that a human can’t. Make it come on with the headlights or something. That way it’s not on during the day.
One big challenge with this is that the human eye has not followed all the technological advances… Its still gonna give you shit after the age of 40. So that means you cannot have a simple mirror reflection system where the driver simply focuses on stuff outside of the car and then from time to time onto the HUD. But I think Mamazon and the apple companies have figure either automated focusing or long distance focusing such that the eye doesn’t have to focus on shit up close while driving. So it’s totally doable.
I didn’t pay attention in physics class, why is the light reflected back not polarized? what happened to the once polarized photons that they come back non polarized?
Also what is polarization? I know that Electro Magnetic Radiation or EMR is made up from pulsating magnetic and electrical fields that propagate through space at a fixed rate or frequency… but what does polarization mean? does it mean the fields are slanted to one side or into one direction or something? or is it like some sort of spin or other sort of modulation?
There’s Horizontal and vertical polarization as well as circular polarization. In a simple explanation , think of horizontal as a fence with horizontal bars so that only the horizontal part of the photons pass thru. Now once those horizontal photons pass, they will meet surfaces, which will reflect back their light so your eyes can see it. However, in this experiment only the vertical photons will pass your windshield. Because polarization depends on the angle of incidence, you will get some of the horizontally polarized light back as vertically polarized light which will pass thru. The effect is psychedelic. I totally recommend you to try it. You need polarized glasses, a flashlight and a piece of polarized film to place on your flashlight. The colors and shapes come back to you without defined form or glimmers so stuff looks normal, but weird as heck.
I don’t want anything about driving at night to look psychedelic or weird as heck
I think ‘uncanny’ would fit better, as certain surfaces would fluoresce despite having no apparent source of light, artifacts, or glaring that you could see.
Its just weird. Once you see it, its just like any other thing in life.
Yup pretty simple.
But check the date this is a very old idea. Would probably make a very interesting YouTube video or two
I know. It’s not my idea, this is old old. So its amazing how much we seem to like people crashing at night.
I do have some concerns about polarizing the light. If I can get a hold of some cheap filter material I might be inclined to do some tests. Maybe I can rescue the polarizer out of an old LCD TV.
Polarizing’s not completely magic, It does seriously reduce the amount of light coming in. There’s just usually enough light around that it doesn’t affect us, our pupils dilate a fraction of a fraction and it’s no big deal.
But at night when there’s already relatively little light out, It does reduce the overall light amount.
I’m also concerned that any light that bounces off something but maintains the polarization will be blocked, so there will be a higher chance of you not being able to see some percentage of your own headlight illumination, I would think that the average diffraction off everything in front of you would thoroughly destroy the coalescence of polarization but I don’t really know for sure, it’s possible that would make your own headlights less effective to you.
I suspect if we were thinking about this in the '50s if it were viable somebody would have pulled it off by now. But we only have had windshield sized polarizers in TVs for maybe a decades so maybe?
All I can say is that it works. I’ve tested this using a flashlight and polarized film on the lamp and on my safety glasses. It makes everything evenly lit. Other light sources become useful since you’re not blinded by the incoming light.
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I agree, fuck those headlights, but I don’t understand the point of a community for it.
Somewhere for me to go and make myself annoyed?Welcome to the Internet
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
It is like road rage videos. I hate road rage. I hope they lose their license. But I can’t watch them because they pointlessly get me worked up.
Oh, it’s bullshit. It’s a bunch of cockfucking bullshit.
You’re sitting, waiting for the bus, trying to look down the street to see if you notice the bus coming. What do you see instead? White. Just an all encompassing blinding white light which just consumes all reality and everything you’re experiencing right now.
NOW how am I supposed to know if I should be getting my bus pass out? Also, 50% chance my retinas were just singed to a crisp.
A quick question for Americans: here in the UK, cars have to pass an annual inspection once they reach three years old. It’s called an MOT test and it’s primarily concerned with making sure the car is safe - they check for rust, seatbelt tension, brake wear, and, yes, they make sure all the lights are not just working but also aligned properly. Do you not have an equivalent?
I think some states have laws similar to this but in a lot of the country you can basically drive your car until it falls apart unless a cop specifically stops and tickets you for something egregious.
It’s by state. I’ve always lived in states with relatively strict inspections, at least compared to other states, but I’ve never heard of them checking lights or window tint. They’re supposed to
I suppose it’s good that they focus on more urgent things like brakes, emissions, that there be lights, tire treads, and windshield chips/cracks, but I wish they’d do everything
Actually it’s mildly annoying that I have to pay the same for inspections that include the emissions check, with my EV
Some states have something similar, but it’s more for emissions I think. Michigan doesn’t seem to care AT ALL.
Not in my state in the US. Arkansas did away with vehicle inspections. As a result you not only have to contend with bright headlights but severely misaligned headlight housings. Most are done on purpose and the funny part of it, if there is a funny part. When they bright light you its really better than when they are on dim.
I’ll add onto the answers already. I lived in both an inspection state (Virginia), and a non inspection state (Washington state). I was in Va for about 2 years. I never saw more janky ass cars on the road and broken down ones. I saw more in those 2 years than the 20+ years I’ve lived here in Wa.
When it came time for mine, all my neighbors sent me to a mechanic down the road. It was a long ass line, but moved pretty fast. No appointment needed. “WTF is this?” I thought. I got to my turn. The guy was in a short stool, like a dr’s one. He didn’t even leave it. I was in and out in 5 minutes. I’m anal retentive on our vehicle maintenance. So I’m not a danger, but man, I know how others are.
One of our neighbor’s friends brought his car by one time. When it was off, oil was flooded into the spark plug holes. I swore it would never start. He cranked it. It turned over right away and all the oil sucked back down into the engine. I’ve never seen anything like it, nor since. I’m still flummoxed by it.
I saw one car where the person cut the roof away from just behind the driver’s seats. Regular old car. They half ass put a piece of plywood and, what I assume, is plexiglass to act as a wall. The “bed” of the vehicle was now the passenger seat area. It also had some janky work going on back there.
Our inspection system is really shitty, even in the states with them. There are so many, “I know a guy”, things going on that they might as well not have them. Then there are exemptions as well. Year ranges exempt. They do no real good if they’re there. Completely defeats the purpose.
We used to have inspection in Oklahoma but I think it violated our “freedom” so they got rid of it.
I still get mad about this aftermarket center high beam. way more blinding in person than the photo, also makes it impossible to see the plates
That is definitely “please ticket / pull me over officer”
Aircraft approach lights level.
The most annoying thing about bright LED headlights is that LEDs don’t have to be bright. Yet because so many are, people view LED headlights as the problem. You can get varying brightness LED bulbs for your home, why not your car?
As a cyclist, please.
Ooh a place for the cult of the Honda Fit to congregate
I’mma get some downvotes for this. But is this community also for the headlights of bicycles who like to shine into the face of other road users instead of illuminating the road?
Totally, I’m commuting by bike almost every work day of the year and it’s infuriating how many cyclists have their headlights misaligned.
Yesterday, some idiot on a bike came right at me with a strobing light pointing at my eyes. Fuck you…
What I currently do is to take out my own headlight from its holder and deliberately point into their eyes. At least the message should be clear.
Oh god yes, especially now that all of them use led lights. Mine still uses an old-fashioned light, which is great when you’re alone on the road because your night vision can deal with the rest. But I turn completely blind when an oncoming bike shines one of those led-lights directly in my face.
I’ve already ran off the path twice so far because I couldn’t see where I was cycling (it was at a bicycle path through the park without street lights)
No downvotes from me. I cycle every day, it’s my only mode of transportation, and the number of poorly adjusted lights on other people’s bikes is staggering.
Ugh yeah that’s been an increasing problem too. I had some guy last year just as dusk was starting to set with a bike headlight blinding me on the bike trail.
❤️ StVZO-compliant illumination ❤️
I recently had a high beam tailgating me. I moved my side and rearview mirrors to reflect it back and he passed me on a double yellow line with him in front of me I just turned on my own high beams. He turned off soon after but I hope it made his day a little more frustrating ¯_(ツ)_/¯
perhaps there could be an automatic mirror to handle this for you. that’d be a good project
I’ve thought about turning my entire rear window into a mirror, but I imagine there is a law against it, so I haven’t looked into it.
The same crossed my mind but that would be hell for everyone around you on a sunny day. Sometimes even just a car with a lot of chrome is annoying 😔
Hah I’ve thought of this maybe I can look into it, I’m an amateur Arduino enthusiast but it might even be more simple than that.
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