Are headlights getting brighter or am I getting old?

Pickup trucks and large SUVs have their headlights mounted higher up and dazzle drivers in normally sized cars.

It's another example of regulatory capture where owners of pickups and large SUVs have free rein to dazzle lower folk.

Interestingly lights on heavy trucks are regulated in height and aim so that they don't dazzle other drivers.

Lol I live in a big city with a lot of terrible/rude drivers and literally until I read the comments here, I thought there were just a ton of super annoying people driving with their high beams on at night.

I still drive a sedan while it seems like 99% of the world has moved on to driving monster trucks and mini school bus sized SUVs. I hadn't considered the impact of the height difference.

For a definitive yes or no answer: Yes, they are getting brighter.

The Corolla is the litmus test of if a given technology has hit the mainstream in cars. Once upon a time LED headlights were too expensive to ever be standard on a car that basic, so halogens, which tend to be dimmer and at a less glare-prone temperature were standard.

Now they've gotten cheap enough that one of the most simplified cars on the market features them, so it's a given that you are seeing many more of them than you used to.

Bonus: HID lamps, which were the popular "blindingly bright" option back in the day were legally required to be self-leveling in some markets. In my 4 series for example, the HID lights are on something like a gimbal and can aim down if the car is pointed up, and side to side depending on which way the steering wheel is pointed.

LEDs don't have that restriction, and these self-leveling assemblies aren't exactly cheap to design and manufacture, so naturally higher volume cars are skipping out on them. So now the most common cars are most likely to blind you.

(there's also manual leveling switches in some cars, but most people barely know what their temp gauge means, so the odds someone both knows what it's for, and knows when to adjust it, are incredibly low)

There are a few cross-over SUV's with LED headlights that seem exceedingly annoying. The newer Honda Pilots and Subaru Ascent always seem like they have sun-like headlights. When one of these vehicles is traveling up a hill, the basically blind anyone coming down the hill. I own a Pilot, and get high beam flashed constantly. I had Honda check the alignment and they say its 100% where it should be.

I can't ever make out the grill after being blinded, but it seems like GM trucks (perhaps the 2500 series?) also have exceedingly bright lights.

Other vehicles seem to have "are those low or high beams" bright headlights, but not enough to "old man yells at clouds" about them.

You can tell if it's highbeams by looking for four distinct points of light.

Some headlights are always bright, moreso than 10-20 years ago. Probably due to the recent surge in prevalence of LED assemblies.

It also does seem like the quantity of clueless people driving with the highbeams on 24/7 is on the rise.

Do people not know how to operate their vehicles? There is no good excuse for the highbeams to be on in excesse.

As a pedestrian, Teslas really suck with their auto-highbeam tech. It's friggin' blinding. Every. Single. Time.

Yes.

You are getting older, and your ability to adjust to changes in light gets much much worse in your 40s onwards, but modern LEDs are also brighter, colder, and there are also a lot of poorly regulated after-market halogen→LED conversion kits doing the same to older cars.

Yellowed glasses are a thing. I've used them for shooting in winter but people swear by them for night driving. It's obviously important not to dim your vision too much though.

My last car (before I gave up on cars and sold it) was a Honda from 2016. It no longer allowed me to adjust the lights. All my previous cars allowed me to lower the beam. Change the angle. This feature was removed.

Furthermore, the rearview mirror had a new feature to automatically "dim brightness from cars behind me". Which confirmed for me the problem of bright lights in general.

And finally, and most annoyingly: the Honda would automatically turn on the brights if it was night and it thought there was no car coming towards me. This feature was so buggy I had to switch to manual lights like 1992.

Writing this I am so happy I gave up cars.

Lighting regulations haven't kept up with changes in the technology used to produce electric light. Most LED headlights are much bluer than the halogen bulbs the automotive companies started using in the 1960's.

I think we're all casualties of a sort of trench warfare. Luxury brands started putting High-intensity discharge (HID) lamps in their high-end cars in the 1990's. HID lights put out more blue than halogen light bulbs. This led to the association of blue-white headlights with expensive cars. I suspect the marketing departments of the automotive companies told their engineers to use blue-white LEDs when these first became available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp#...

No one had the answer to my AskHN: What prevents the automotive industry from using safe LEDs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334405

Another problem is people retrofitting LED bulbs into housings that were designed for halogen bulbs. The fine print on these bulbs usually say "for off road use only". The LED bulbs have a totally different light output than the halogens. The housing for the halogen bulbs are designed with the assumption that there will be a filament at a precise location. LEDs retrofit into a housing designed for a filament usually just blind everyone on the road.

I've also seen people driving around with LED light bars turned on. I don't think it's legal to add supplemental light to a vehicle.

I have a few self-defense strategies to protect my eyesight. Mainly this is wearing yellow glasses whenever I'm likely to be exposed to blue-white LEDs.

(minor edits)

They are definitely brighter. I had a 2009 Ford Fusion and could barely see the road. Now I have a Mazda and I legit feel bad at how bright they are for other drivers. A lot of cars also now have auto brights, which of course never turn off quite fast enough. I always turn my auto brights off, but my wife doesn’t and it drives me nuts.

I had the same observation. I just chalked it up to more cars having LED headlights and sitting higher on the road, therefore shining their light right into me eyes or my rear view mirror.

Color temperature may make a difference. A 6000K LED headlamp will appear brighter than a 3000K incandescent bulb of the same brightness.

Makes me want to make a little sensor stand, with cameras at eye level for

1. low convertible drivers 2. standard sedan drivers 3. pedestrian, and 4. SUV drivers

At least top and bottom of the range, preferably at least one in the middle.

Something to stick on a street corner. Would want to anonymize data: license plates and faces. And want to share designs so others can do the same.

I'm not sure there's much of a business in this, but a hacker and passion community possibly. I've seen noise pollution sensors made by passionate folks, sharing plans online. The technical architecture of the company (to self-sustain in monitoring or addressing this) would have the same shape as PurpleAir.

Have you noticed that looking at a monitor is harder to do with a bright background, such as a window with a sunny day outside hurts more than it used to? I do, and I concluded it was increased sensitivity (in a bad way) to contrasting light levels in the one viewing field. I raised it with an optometrist and they didn't think it was a problem. It is for me, though and also affects my ability to drive past cars with headlights on :)

Not saying the other comments are untrue, just adding my own experience :)

Everything is getting brighter.

Headlights are brighter and aimed higher.

Paint and signs are getting more reflective. And there are more of them.

In my opinion all this extra blinding light has been making it progressively more dangerous to drive at night.

(Then there's the occasional cars with weird LEDs that rapidly flicker like looking at a screen with the wrong refresh rate. Not sure what that's all about.)

Makes me wish I could buy some nighttime sunglasses.

The HIDs on Jeeps have gotten absolutely offensive.

I wear my sunglasses at night.

Both.

You are getting older (and it takes your eyes more time to adjust), and headlights are brighter (because, well, why wouldn't my drive be less comfortable when I'm legally allowed to blind you?).

First moving to a cooler light (white/blue) and second Xenon lights are now a trend. These tend to be strong and also you should do multiple of them so you look cool.

Yeah, car manufacturers are prefering look to safety now.

My current totally unconfirmed theories: people pay extra for shaded windows, then they need brighter headlights, and finally the new headlights are less directional. Again, just theories.

Might not hurt to visit an ophthalmologist or optometrist(?) and rule out cataracts. Lights might be getting brighter though.

I have found rose color goggles REALLY help. They change the color of the light. Even people with their bright lights on do not blind me. Just annoying. The goggle is popular with snow skiers. They look goofy on me driving at night, but I can see better. Amazon has many "rose colored clip on sunglasses".

And tail lights too. Some brands have very bright led stop signals, and you often see them from up close.

Higher, brighter and LED are more uncomfortable at same brightness I feel.

And bicycles are also very bad, mostly for pedestrians, because they point their super bright LED straight up instead of downward.

It’s not that they are brighter; they are far more streakier. I can easily tell which lights are LEDs. It’s much harder to see at night and it’s not just getting older.

They are improperly installed LEDs. And also yes, they are about 2-3x brighter than halogen bulbs.

You can easily check yourself by comparing lumen values on the car accessory websites.

Yes it is definitely more annoying. I find myself flipping the rearview mirror so some of their light shines back at them.

They are so much brighter.

Fucks with my astigmatisms.

it can also be the angle. subtle change in your car height relative to taller cars and it gets a lot worse. my lifted tundra is much nicer at night relative to my nissan leaf.

Yes plus they are sharper and bluer.

Where do you live?

both

This seems like more of a tweet than a hacker news themed conversation. I miss old twitter too :(