It might just be me, mainly because I drive an "old" car that doesn't dim/adjust my rear view mirror based on others drivers lights, but I find the uber brightness of other drivers lights to be a real pain these days. Often on the motorway I struggle to see ANYTHING as i'm being constantly blinded by other drivers high power lights behind me and when oncoming. I get its meant to be a safety feature, but for a lot of other road users it's a real nuisance to be blinded on a daily basis.
A good solution would be for modern cars to detect ambient light and adjust accordingly. On a well lit highway with lots of other road users, there's no reason to have these things turned up to 11 all the time. They could safely dial back to 3 or 4.
It isn't the HID lights themselves. All proper HID lights on new cars come with auto-leveling systems which will keep them from throwing light at your rear view mirror. You actually wind up with less light in your rear view than with traditional headlights. When you look at them, they'll look like projector lights and you can see them move up and down as a car goes over a hill, for instance.
The problem is that aftermarket kits are used to install HID lights into standard headlight enclosures. This is base-level idiocy on the part of tinkerers to 'improve' their cars and make them look more modern. There may be a corresponding 'Type R' badge on the back to make the car go faster as well. These will throw a TON of light at your rear view and blind you. These are illegal in most states and I wish this law were enforced without exception everywhere in the world.
This is the correct answer. When my car starts up, my lights lower and then rise again to adjust, although I didn't know this also happens when driving over a hill.
It does not happen when driving over a hill. There are two different levelling functions. What you describe is the "homing" procedure for the stepper motors (typically) that do the levelling.
Static levelling is mandatory for HID headlamps, and that adjusts the headlamp level according to load, etc, for example based on suspension level sensors. As the name says, it is static, so it doesn't do anything while the vehicle is moving.
Dynamic levelling compensates for driver braking and acceleration, but I have not seen a production system that works for hills (how could it without information about where the crest is?). Typically, the systems work to ONLY react to the driver doing something, not road features like speed bumps or inclines.
Neither levelling procedure works to actively reduce glare for other drivers when in turns or going over a hill.
The problem is not the brightness, IMHO. The real problem is that, at least in the US, no one seems to care about keeping their headlights aimed properly, which in combination with the abundance of trucks with headlights mounted higher than a normal driver's head, leads to insane glare. As much as mandatory vehicle inspections are annoying, this would be my one reason to support them. (Not that it seems to matter, here in HI they have annual inspections, but the inspection facilities don't seem to give a damn.)
Of course, a brighter misaligned headlight is worse, but an old halogen headlight creates plenty of glare if misaligned, while a super bright headlight is fine as long as it's not aimed at your eyes.
I'm not sure about other countries, but all vehicles sold with HID (the bright blue headlights that many people find annoying) headlights in the US must come with an auto-leveling system. I'm almost 100% certain that the standards are the same or higher in Europe.
The fact that (as you point out) those bright blue headlights are especially offensive to many people would suggest that the auto-leveling system is not doing its job.
The more blue the lights are, the greater the chance they are not factory; some schmuck stuck HID bulbs in halogen housings. This means no auto-leveling, no proper beam focusing, etc. It is already widely known that doing so is a Very Bad Idea (tm), but some people have absolutely no deference to their fellow drivers on the road.
The OP said, "The real problem is that, at least in the US, no one seems to care about keeping their headlights aimed properly..." I'm only pointing out that proper adjustment isn't the issue.
The matter of HID headlight annoyance is well-trodden territory in automotive circles. Owning a car with them equipped, I appreciate the additional visibility. On the flip side, living in an area where they are common, I appreciate that they can be blinding if you're caught in the beam.
My latest complaint is LED brake lights. Many models seem to be making them very bright -- to the point where they blind me when I am behind such a car. At stops, I sometimes find I have to look away from the car in front of me and the road, both due to discomfort and to having my night vision -- despite their being largely "red" -- destroyed.
I thought there were regulations for such things -- for headlights, as well -- but either they are too lax or no one is enforcing them.
Also, it seems typical of today's trends. Brighten up e.g. one's headlights for one's own convenience, even if and as to an excess that inconveniences everyone else or even puts them at risk.
P.S. Also, many "modern" headlights have a very small and bright core source of light, as opposed to the larger reflector of "older" designs that does not create such an intense, localized spot.
And the "blue-er" light -- harder on one's night vision.
LED brake lights definitely seem too bright on some cars.
And there's a new trend... super-bright LED daytime running lights, actually bright enough to be distracting at high noon, and configured so that just one side switches off when the blinker turns on (giving this absurd half-lit or winking effect).
I was behind a car today where the middle "third" brake light would actually blink, so weird and distracting -- hopefully an illegal after-market mod.
Definitely one place I would have thought regulation would have stopped design from impacting safety. Next auto makers will decide brake lights don't even have to be red, because who cares about night vision if you have freakin laser beams in your headlights, right?!
I'm seriously considering turning my high-beams on when behind one of these godawful supernova-machines at an intersection at night. Definitely won't buy one with them.
You mention this, but a smart self-dimming rear view mirror can't help at all against the incredible brightness of oncoming headlights. I have been literally blinded while going over CA highway 17 at night (don't let the "highway" designation fool you; it's a twisty mountain road abutted by cliffs), an obvious safety issue.
I don't understand why it's legal to have headlights so bright. Manufacturers say having headlights brighter than everyone else makes you safer because you stand out. By the point where no one can even see, any putative safety benefit has been lost. Headlight brightness seems like a close analog of overfishing to me. :/
The drive for ever-brighter lights also ignores the safety of the road users without lights, who become increasingly harder to spot. An example of road users without lights: people.
I know it's unfashionable to give a shit about people when you're driving a car, particularly people on foot, who if they were at all important enough to care about would surely be driving a car, but - well, what can I say? Bleeding heart, that's me.
You appear not to have read the part about BMW's new pedestrian spotlight feature. Which may raise another issue about deer (or people) freezing in the spotlights.
It's not the obscuration of pedestrians from the driver with the bright lights, it's the obscuration of the pedestrian from the other driver being blinded by the super bright headlights. In the brightness the pupil closes and the driver looses any night vision. If you were approaching this situation from the other direction it could be extremely difficult to see the reverse-spot lighted pedestrians.
Also the obscuration of everything from the pedestrian. When walking, if you have a car coming upfront it's there for a long while (since it might be fast but you're always slow), and at night your night vision goes away for a very, very long time. Having to stop, close your eyes and turn around every time you hear a car closing in does not make for efficient or fun walking about.
That may explain the deer in the headlights phenomenon, if real. They could be waiting for their eyes to readjust. Agree that this feature would be undesirable for pedestrians (and cyclists, if also targeted). And I suspect the spotlight is unlikely to avert any more than a small number of accidents. However, it seems quite a strong sales feature for BMW - enhancing the driver/owner's sense of control.
I was under the impression that deer freeze whenever they feel threatened by anything. Freezing when spotlighted is just a particular case of how deer always react to threats.
NB: "highway" doesn't mean multi-lane controlled-access expressway or freeway. It's any road open to the public, though generally between towns (as opposed to a local surface street). In the UK it can refer to footpaths as well as vehicular roads.
It's not just you, lights on most cars are just too damn bright and severely affect other drivers' night vision. I have no idea why they are considered "safe."
However, BMW's new ultra bright lights will surely fail to gain traction, because BMW tends to attract a class of ultra-considerate driver that puts the safety of other drivers first and foremost, and surely BMW drivers would never stand for something like this.
BMW also need to work on their indicator fluid systems. So many of their cars seem to have run out, which leads to other drivers being unable to see the indicators the BMW drivers so conscientiously use.
About nine person out of ten I know aren't aware of the fact that the rear view mirror in most cars can be manually set to "night mode". The rear view mirror has two positions: one for day-time and one for night-time (which dims the brightness of other cars' headlights).
There's a manual switch which accepts two position and which is located on the back of your rear view mirror.
It's something you need to switch manually twice a day: once in the morning to put it back in "day mode" and once at night, when it becomes dark. You don't need to reconfigure anything: the position of the rear-view mirror stays correct and you continue "viewing the same thing", just dimmed enough as to not be blinded by bright headlights in your rear-view mirror.
Honestly, as I wrote earlier, most people I know who drive cars are totally unaware of that switch even though they're driving since 20 years.
When I feel that the oncoming vehicle's lights are too bright, they get my high beams, which stay on them, despite their frantic high beam flashing. If more people did this, perhaps these people would switch back to their OEM lights.
EDIT: Not talking about the lights described in the article, but people who replace their cars' original lights with brighter ones.
> When I feel that the oncoming vehicle's lights are too bright, they get my high beams, which stay on them, despite their frantic high beam flashing. If more people did this, perhaps these people would switch back to their OEM lights.
Sounds like you're really endangering other people's lives in response to an annoyance.
Even if that's the case, the correct response is not to endanger them right back. That's like people who tailgate because they think the person in front of them is going too slow, or the ones who slow down because they think the person behind them is going too fast. Two wrongs don't make a right; they just make things twice as bad, or worse.
You're either very principled in that you're willing to get seriously injured over a minor cause, or you haven't really thought this through methinks...
I have a VW with xenon projectors and the self-leveling feature should ensure this doesn't happen, but occasionally people do flash me. I assume their eyes are dilated from the weed.
Xenon lights are obnoxious because they are so much bluer than standard lights, they are that much more blinding; outdoor lights that are too blue (or full-spectrum) have the paradoxical effect of making everything darker by contrast, and much harder to see.
I can't stand cars that have xenon lights, and I was glad to see their numbers start to decline in the last couple years.
Xenon lights actually have a lower cutoff on the drivers side because the designers were aware of onlooking from the opposite direction (and on the left of the car in the U.S.)
What possible good would that do? You can't make them un-xenon. If I flash my lights or not, you'll still just keep toodling along blinding everybody in the oncoming lane.
If I see ultra-bright lights, I assume the other driver has the high beams on and flash them. If you can tell that they have misconfigured low beams, you wouldn't do that, but I'm going by my experience and assume that at least a few drivers would act the same way.
The blue headlights you see are different than VW factory HIDs. 8000K or 10000K aftermarket halogens marketed as xenons to car tuners that look like crap.
I don't understand how self-leveling works. If you're on a down-slope, won't they level themselves relative to the horizontal and shine in everyone's eyes then?
Besides, there's no helping that everyone's screwed on convex roads. Coming over the top of a hill, your headlights will necessarily blind everyone coming from the other direction.
Recentish Range Rovers are easily the worst. But most SUVs are generally pretty bad, with speed bumps, slight hills, or - yes - even a simple right-hand bend giving you an eyeful of piercing cold light. With the modern HID-/LED-/etc.-type bulbs, there's no falloff at the edge of the beam, so the moment your eyes are even slightly inside the light cone, they get zapped.
I drive a BMW 3 series, which I don't believe is an especially low-riding car, but I still notice this quite a lot! I'm 6'2" and have the seat basically bolt upright, so my eyes are pretty far off the ground.
The biggest problem is how well are the other vehicle's headlights aimed. When i'm on the highway at night, i find that the Mercedes and Range Rovers with their HIDs are never an annoyance, because the lights shine at the ground rather than into my windows. GMC/Chevy SUVs and Pickups seem to be the worst offenders - they've got the xenon lights, but they're just a drop in replacement for the standard headlamps, so they shine straight out in front.
I assume people with blinding lights are willingly acting malicious against others on the road knowing their overpowered lights reduce visibility for others. Lines like yours don't do much to break this mentality.
Keep assuming drug usage while the reality of you blinding others is readily observable by peers around you. Self leveling projector lights beaming straight into my cab.
A good solution would be for modern cars to detect ambient light and adjust accordingly. On a well lit highway with lots of other road users, there's no reason to have these things turned up to 11 all the time. They could safely dial back to 3 or 4.