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  • It's not just that they're horribly, unnecessarily bright--but the drivers never adjust their angle because it's not common knowledge that you're supposed to do that when you get a car. It's right there in the manual. LED headlights even have an attempted safety measure where they have a hard line stop instead of a gradual drop-off, to avoid blinding people--so when they're correctly angled they're... Okay, I guess. Not great, but better. So when it feels like they're beaming directly into your eyeballs, that's because they are.

    That, and idiots putting LED headlights into their old cars without switching the housing, which essentially eliminates the safety measures and turns them into million lumen lasers.

    • LED headlights even have an attempted safety measure where they have a hard line stop instead of a gradual drop-off, to avoid blinding people

      Whoever thought this was a sufficient safety feature had only ever driven on a Minecraft superflat map. Even looking past people having them badly aligned, this breaks down if the road has the slightest change in elevation. Oops, that truck ahead of you is actually climbing a 4 degree incline so now instead of being above that hard cutoff the lights are right in your eyes.

      They need to be less bright, and more importantly they need to be less blue. There needs to be a very small range of acceptable headlight hues.

  • Yeah that shit sucks. I drive a 90s Japanese economy car and it's pretty much guaranteed that this time of the year, I'm going to have some 6,000+ pound bro-dozer behind me flooding my entire cabin with light on the way home from work. They aren't even modified. That's just how annoyingly big cars have gotten.

  • PSA: For anyone experience this all the time at night, but especially when it's rainy/wet. it is most likely their dipshit headlights... buuuuut you should also get an eye exam if you've got the opportunity to do so. I know that's extremely out of reach for a lot of folks but if you can, you should.

    It's extremely common for halos, streaky/blurry lights, etc. at night to be early or uncaught indicators of eyesight conditions like:

    • Astigmatism
    • Glaucoma
    • Cataracts
    • Keratoconus
    • Etc.
       

    The good thing is pretty much all of those are extremely treatable and not a big deal especially when caught early. There's also the possibility that it's literally none of that shit, but if it's been more than a year, get your eyes checked anyway. You need to be able to see to aim at fascists.

    Again, there's almost a 100% chance it's the headlights and just rain and lights being shit at night, but, as has happened to two of my friends, you can also maybe find out it's your eyes being weird shapes and they fix it real easy and it's literally the difference between not being able to drive at night and being fine but occasionally struggling.

    Plus on the off chance it's Glaucoma, you really wanna catch it early.

  • I ran into a lot of those today. At a point I just kinda snapped and popped my brights on briefly while waiting for a left turn, just to spite the fucker with a death ray facing me. I wish the public transport here was better. I already should minimize driving at night, but then fuckers with LED lamps come out. In the middle of a rainstorm I'll find it a miracle I don't wind up crashing or accidentally hitting some pedestrian while momentarily blinded.

  • Sitting at a stop light in a more rural part of town with little street light coverage and one of these assholes pulls up behind you and your rear view mirrors become DBZ Solar Flares.

    • Happened to me last night. Sitting in my little human sized car and a fuck in a giant truck with these LEDs at directly head height rolls up behind me. Truly a painful experience

  • I been awake for 34 hours and the red lights make this look like a shadow monster with glowing eyes shining its flashlight at me

  • Bicyclists have started getting LED lights and I fucking hate them. We're on a bike path in a big city, you're not more safe for spitting out 1000 lumens, actually the opposite, I am now blind and am going to crash into you, my fellow bicyclist, but at least the path that was illuminated by streetlights is also slightly brighter for having tye power of a cold sun aimed at it

    • LED lights revolutionised cycling here in the UK. Back when I started you'd go through 4 D cells a week. And the incandescent bulb was shit. Utter, utter shit.

      Then about 20 years ago LEDs came on the scene and suddenly drivers could see you. And I know they saw me because they'd lose their marbles over the light (I always checked my angle/brightness with my brother sat over the bike - if Icouldnt see his body/arms I knew I'd be in trouble). Hilarious that drivers here moan about unlit riders (still many) yet they crawl over the line into the bike box to shout at the lit riders..

      USB recharging as made bike lights even better. The LEDs made the light last 10-20 hours. The lithium gave you 2-3 weeks of riding in some cases with no loss of light.

      If you're on an unlit bike path (most around heredont have street lights) then yeah, you do need those lumens. But the issue isnt the lumens, its those with helmet lights shining them into others eyes. Or badly positioned lights. Or buying Magic Shine off-road lights from ebay/amazon etc and expecting those to be suitable.

      • I'm not against LED lights on unlit roads out in the sticks, I'm against using them in the middle of a big city. It's be like taking those big outdoor lights that some trucks have and mounting them on a Volkswagen Beetle that the owner uses to go to the shops a few times a week. It's not what they're meant for and using them like this actively endangers you and everyone around. My issue is with people buying these off-road/country road lights for their inner city bike.

  • Used to drive a car with a stun gun: grill and roof lightbars. Would do a quick half-second flip to tell transports and big pickups that their lights were too bright. Definitely made people running with high beams think twice.

  • I've considered strategically placing a few strips of retro-reflective marine tape on my car just to start counter-blinding people who get too close with poorly aimed headlights.

  • My RETVRN take is we need to go back to the days where there were like 2 types of headlight and it was the whole housing and car manufacturers just had to figure out where to put in one of the two types of standard headlight

    Reject modernity, return to tradition

    Also ban cars for most people

  • I got a car that came with HID bulbs once. The car was low to the ground and the lights were shrouded and angled properly. They illuminated just the ground in front of you (like 50-100 feet) but came up to the right so things on the shoulder were visible. If you wanted to see everything in front of you that was far away on an unlit road you turned on the high-beams.

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