Why are car headlights so blindingly bright now?
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wrote 30 days ago last edited by
I have noticed this and dont like it!
https://www.vox.com/explain-it-to-me/407147/bright-car-headlights-leds
Are car headlights getting brighter?
There are two ways to answer that question, lighting scientist John Bullough, a program director at the Light and Health Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Vox.The first has to do with the color of LED lights, the kind now overwhelmingly used in car headlights. “You’ve probably noticed that a lot of them look a lot more of a bluish white compared to the yellowish white of halogen headlights,” Bullough said, which used to be more common in headlights.
The concepts we use to measure light intensity — lumen and candela — were created by scientists long ago, and don’t fully align with how different parts of our vision have different sensitivities to different-colored lights, Bullough said. That means that even though a light meter might say a pair of halogen headlights has the same light intensity as a pair of LED headlights, our eyes will see the bluish LED one as brighter because it’s more likely to be picked by our peripheral vision, making our brains prioritize it as important or alarming.
The second factor, Bullough said, is that the intensity of headlights really has increased over the last 10 to 20 years.
”If we think about the reason we have headlights, they’re not to create glare — they’re to help us see things along the road so that we can avoid collisions,” he said. But the result has been that moves to make cars safer for their occupants, like the ever-increasing size of American vehicles and the increasing intensity of headlights, have created a new set of safety problems for anyone outside the car.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by LuFins Dad
We call them “asshole lights”
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
It's tough on an old man to drive at night.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
Yeah it's bad. Watch any movie from the 70s (or even 90s), yes a very scientific approach to this question. It's especially bad on SUVs and taller vehicles and even worse when there are slight hills. On the flip side, cars are doing a better job with automatic high beams, so at least that's one thing.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
I cant find it, but I read somewhere that the Europe has some sort of headlight standard that the US finally accepted, which may help with the extra glare, etc.
I think it is a big problem, especially on a road where I am unfamiliar. Kind of have to drive by the white line on the right edge of the sometimes.
(Another thing is that alot of people let their headlights get out of "whack" so one of the lights is shining right in your eyes as they come towards you.)
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
Back in the day in France you had to use yellow headlights, which were supposed to reduce glare. I think they dropped the requirement in the 90's in the interests of European harmony, but when you travelled there you had to paint your lights yellow.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
@Jolly said in Why are car headlights so blindingly bright now?:
It's tough on an old man to drive at night.
Yep. And by ‘old’ we mean over 40 or so.
And if it’s raining hard at night? Pull over and wait it out.
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wrote 29 days ago last edited by
What? I for one love modern car lights and driving at night. It's just wonderful. The cold light temperature makes everything very clear. The light follows any curve I take. I can leave on the floodlight all time without blinding anyone because the car automatically makes a hole in its light cone where other cars are. It's no comparison to the pathetic lights we had 20 years ago.
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What? I for one love modern car lights and driving at night. It's just wonderful. The cold light temperature makes everything very clear. The light follows any curve I take. I can leave on the floodlight all time without blinding anyone because the car automatically makes a hole in its light cone where other cars are. It's no comparison to the pathetic lights we had 20 years ago.
wrote 28 days ago last edited by@Klaus said in Why are car headlights so blindingly bright now?:
without blinding anyone because the car automatically makes a hole in its light cone where other cars are.
Bro that's just macular degeneration
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What? I for one love modern car lights and driving at night. It's just wonderful. The cold light temperature makes everything very clear. The light follows any curve I take. I can leave on the floodlight all time without blinding anyone because the car automatically makes a hole in its light cone where other cars are. It's no comparison to the pathetic lights we had 20 years ago.
wrote 28 days ago last edited by@Klaus said in Why are car headlights so blindingly bright now?:
I can leave on the floodlight all time without blinding anyone because the car automatically makes a hole in its light cone where other cars are.
Maybe that is what I read about that the US has finally accepted and will allow in cars now sold in the US.