It’s not because they’re LED. It’s because they’re aftermarket: illegally colored, and poorly aimed or not aimed at all.
1000% this. Aftermarket, fucked colors, and/or no alignment is the cause of the problems. I would add that a lot of aftermarket lights are also way too bright. Sure, the owner can see (a tiny bit) better but everyone else gets blinded. Even then, it’s not bad unless they’re not aligned properly. (Well, it’ll still blind you if it’s a truck directly behind you but that’s just trucks.)
I own a '97 Honda. The last owner had LEDs in it. The lenses weren’t designed for LEDs, they were designed for halogens. So one of the first things I did was revert the headlights to halogen bulbs. And they work perfectly fine. I drive in a suburb so the streets are already fairly well lit. I don’t need to cast a beam 5 miles out to see where I’m going.
Also, it’s that soft yellowish white light. Not that harsh daylight bluish light everyone and their mom is obsessed with. I don’t get it. Anyway, the best thing you can do in 99 times of 100 is to consider what equipment you have and stick to OEM spec.
Anyway, the best thing you can do in 99 times of 100 is to consider what equipment you have and stick to OEM spec.
Or if you do legitimately want to upgrade, consider swapping in something that was OEM spec on a higher trim level/fancier related car model (e.g. Acura stuff on your Honda).
You don’t want blue light anyway because it messes with your night vision.
This isn’t always correct. I have a 2021 Toyota and the lights are factory installed and way too bright. I’ve had the lights lowered by a mechanic, but I still blind oncoming traffic and frequently get people flashing their brights at me. I feel terrible, I don’t want to blind anyone. I had someone yelling at me about my aftermarket lights and I had to tell them they were factory, he was still mad at me. It drives me crazy, I hate these lights too! Replacements are over $1,000.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ll try to remember there are at least a few people out there like this when my blood pressure starts to rise, and I wish painful deaths upon the presumed assholes blinding me on my way home from working for 14h straight.
Emissions checks need to have strict headlight inspections and tight regulations on aim and intensity. Permits should be required for all these additional spots and bars that truck owners love to slap on too. It’s too far out of control.
Yeah, I hate them too. When it’s late and I’m on a 2 lane and a sedan is coming towards me I’ve gotten in the habit of turning my lights off to give them a break (not when it’s too dark), but I don’t do it for trucks, we just blind each other.
I’ll look into a film or something I could try to dim them.
Can’t you stick some material over the lights to dim them? Or is that illegal?
Bullshit, Tesla headlamps blind everyone else on the road straight from the factory.
“tesla” and “build quality” do not match, even before the cyberstuck
Yeah, he already covered “poorly aimed or not aimed at all.”
Unless they were aimed poorly from the factory (with how bad their cars are built I’d lean towards that being very probable) they should not be blinding. I know someone with a very early model 3 that had poorly aimed headlights, but he eventually got it fixed. But the 5 other people I know with Teslas are not at all blinding. My Outbacks slightly fucked up headlight is more blinding than their cars.
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And most cars involve a good amount of work to aim them manually which is time-consuming and possibly intimidating.
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That’s because there is no governance for aiming headlights properly. It’s usually done by dealers who don’t care.
Most headlight issues are because people have retrofitted improper lights into their factory casings. different light sources project light in different patterns so if you put an LED or an HID bulb in a halogen housing it will blind the fuck out of everyone.
But at the same time if headlights aren’t aimed properly they’ll just blind anyone anyway regardless of the light pattern.
On top of that really tall vehicles, even when aimed properly, still aim their headlights directly into your eyes just because of how high above the ground they are.Very little of the blinding headlights issues are due to the source of the light.
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There’s enough fuck heads in minivans and civics that do this shit too
Often this is the case, but there’s also a not insignificant number of times I’m convinced a car with shitty aftermarket bulbs ends up being a new Acura, infinity, or Mercedes when I get close enough to determine the make.
New doesn’t mean no aftermarket
Every car that blinds me is some extremely new 2020-2024 year car. I get blinded by every third car on the road. The amount of people that get aftermarket headlights installed is very much not a third of all car owners. I can get behind poorly aimed by the dealer but you are wildly overestimating the number of people who have aftermarket lights.
Are they all trucks? If not, maybe you need to get your eyes checked if they’re all blinding you that badly. Or do they just not aim headlights properly in the US anymore? In EU, low beams are supposed to have a dipped beam.
Your last question, no they do not aim them correctly. Cost savings.
Yikes. Wouldn’t pass inspection in my country even.
Car inspections sound like a pipe dream here in the states. I think its a great idea personally.
Most states here don’t even have car inspections lol
I don’t understand how LEDs were ever allowed with the same sockets. What legitimate use could that be.
… plus this has somehow gotten so popular that my garage, part of a major regional chain, offered to replace my headlights with LED replacement bulbs
… although I can see the personal motivation. When everyone else seems to be causing so much glare, you need all the help you can get
On the basic end: because they’re cheaper, use less energy, are more reliable, and last longer.
On the fancy end: have you seen demonstrations of Audi’s matrix LEDs? They have the ability to dim specific areas dynamically, so that they can track incoming traffic and keep them in a dim-zone while still keeping the road and shoulders well lit.
Keep in mind that there is nothing special about LEDs that make them brighter; they can make LEDs dimmer and they can make halogens brighter, but the manufacturer has chosen not to.
Sure, but making them with the same socket, so they fit in the same place, despite having different beam shape and reflector requirements, is entirely wrong.
My car has LED headlights and they fantastic. They also have a very sharp cutoff meant to keep it from blinding others, assuming correct alignment. It also claims to have the hardware for active matrix and will turn that on as soon as they get approval
My older car that I keep for my team has noticeably dimmer lights. I’d really like to convert to LEDs and I know there are some that fit and are sold as replacements. But I know they’re not. Those manufacturers need to be fined for every kit sold like that
I think the key part is “the LEDs could be made dimmer, or the halogens brighter, the manufacturer chose not to”.
It makes sense for plain ol halogens to share the same socket as plain ol LEDs, because they function in the same way and are the same brightness.
But bulbs of different characters probably should have different sockets, so that high-intensity bulbs of any kind (eg xenon, laser, led) cannot be used in a regular lighting fixture without the necessary hardware to make it safe.
But here we have another problem - standardizing car parts is very beneficial to the owner because it makes repairing much easier and cheaper; if every manufacturer uses their own connectors for everything, then vendor lock-in would get that much worse and replacement parts would get that much harder to find and more expensive.
If manufacturer we’re encouraged or forced to use standards, and we’re instead encouraged not to, then they’d all make their own proprietary connectors for everything forcing you to get all maintenance done at official dealership where they can charge extortinat prices.So it’s kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. I think all we can do is regulate the behavior we want to see, and fine manufacturers, garages, and drivers that violate it.
That explains it to me. Never understood the hate for LED headlights, they’re great. Aftermarket is illegal here, you don’t see any.
In Europe, this is hardly a problem. I’ve recently been on the road more in the US, and it sucks. But I think it’s more so due to cars being ridiculously big and their lamps being way off the ground.
it is a problem in europe too. all new german SUVs, and many others, have front beams around the height of others drivers eyes so they blare right into internal rearview mirror, car is lit like ufo is here to take us, and when meeting those cars coming from opposite direction, it’s again at the height of eyes to burn the retinas. the regulation of headlights is obviously fucked.
Headlights definitely need more regulation but this issue is very amplified in SUVs which are much underregulated. They have mismatched bumper heights to other cars causing more damage, they drag pedestrians underneath causing more injuries. I personally see no point for modern SUVs existing at all, but let’s at least make sure they are safe on roads.
Adjust the mirror to send it right back to them.
And then the snow falls and all the light not being directly shot onto your retna from the light is now being bounced off every surface in your feild of vision.
Thanks for this clarification. I was wondering about this meme, I have never had a problem with headlights here in Germany. It’s the first thing they check at TÜV. Wrong headlight setting, inspection failure. But getting your car inspected probably will trigger some freedumb people over there.
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That’s only for high beams tho right?
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Thay does nothing for the Ram 3500 behind me blasting pure sunlight into every mirror. Sucks for bikes amd pedestrians too.
People are just too afraid of the dark.
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That’s a pretty complicated and expensive way to fix a problem that was resolved decades ago by a screw
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From what I hear, people who modify their vehicle by lifting it higher with bigger wheels are suppose to recalibrate their headlights (point the headlights toward the ground).
And they do not.
This exactly. They are definitely getting brighter year over year as well. It is noticeable, I just feel like a cop is shining their light in my car every time a truck gets behind me now. I feel like there are just no regulations in the US on the brightness nowadays.
Lamps off the ground aren’t a problem when they’re aimed correctly. The big issue is everyone putting LEDs inside of halogen housings. The light scatters everywhere and blinds everyone.
You are making it sound like its a user modification problem. There are a number of large vehicles that come stock with headlights that blind people in smaller cars.
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We need regulations. It is dangerous to operate a vehicle if oncoming traffic makes it that difficult to see anything in your own lane.
The problem isn’t LEDs though. The technology isn’t what’s making it bright.
The regulation needs to be specific about what they want the end result to be, not about the specific technology used.
Like: there should be a mode of operation where oncoming traffic at x distance, seated at y height, on level roads should not experience more than z brightness.
Or maybe actually enforce our existing laws on this, and make actual punishments for when people modify their cars and don’t align their headlights.
Going after random people is harder and worse than going after the manufacturers of products.
Unless you want police shooting black people because their lights were “misaligned”
I think it is LED technology. LEDs have a very small bandwidth. Even white leds are just three very small small bandwidth emissions.
The very tight intensity in such a small bandwidth is hard on the eyes. Even when compared with the same power of older lighting technology, which has a comparatively massive bandwidth.
LEDs could be designed to compensate for this better. They could add more different colours of LEDs to the matrix that makes up white LEDs.
In the Europe we have the regulations, it still sucks. Especially OEM “active-matrix” LEDs.
How? We only read the good things about active matrix headlights, not how they behave in the real world
This is why regulations should be about the behavior they want to see and not the technology used.
The goal is not to blind drivers; companies should be able to use whatever tech they want, but they should get fined every time their tech doesn’t work as expected in the real world.
Maybe you need to get your eyes checked. I rarely get blinded on the road in Germany, and when I do it’s almost always someone who just forgot to turn off his high-beams. Active matrix headlights are very common here nowadays and never blind me
If we won’t regulate guns despite school shootings, what hope is there to regulate cars? (Unless someone rich can get a cut?) Apparently someone else’s freedumb to do dangerous things is my own freedom to stfu:-(.
All Praise and Honor be to our glorious Electoral College, may it forever prevent us from making dumb decisions such as “preventing needless deaths”.
Oh, yeah, of course it is not going to happen in the US. Force a pickup truck to aim their lights at the road instead of other drivers’ eyes? Political suicide. But I’d still like it to be regulated.
It is. You want it enforced too?
Even here where there are mandatory annual inspections meant to catch these things, no one ever checks headlights beyond whether they turn on and off
Even here where there are mandatory annual inspections meant to catch these things, no one ever checks headlights beyond whether they turn on and off
German TÜV inspections absolutely check that the headlights aren’t foggy and are aligned correctly
Me too:-|
Guns are part of the US constitution, headlights aren’t.
Well you just made it sound even more fucking stupid
Ode to Joy intensifies
It’s interesting how versatile classical music can be - e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/19cyf40/protesters_singing_ode_to_joy_in_bonn_at_a/.
With halfway decent power stabilization, and the appropriate about of directionality in the lights, plus the lights being somewhere below the typical sedans window frame, the only time headlights should bother you, is when you’re on a hill, regardless if they’re LED or not.
IMO, one of two things is very wrong if you’re getting blinded by anyone’s headlights (highbeams not withstanding): either the designers and engineers that worked on the car are idiots, and placed headlights in a location that was going to blind people, or they used crap optics, etc… Or, the owner of the car can’t be arsed to have their headlights properly adjusted.
Honestly, it’s a little of A and a little of B… Depending on the car and the circumstance.
One the person I knew actually had self adjusting headlights, which somehow were damaged and would not adjust properly anymore. They drove around like that for years before retiring the vehicle.
Can’t fix stupid.
LEDs legally have to be self-adjustable at least in EU. Your mandatory inspection will usually catch it if that system doesn’t work.
The bigger problem is people throwing LEDs in halogen housings. It’s not the LED’s fault. The other big problem in the US at least I reckon, is having vehicles that are way too tall, so their headlights, while hopefully dipped properly, are above a normal driver’s eye level.
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It’s not uncommon to see massive trucks with insanely bright LED lights (a certain personality type), which puts the lights just about windshield level on a sedan.
What’s extra fun is now the lights also blind drivers going the same direction as the truck, as every mirror in the sedan is filled with light.
Not really, I have factory LED headlights on my 2023 Toyota Yaris and those are manually adjusted the same way halogen headlights used to be. Mind you I don’t have the LED matrix technology.
When it comes to people throwing LEDs in halogen housing, it doesn’t have to be bad. I used to use a pair of OSRAM LEDs instead of halogens in my Citroen Berlingo 2006, but those were homologated for road use with the same lumen rating as homologated halogens. They were not cheap, but the light pattern was the same as with halogens and they blinded oncoming traffic a lot less than halogens (I tested that with my friends and colleagues). Of course using cheap illegal LEDs in halogen housing is a bad idea, but you can’t throw illegal solutions in one bag with legal and sensible solutions.
P.S. I live in the EU
Interesting. I couldn’t legally drive a car with high output headlights without it having both automatic adjustment and headlamp washers. It’s simply mandatory
Maybe you mean that it’s manually adjustable in addition to having auto-leveling? I think that’s the case for nearly all cars. Or maybe your car manages to stay below some sort of light output limit despite having LEDs.
What you’re talking about aren’t LED headlamps, these regulations (auto-leveling and washers) are mandatory for xenon headlights. LEDs don’t fall in the same category as xenon headlamps. What is interesting is that halogens have maximum allowed lumen rating which is a lot lower than what xenon headlamps can have and LEDs can have even more.
So it’s based on the lumens and it’s hard to make HIDs that don’t exceed the limit, but easier with LEDs. I just assumed that your LEDs were bright.
Well, your first point is great except we don’t have yearly inspections on vehicles in North America or anything. Inspections happen when cars are registered, then never again until ownership changes hands and it needs to be registered by a new owner.
Add that to the fact that inspections are done by mechanics, and they don’t generally give a shit about it, and it’s a recipe for failure. Last time I got a used car inspected, the mechanic looked at the car through the window and said “is that it?” I replied “yeah”, and he went through the list and checked all the normal stuff without glancing at the car again. So most inspections here are void from the get go.
The second point is valid and a design problem which I covered previously.
Well, your first point is great except we don’t have yearly inspections on vehicles in North America or anything.
I can say that, at least in Texas, we require annual inspections as a condition of yearly vehicle registration. We just don’t test for the impact of headlights on incoming traffic, because… TxDOT (and the Texas legislature/governor by extension) doesn’t consider it worth regulating.
Add that to the fact that inspections are done by mechanics, and they don’t generally give a shit about it
Mechanics test what is on the regulatory code. Add headlight brightness to the list and they’ll test for that, too. This isn’t an unsolvable problem by any stretch.
Well, Texas DID requre annual inspections. This is the last year. On Jan 2025, annual inspections will no longer be required, although, some counties will still require emissions testing, and you still have to pay the fee.
Well if you like your mechanic then keep quiet about it, because what you just described is a felony, which carries a fine and loss of inspector’s license. And vehicle inspections are dependent on the state and county in question. Most US states require vehicle inspections. Some don’t.
Oh, I wouldn’t rat anyone out over it. I’m just saying that it happens. I’m also in Canada, but I think the same applies (felony/fines/loss of license for inspection).
I’m a bit of an amateur mechanic, I’ve done a lot to cars in my time. I’m nowhere near the skill of an actual mechanic, but I know enough to know when something isn’t safe. I see significant rust/rot, I’m probably not going to even try to get it certified/registered until I’m happy that it’s safe enough for me… I know that many are not as knowledge/discerning. They’re not my concern though. I wouldn’t bring it to a mechanic to be inspected unless I felt safe in the vehicle.
That said, that was a former “beater” vehicle that I no longer have. I kind of killed the motor on it… I think that’s the one that the motor died on me. I was pushing the old beater well past what I normally would because I was in a rush. I got well over the speed limit on the highway. When I came to a stop, the poor thing stalled and would not start again. I never found out what actually went wrong, and the vehicle went to the scrap pile soon after afaik.
I currently drive an off-lease vehicle, it was about 2 years old when I acquired it and I’ve kept my eye on its condition since then, about 10 years now. I do regular maintenance, and all the things I need to in order to keep it in good condition. There’s a little rust now, but it’s pretty limited. Nothing that concerns me. I don’t have a desire to replace it, as the car market is nuts. How is my 12+ year old car still worth like $9k? It’s a civic!
Anyways. I don’t have any desire to make anyone’s life harder than it needs to be. I knew the car was safe, so I didn’t have a problem with it. My only concern is that others that don’t know better are going to end up driving around in unsafe vehicles because their mechanic can’t be bothered to actually inspect the cars during an inspection certification.
I don’t know why he did it, maybe he just knows that vehicle doesn’t really have the problems that would cause it to fail an inspection? I have no idea. I think that one was an older accord. Maybe he knew that car specifically? IDK. I didn’t ask. I took the win and went on my way to register the car. I was a broke college student/grad at the time (I can’t remember if I had graduated at that point or not).
person I knew actually had self adjusting headlights, which somehow were damaged and would not adjust properly anymore. They drove around like that for years before retiring the vehicle.
Where was that? In Europe this should have been spotted during the mandatory inspection.
Canada. Our inspections are basically a funny joke.
We have them for cars, but unless your car is basically rust with wheels, someone will sign the inspection to say it’s roadworthy.
If it wasn’t him it just would’ve been someone else
The new trucks in America are all blinding because of how high off the ground they are and the ridiculous number of lumens. It’s like manufacturers just want bigger number, bigger number = better, lol.
I can’t prove it, but I suspect that a lot of people are suffering from having backlit phone, console, and cluster LCD panels in their face while driving. The dim incandescent glow of the speedometer as the only thing illuminating the cabin is a thing of the past. This makes me think that folks actually need more lumens on the road in front of you because your pupils are not at all dilated for the dark.
Meanwhile the color temperature and spectra of LEDs vs halogen lights could not be more different. I honestly think our eyeballs respond to to these things differently and it just so happened that halogen is/was easier on our eyes in a lot of cases.
BTW, I’m not excusing anyone for blinding other drivers where it can be helped, especially manufacturers. That shit drives me up the wall.
Congress could easily pass a lazy maximum brightness law but we’re too busy stalling a mostly approved daylight savings law because some asshat party leader(s) is waiting to slap 200 riders onto it like another morbillion dollars of tax money to Israel.
It’s so bad people put here are getting illegal windshield tint just to reduce the insane glare.
Of course a real solution would be a proper regulation with tickets for anyone running incorrectly adjusted headlights or anything that is basically acting as a high beam.
Of course a real solution would be a proper regulation with tickets
That would require a municipal government with any real legislative authority, a state government that wasn’t the wholly owned subsidiary of big business, and a police force that considers “driving with overly bright headlights” more worthy of their time than “driving in the wrong neighborhood while black”.
I’d say this ‘chat’ should go to GM and their stupid ideas to point fucking headlights straight into the mirrors of cars ahead of them. Only one of the few hazards they cause on the road today.
It’s mostly the color of the light that’s the problem right? Our brains register the cooler light in the contrasting darkness as blindingly bright as opposed to warmer incandescent light, despite both lights having the same measured brightness (lumens).
I do not think so, the LED lights are just really bright. The human eye is most sensitive to green light. And according to the following graph similarly much to reddish and bluish tones (maybe even more sensitive to the yellow stuff rather than blue) https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-eye-sensitivity-function-7_fig17_343319896
Supposedly car manufacturers even brag about their stupid bright lights, so I do think they put effort into making their lights more and more bright, even if they try containing the beams to the street. I couldn’t find Mercedes’ original ad to this picture though: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2556223
That’s easy enough to fix with a filter over the bulb. But, again, it would require some degree of regulatory action for the benefit of all drivers rather than a captive agency that only works to maximize corporate profits.
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I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the horribly distracting flicker that they make.
I’ve never noticed a flicker.
It depends on the make and what PWM frequencies they use. Essentially everything LED flickers.
Did CRTs bother you? Most people weren’t perceptive enough to notice CRT flickering either.
I always had to adjust the refresh rate.
CRTs were horrible, the flicker was unbearable at times.
And, I’m also really bothered by LED brake lights / tail lights.
I had an interlaced monitor once. That was horrible.
You can’t go and kill the guy at a point where you know he has events in his yet. (A person’s “yet” is what is known of their personal future). You have to attack him at a point where you he doesn’t have any events in his yet that you know about. This also means no killing Hitler before April 30th 1945.
Lucky for us my super power is that I’m completely incompetent at remembering dates and events. Even after reading your comment I couldn’t tell you what date you said or have any idea what it is referring to.
Man I want to put LED bulbs in my 1999 model year car, but I don’t want to start blinding people. The last thing I want is for someone to hit me because they were blinded. It seems many LEDs do intend to have similar beam patterns to halogen bulbs, but I’m not sure how well they actually do.
Our 2020 Mazda has LED headlights, and I gotta admit, they are much better for seeing. We live off the beaten path, not a ton of traffic, but plenty of deer and other animals.
On the other hand, my headlights in the 1999 had gotten really hazy, and I recently did one of those headlight restoration kits to it, and it worked stunningly well. Since then, I haven’t driven at night very much to get a feel for how much it helped. So maybe I won’t need LEDs. (The halogens in there are relatively new.)
Related, but are most people unbothered by LED tail lights / brake lights? The flicker drives me nuts.
That, and the fact that a lot of them are too small.
Too small to see? Or too bright because they’re really small? Or what?
Too small to see. You can be paying attention to the road, and those small led blinkers will go unnoticed most of the time.
I’ve never had that problem. They’re normally clustered into a cluster of other LEDs.
If they flicker it’s because the designers/engineers did something wrong. It’s an entirely DC system, so the only way they would flicker it’s if they’re using PWM control for the intensity of the lights. There are better ways to dim LEDs, which don’t introduce flicker.
Every single vehicle with LEDs does it.
Yep, because they’re cheap. I don’t notice it anymore, which only tells me that things have improved, I used to see it a lot with brake lights. Not so much with headlights.
I dunno why they’re horrible, I just know that’s an effect of PWM control that’s been set up pretty poorly.
I’m not an engineer, nor do I work on cars, either designing them or fixing them. I’m just some guy.
Respect
