I wish there was more awareness and concern about LED headlight PWM flicker.
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) is a technique where the power to the output (bulb) is turned on and off at high frequencies in order to increase efficiency, power handling, and control of the output.
If this on/off switching is done fast enough, your eyes/brain will interpret it as a normal always on light source.
PWM is significantly cheaper and easier to implement vs current source LEDs, so it of course has become dominant in the industry.
When the PWM frequency drops below 120-240hz (cycles a second), some people can start to pick up a strobe like effect from the bulb. This flicker is known to cause additional eye fatigue and can trigger headaches in many.
What's worse is that many aftermarket LED headlights are now using PWM at 60hz. These cheap headlights are often bright blue in order to look modern and impressive. When a car with these installed is behind me at night I have to move my mirror away because the flicker is incredibly distracting and fatiguing.
Even at fairly high PWM frequencies, strobing can be visible when either the eyes or the source are moving. Which, in a car, they are! You don't need to have exceptional vision. Just glancing from left to right can be enough to leave a confusing and distracting trail of multiple images on your retina.
Motion must explain why I find these LCDs in my home office so offensive. Normally they're not a bother, but when my ceiling fan is on and I look at the lights (below the fan), I swear there is some strobing.
Ford's marker lights are an example of this. The huge consistently illuminated panels are simply amazing. The huge light source is perfect for maximum visibility without presenting a blinding spot source like the majority of automotive lights.
But that practically singular investment in automotive optical engineering and innovation is let down by the low frequency PWM driver baling wired into the final design to cut cost by perhaps a dollar or two.
I may be putting too fine a point on it, but I think that even something as perhaps seemingly trivial as being blinded by intense car headlights (these days in the U.S.) is another one of those things that fester in our subconscious building to a creeping sense of dread that the world is not how it should be — that somehow we're living in a modern society that no one would have ever designed, voted for, wished for, desired.
> somehow we're living in a modern society that no one would have ever designed, voted for, wished for, desired.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the majority of the population doesn't seem to notice this crap, at least not in a way that affects their day-to-day happiness.
Why not vote for something that sounds good at surface level if you've never perceived that annoying sound or flicker? Why would you even think about it?
It took me awhile to figure out why the LED tail lights made me have a specific weird feeling.
If you're old enough, you may have seen the science fiction children's show "Captain Power." The LED tail lights remind me of the target strobe meant to trigger the accompanying toys.
Of course if you're old like me, you probably only watched an episode to see what Lightwave3d was capable of, but ..
Wait, what? They are economizing on headlight LED power draw? LEDs are ridiculously efficient to begin with, and a rounding error against a car’s total energy usage. (And in gas cars, get the energy from the battery, which can be recharged off of otherwise-wasted energy from the engine idling.)
All on the basis that “lol humans don’t notice the flicker”? Uh, okay, but animals? The 99th percentile humans? Subconscious effects on fatigue (that you mention)?
> Wait, what? They are economizing on headlight LED power draw?
Mass produced cars have reached the point that a $0.50 saving per vehicle is worth designing and building for. When you reduce the current draw from something that is always-on (like headlights) you increase the life of the LED, you can reduce the gauge (size) of the wires to the lights, you can reduce the size of the alternator, you can load the alternator less, which means increase the service life of the alternator belt and idlers, and (in theory, at least) decrease fuel consumption.
All of these are tiny, tiny efficiencies, but they do add up.
While it might seem penny-wise and pound-foolish, imagine following this same logic for all systems in a modern vehicle. This is why even such a "rugged offroad" vehicle as a Jeep Wrangler has a plastic clutch slave cylinder (weight and cost savings) and why the headlights will dim in virtually all vehicles if you turn on every single electrical device that draws current (the wires are not sufficient gauge for everything to draw max current at the same time).
They're saving actual money on every vehicle built, which is what they care about.
> which can be recharged off of otherwise-wasted energy from the engine idling
That’s not how it works. When charging, the alternator will put more load on the engine and that will increase fuel input to keep rpm up enough to keep the engine from stalling.
Overall, every vehicle designer will seek to minimize any and all loads (even small ones).
Worst is when they remove the spare tire, grrrrrr.
A lot of modern cars only have a single LED bulb that provides normal headlights and high beams. In the past with halogen headlights they'd either have two separate bulbs or a single complex bulb with two different filaments for normal and high beams. I would assume LED + PWM lets them have a single bulb whose brightness can be controlled by software, so the choice is probably more about cost savings and reducing complexity than energy usage.
All of the builder LED lights in my home had this issue. Very expensive to replace these.
Newer construction doesn't install proper fixtures anymore. No more user-replaceable bulbs. Everything is screwed directly into the box and you have to do a minor electrical job on every unit you want to replace.
A local business had installed some expensive LED lights and were having flickering issues. At the time I remembered seeing something about power supply design and how having no resistive load on the circuit would cause issues with the power supplies. I had them replace one bulb on one string of lights with an incandescent and they stopped flickering. Another one for the circuit on the other side of the room and the LED flickering was gone. The fluorescent bulb flicker was an entirely different issue, but they weren't nearly as obvious from a distance as the LEDs were.
I too strongly dislike the lack of replaceable bulbs in newer LED fixtures. It's outrageous how many things in modern construction shave a few cents here and there to get the initial cost down, and the long term costs are enormous. Once the house is sold it's someone else's problem and that mentality is disgusting.
That's interesting; I've been going the other direction. One by one I've been retrofitting my recessed can lights with fixed LED fixtures made by Cree. Because the LED floodlight bulbs fail relatively quickly, no matter which brand I buy, but I've never had a single one of the Cree fixed-LED fixtures go bad (and the oldest are pushing 10 years now). I figure the heat management is better on the purpose-built fixture, which explains why it lasts.
The terrible PWM drivers add another downside - At the frequencies in question the peaks are long enough to increase the retina-stabbing factor much higher than the average brightness, even if they're not long enough to cause noticable strobing. Smoothing capacitors as an aftermarket QOL option is a market that needs to exist.
However, poor (or nonexistent) light source shrouding is also a common factor. Bicycle headlights make a great lower-powered example. Cheap bicycle headlights throw much less light than a car headlight but are painfully blinding due to the exposed light source point. Bicycle headlights that meet StVZO regulations shroud the light source, have decent optical design, are far more effective as headlights, and don't make anyones eyes bleed even when they're flashing.
Early composite car headlights (post sealed beam) received significant design investment involving established headlight manufacturers and worked extremely well. Auto manufacturers brought headlight design in-house by the time xenon and HID headlights showed up in general use; inexperience and cost avoidance gave those lights an undeserved reputation. A lack of regulatory outcomes rewarded that strategy, leading even established composite headlight quality to decline. Light source shrouds disappeared or became ineffective due to poor reflector design.
Headlights on new cars in the US market have declined to the point that they're effectively overpowered cheap bicycle headlights plus extra PWM induced stabbiness, while costing orders of magnitude more as a result of cost cutting. The worst have returned to sealed beam levels of utility, but at least there were aftermarket options to improve sealed beams. Modern aftermarket lights are so bad that it's normal for drivers to install them for malice against other drivers with blinding stock headlights. There really aren't any optically well designed headlights on the US market any more, except for bicycles.
That term comes from EPA regulations about emissions, and led the entire aftermarket industry to figure if they put that on their parts, all was good. (The application here, applied to DOT lighting regulation, is likely bleed over)
A few years ago the EPA clarified that when they said “off road use only”, they meant in machines that were never intended to be on a road. So, aftermarket shit designed for a lawnmower, cool. But if you’re designing for a vehicle that was originally designed for the road, you have to stick to EPA regs. This killed a lot of those “off-road use only” disclaimers, but it also panicked the amateur racing community because they tend to use modified road cars. I’m not sure how they worked it out with the EPA, but I don’t hear them complaining any more, so I assume they did.
Commercial LED PWM drivers for automotive applications are in the hundreds of kilohertz. If there are aftermarket modules that are only 100 Hz that’s a matter of regulation. It should just be outlawed.
Well I don't know the frequency, but it is easily noticeable to me on most modern cars when moving my eyes. It's definitely not a question of aftermarket modules.
The PWM I use at home on an ESP32 is supposed to be in the 1-10 kHz range and I don't see flicker when moving my eyes.
The usual ~200kHz PWM is cheaper, more reliable, smaller, and usually more powerful than anything you can build on the ~100Hz. Besides everybody sells chips for ~200kHz, but finding anything that can operate at ~100Hz is a challenge.
I can understand cheap household ones using the mains frequency to avoid an AC/DC conversion. But AFAIK, using them on a car is stupid from every conceivable point of view.
There's an emergent interaction between PWM headlights and rear view mirror cameras(RVMC)[1]. The PWM headlight frequency and RVMCs frame rates are slightly different and phase in and out of each other resulting in a strobing effect. If RVMCs become more popular, eventually an accident will result in the way these two technologies interact. I found it an amusing interaction, but it also has serious safety implications that should be addressed.
1. I'm not sure if there's a better name, but the system where the rear view mirror is a display linked to a camera at the rear of the vehicle in some higher end cars and as an aftermarket addon.
As I remember PWM is to control the brightness of the LED. LEDs can only shine at one brightness, they're either on or off, so to dim them to half-brightness you need to have them on half the time, off half the time. That's how you get all the different colours from three LEDs.
But they can switch on and off very fast, so if 50Hz is flickery, you can use 500Hz, or 5000Hz. Most microcontrollers have circuitry for this built in, so you just literally write a different constant into the controller.
I once made an LED dashboard for use in police cars. After it was rolled out, it was discovered that the flicker frequency was interfering with the radio (the only bug ever found in my code!)
My client called me back in to fix it, so I added a zero in the relevant place, and recompiled the code.
> LEDs can only shine at one brightness, they're either on or off,
This is factually incorrect.
LEDs shine at a range of brightnesses. The amount of light emitted is related to the amount of current flowing through the LED, which you are free to control however you want. The cheapest way to do this is to use something like PWM and monitor the average current flowing through the LEDs. However, you can also just use a constant current source, and adjust it to provide the amount of current that you want.
I don't know where the idea comes from that LEDs are only on or off. There's no basis in fact here, as far as I can tell.
Truly sick of hearing about "misalignment" and other nonsense from LEDsplainers and apologists. No alignment is going to fix the issue of giant trucks and 4WDs tailgating other drivers and blasting thousands of lumens into the cabins of their cars. The fact that modern LED headlights need to be within a Goldilocks zone of multiple operating parameters simply to avoid blinding other drivers is an inherent problem of these headlights.
The amount of ink spilled over LEDs is incredible when you consider how simple the situation really is. For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't. Regulators need to sort it out.
Yes, the size of those vehicles is definitely a factor. No alignment is going to account for the truck headlights being the same level as your eyes. Misalignment is definitely a thing though. Particularly with lifted trucks and the lack of auto-leveling when carrying a load. This affects halogens as well
But I think a lot of the blinding you see day to day is actually illegal HID/LED retrofits in reflector housings. Factory LEDs are not nearly as bad as those Amazon LEDs in reflectors.
It's not just retrofits. There are a headlights are much brighter stock than they were 10 years ago, and even where they're correctly aligned, they're assuming a perfectly flat road.
Unfortunately, perfectly flat roads are like spherical cows, so everyone is getting blinded by these newer, brighter headlights.
And now that active control is in play they're going to get even brighter and more blinding. YAY!
The worst ones I face are the Acura MDX “jewel eye” LED headlights. They are terrible whether oncoming or following. I can tell from a long way away that it’s an MDX.
since forever we have had cars that did not need to beep when in reverse gear. Now, some mental damaged people think it is acceptable to live in an experimental industrial electronic concert. And there is now a market for "ringtones for cars". So the issue is, regulators must be sound minded and present and active... And be able to respond to instances of common sense...
Trucks have had reverse beepers for a very long time, because the drivers can't see behind them (though modern remote back-up cameras can fix this). Car drivers didn't need this because they had good visibility to the rear.
These days, everyone is driving around in a gigantic off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility, though again the back-up cameras mitigate this.
As for common sense and regulators, decades ago it was considered perfectly fine and normal for people to not wear seatbelts, and to be regularly impaled on the steering column in a crash. Regulators eventually decided this wasn't good enough, but it took them a very long time. Seat belts were offered back in the early 60s I think, maybe 50s, but people didn't use them. Any idiot can tell that a seat belt keeps you from being impaled on the steering column, but obviously much of the population didn't have much common sense.
Worst of all is the Tesla backup sound. It's as if they hired some 20th century avant-garde musician to come up with the most jarring sound imaginable. That awful dystopian groan emanates through my house every day as my neighbors back into their driveway.
Just use a nice sounding V8 recording I say. I'd prefer that any day of the week, and it's immediately identifiable as a car noise.
I dislike bright LEDs at night, but not nearly as much as when people use terms like this as an insult. I'm sure you'll agree that people making poor choices isn't a sign of mental illness, and that by suggesting as such does harm to those who struggle with mental illness.
I can't remember the last time I was blinded by a semi truck, and those are larger than anything else on the road. There must be some sort of solution for tall vehicles other than "don't be tall"
> For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't.
That's some serious rose tinted glasses you're wearing there. This has been a problem for decades, regardless of the type of lightbulb. The number of cars with badly adjusted incandescent lightbulb fixtures is insane.
I found things to be better in the UK, where alignment was part of the annual MOT, but even there it was still a regular thing to find someone with lighbulbs adjusted so badly that the beam was shining on the inside roof of my car.
Halogen headlights were significantly lower lumens, lower color temperature and more diffuse. That's not rose tinted glasses. It's fact.
No one is forgetting that there were badly adjusted halogen headlights or misused high beams. The point is that despite this we didn't have anything close to the blinding landscape of the modern road.
If I'm going to be on 2-lane roads at night I wear lightly tinted sunglasses and even then the oncoming lights are a big problem. It's very scary to be driving a 2-ton piece of steel at 50-60 mph and then be intermittently blinded for 1-2 seconds at a time.
Curious if you're familiar with the anti-glare mode for your rear view mirror? The tab at the bottom you can flip up/down. I have electrochromatic rear view so never have any blinding problem, but I've been in friends cars that complain about headlights behind them and have no clue there's a switch to dim them!
Some car models even have dimming side mirrors these days!
...though, come to think of it, maybe the fact that manufacturers keep inventing new ways to combat extra bright lights is a sign that the problem is worsening.
is there a dimmer available for when these lifted megalumen trucks blind my infant in her rear facing car seat? to hell with these people and the harm their insecurities cause others.
I bought a totally stock boring crossover SUV new from the dealer in 2020 and I‘m sick of people constantly flashing their lights at me. Are my factory headlights illegal? It’s possible, but I doubt it. Is it illegal to flash your brights at someone when their own headlights are perfectly legal? I don’t know, but it’s certainly distracting and doesn’t seem safe in precisely the same way that excessively bright headlights are unsafe.
I just had to travel back to the UK. I rented a horrible car, some new MG 4x4/SUV, it was a great driver, but horrible UI. I landed at night and had to drive an hour or so, after having only driven in the USA for 4+ years. Almost as if it was a revelation, I realised I could see, and see far, even on 1x1 lane road, with small/medium/SUV/trucks passing me, their beams weren't shining directing into my eyes. I realised that my own beams were slightly different, the beam facing oncoming traffic was pointed much lower, then I remember all those times traveling to Europe, and having to attach those reflector stickers over my headlights, remembering why would would do it.
It wasn't until I left the US that I realised that I drive blind most nights, either because oncoming traffic is blinding, or, the roads have so little reflection (or the opposite, when wet, it's 100% reflection), and cannot see the yellow/white lines, even US cats eyes aren't that helpful/bright.
Also, I think every car I have driven in Europe has a knob to adjust the height of the headlights. It seems like it is a requirement, but it might not be. On the other hand, a 2007 entry-level Skoda Fabia would not have it unless forced by regulation.
Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
> Also, I think every car I have driven in Europe has a knob to adjust the height of the headlights. It seems like it is a requirement, but it might not be.
It is and has been for 30 years (76/756/EEC).
> Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
Usually you can't adjust it high, because the purpose is to lower the beams when the boot is loaded (and thus the car is not sitting level). "0" should be the standard / reg level for a level car.
IIRC, Xenon headlights are required to dynamically auto-level because mis-adjusted ones were considered too dangerous. I'm a bit surprised that's not the case for LED headlights. The issue with manual adjustment (or even semi-automatic) is an uphill or a bump in the road will flash whoever's driving the other way.
I think a few luxury models have a local dimming feature, so they automatically dim the section facing other cars when detecting them.
Thanks for the reminder, there is that knob! Another thing that the MG had was automatic high beams when on a dark road, so it would pop on and off at the worst times. I think I had to fiddle with that same knob to turn that off, guess that knob has grown up a little
I also recently rented that MG SUV in the UK, although I didn't like how it drove. The steering wheel felt loose like it wasn't connected to the wheels enough (I know nothing about cars and can't describe this better). Agree the UI sucked. Couldn't figure out how to turn the radio off??!
Driving in the US at night SUCKS. No cats' eyes on the highways, poor lane markings, I might as well cross my fingers and close my eyes driving at night. And the bright headlights are beyond ridiculous.
I don't know what part of the country you were driving in, but I find here in the London area, that a lot of the cats eyes are either damaged or dirty and don't reflect at all.
However when you do get on a stretch of recently resurfaced road with new cats eyes, it's bliss.
Hah! I've driven Jeeps like that! I opted for the automatic version, and have only ever driven manual over there, so maybe just that alone made it smooth? It took me a good 10-15 minutes to figure out how to figure it all out, and then couldn't operate it once driving as it would require too much attention, so it's now the passenger who's in charge of changing the temp?
I feel the same way! Especially in a big city when it's raining at night, beautiful visuals as a passenger, but the worst thing as the driver.
What part of the country are you in? There are cats’ eyes on every road except neighborhoods in my area. Especially on the highways. Lane markings are everywhere, we have major construction on one of our interchanges right now and they update the lines frequently as lanes close and shift, complete with cats’ eyes.
Some neighborhoods around me will have a cats’ eye marking where a fire hydrant is located.
the beam facing traffic points down, the one facing the side points up, which is of course an issue when you visit an island who decided to drive on the other side :D
If you take your car from the UK to mainland Europe (or vica versa) then you're required by law to fit headlamp beam adapters[0]. These essentially point both your headlights down to avoid blinding people who are now on the "wrong" side of the road. It does make it lightly harder to see forwards, but avoids blinding other drivers.
Yep, that's why it's a legal requirement that if you take a UK car to mainland Europe, you need to put some stickers over the edge of your headlights so you don't blind oncoming drivers: https://www.euromotoring.uk/beam-deflectors-GB-sticker
>and cannot see the yellow/white lines, even US cats eyes aren't that helpful/bright.
I'm not sure how cats' eyes are supposed to be related to driving cars, nor why US cats would be different biologically than cats in other countries. I hope you're not doing any weird scientific experiments with cat eyeballs.
I weep for the past when people talk about modern MGs. There’s literally nothing left of the heritage in that marque. Why couldn’t they let those quirky little sports cars have a quiet, respectful end?
The solution proposed in the article is a high tech one that might help, but the real solution should be that misaligned headlights fail inspection. Inspection needs to be updated to incorporate measurement standards, and the standards need to be followed.
If your headlights are at the same level as my car's roof, there is no alignment that will both a) not blind me, and b) actually illuminate the road in front of you. It is geometrically impossible.
But I agree to some extent that adaptive headlights are a band-aid. The real problem is the American auto market's fetish for ever-larger vehicles with ever-brighter headlights. We are a nation of adult children bereft of restraint, unable to grasp (or, alternately, unconcerned by) the fact that these vain indulgences are killing people.
> If your headlights are at the same level as my car's roof
That is the pain of driving a Miata :). For a regular car, for example a Toyota Camry, even the topmost headlight on a Super Duty FX4 is close to a foot below the roofline of the car.
Which is good for me, because nobody ever flashes me when I'm driving my pickup, but I do occasionally get flashed in my Model 3.
Where I am in Europe they will test and adjust them for you. My headlights can only be adjusted from behind, and I thought there was no way to do it without removing them. The inspector knew of a plastic gromit in the rain tray above the hood that can be removed to access the adjustment point.
I'm in BC, Canada and car inspections simply aren't a thing. In Germany where I grew up back in the day you had to get your car checked every 2 years or so and checking the alignment of headlights was one of the checks. Sure that would never fly in North America and it wouldn't help here anyway. Trucks are way too high by design.
As a European, this is yet another aspect of American life that surprises me... although perhaps it shouldn't be surprising.
British cars need to pass a yearly inspection (called the MOT) to be legally allowed on the road, and if you drive around with a failed or expired MOT then you WILL get caught and the punishment will hurt.
It's quick and easy to get the test done yearly and it's not a big deal; the system works well. You can even go online and look up the MOT history of any car, which is handy if you're about to buy the car as it'll let you know about any historical faults.
I assume there's something similar in most developed countries... why does America not do this?
Yeah, I was going to mention this. Indiana for example does not require any inspection except maybe for some sort of VIN inspection for cars titled outside of the state. And I think there might be one or two counties that have some sort of emissions inspection (out of 92 total counties).
I haven't really looked into this for other states, but I suspect we're not alone.
You will theoretically fail an inspection in Massachusetts for misaligned headlights, but I've never once heard of anybody actually failing because of it.
It's typically a simple fix if it's just an alignment issue. That on most cars takes 5 minutes, pop the hood, grab the right screw driver and adjust the beams. A mechanics might charge $20 for this. Now in newer cars with active headlights this method probably won't work, but the active headlights most likely have self leveling and a test to see if they are within spec.
Would they actually execute, though? They don't for speeders. And i define speeding here as ~4mph+-speed_limit. Not that i'm advocating pulling people over for "speeding" 5mph, but i often imagine cops allow 9mph without a glance because it allows them to pull over anyone for speeding.
I fear adding yet more rules they don't enforce just adds tools to a questionable toolbag.
I'd love for things like this to be enforced, though. Often feels like the roadways are a warzone heh.
Safety inspection will do zero to solve a problem that is dominated by new vehicles that are working as intended. Lights these days are just crazy bright yet within the current federal specs for where light can be shined and where on the vehicle it can be shined from. You might kick a few cars with shitty flickering bottom dollar LED bulbs off the road but that's a small slice of the overall problem pie.
was going to ask this. In France you fail inspection (4 years then every 2 years) if your headlights are misaligned, I guess it's the same the whole of Europe.
I expect inspection requirements to be eliminated going forward, rather than tightened, due to the standard government mantra: "This policy may disproportionately impact disadvantaged and minority communities". Personally I'm guessing that California has about another 5 years before smog testing goes away.
You think woke will beat corrupt/lobbying? I have an older car that needs the smog check every year, and for the last 5 years that's entailed paying a mechanic the better half of a thousand dollars to get the check engine light to go away (for the same issue) each time. The whole thing is an utter scam that only the poor people deal with.
I don't think being poor makes you a minority in this country, except in the offices where the laws are being made.
God bless my state of Michigan: zero inspections, no front license plates. I’ve lived in states with the opposite and it’s oppressive (as an automotive enthusiast)
Meanwhile I've seen people crash their cars every single week during my stay in the US because they drove on tires they should have replaced literal years earlier.
In SV as soon as it rain google maps becomes a Christmas tree because there are hundreds of red icons signalling accident, 10%+ of cars over there have diy slick tires
If any Europeans or Asians are wondering "why are America's vehicle standards so lax", here's your answer. There are a LOT of people that think the way this poster does.
And entirely corrupt and inconsistent. I know people who get the inspections stickers withheld so the shop can try to talk you into paying for maintenance or given out for free to friends.
It was baffling to me when I was in Florida and rented a car. I was driving on the highways and no matter where I was, every highway was littered with abandoned cars. I had things fly off from a car into mine (splash shield). And then I realized its most likely because Florida has no safety inspections.
As a car enthusiast myself, I'm glad Mass has safety regulations and I don't have to jeopardize my safety or breathe pollution from cars rolling coal. Safety and car hobbies can go hand in hand.
I recently moved back to Colorado, where for many decades it's commonplace for people to drive everywhere with their high beams always on, a point of significant frustration. With modern headlights and the new proliferation of lifted trucks (I was hoping I'd leave that behind in Texas, unfortunately not) with improper leveling, it has become nearly impossible to drive at night. I have several thoughts as to how to handle this, but the biggest issue is all of them are meaningless if it doesn't force retrofit or repair of all the vehicles currently on the road.
What we need is real safety inspections in this country that actually look at safety critical items, rather than either phoning it in or obsessively trying to gum up people who modify their cars safely (looking at you California). The types of shit I see these days on American roadways is appalling, and significantly different than how things were 20ish years ago. I now see cars regularly that are on unsafe tires, either for the conditions or the tires themselves being bald or aged out, I see cars driving on 4 spares, I see cars with hanging partially detached body pieces, I see cars with improperly aimed or installed head lights, I see cars with massively incorrect alignment, I see cars with /obvious/ failed wheel bearings or ball joints just waiting for their wheel to fly off.
All of this is a massively worse situation than it was just 20 years ago. I don't know if it is primarily economic, or if it's that people these days don't know fuck all about how cars work or even have any clue as to what types of things they should be aware of on their own vehicle for basic maintenance, or a combination of things. I just know the situation is massively massively worse, and it's terribly unsafe. The American roadway has become a death wish, and it wasn't this way in the past.
I suspect a lot of it is economic. Cars are really really expensive -- the second priciest thing most people buy (after housing). Upkeep easily hits thousands of dollars per year for a vehicle above the 100,000 mile mark, especially if the car is stored outside exposed to the elements or has been in an accident. Insurance and gas makes this even worse of course.
With prices for everything rising, I suspect vehicle costs are the easiest for most households to cut (in the short term). Much easier than food, or housing, or heat, or the marginal cost of media subscriptions.
In the long term? I know a LOT of young people with cars that are basically falling apart. Bald tires, poor alignment, cracked windshields, broken climate control, overheating engines, faulty wipers, dangerous rusting, significant panel damage, 10s of thousands of miles between oil changes, and more. All to make up the cost of expensive housing, which of course is still too far away from work to get there in anything but a car. Many have stopped maintaining their cars entirely.
As someone who thinks the US is overdependent on cars: maybe this is a good thing long-term? I see a lot of people waking up to just how expensive car infrastructure is for everyone involved. In the short term, it's probably a serious issue for road safety and America's ability to travel anywhere -- even work.
That's the thing, I see new cars getting more and more expensive, but the cost of maintenance for existing cars hasn't really gone up significantly. It just seems like folks stopped doing it, or in some of the cases where I've actually interacted with folks, didn't even know it needed to be done. I feel like the average American does not know /anything/ about cars, how they work, or how they need to be cared for, and either simply take it to a dealership (most expensive option) or assume it'll be fine forever and do nothing.
I religiously maintain my vehicles, and I do it myself, and that is not something that comes out of privilege, it comes out of a rural blue-collar upbringing where people did this /for economic reasons/ because we could not afford to take a car to a mechanic or dealership. The price of 6 quarts of oil has not materially changed in the last 5 years, even though everything else has increased in price significantly. The cost of tires hasn't significantly changed in the last 5 years. Tires /are/ expensive, especially good tires, but it's always been so and any set of tires should last 4-5 years under normal driving conditions (tires age out after 5 years, regardless of tread depth). If anything, tires have gotten massively better, so while their price is still high and not going down, you get much more value for money today than 10 or 20 years ago.
When I see 90s era Japanese cars still on the road, /these are the easiest and cheapest to maintain/, which means that the folks who own them should be able to keep up with maintenance no problem. Even newer (but still old) Japanese cars are cheap and easy to mantain. I have a 2012 Honda Fit as a daily that's a bit beat up from various fender benders my wife has been in, but mechanically is in fantastic condition. Every single part or fluid I've ever needed has been available very inexpensively from any parts shop, because 2012 Hondas are exceptionally common and have a high number of shared parts between models. There's very little excuse in my book for folks letting their cars literally rot into the ground as they drive the wheels off (sometimes literally, as the marks on the highway can attest).
Is the claim that /other/ costs have risen enough people are sacrificing vehicle maintenance? I think that /might/ be a fair argument, but I feel like ignorance is a much bigger issue. We have effectively no standards for issuing drivers licenses in this country, and most people are terrible drivers (just watch them, seriously) that put little attention or thought into their behavior on the roadway, and even less into the maintenance of their cars. Based on informal surveys, I find most people have never even read the owners manual that comes with their car, much less done basic maintenance themselves.
To be clear, I agree cars are expensive, and in many ways are the primary asset for most people because many Americans don't own their home, they rent. That car is what gets them to work, so it's essential for their economic survival. This means it's something worth investing in, ensuring it's maintained well, so it lasts a long time and performs well. But I feel like most people simply don't know anything at all about cars, and really have no interest in learning. It's very disappointing.
>> I recently moved back to Colorado, where for many decades it's commonplace for people to drive everywhere with their high beams always on
Don't they teach in the driving school that you should turn off the high beams when you see a car?
I remember I was taught to turn off the high beams when the car (doesn't matter if you are behind the card or it's coming from opposite direction) is approximately 300m away, or when our lights start to cross each other.
Also, forgetting to turn the beams on and off at night is a good indicator that you are slowly falling asleep behind the wheel.
> Don't they teach in the driving school that you should turn off the high beams when you see a car?
They do. They also teach you to not speed, to keep a safe distance, to signal lane changes, to stop at a red light, not to run a STOP sign, to yield at a YIELD sign, and generally speaking, to avoid dangerous things.
Sometimes people forget, sometimes people don't pay attention. and sometimes, people just don't care.
> Don't they teach in the driving school that you should turn off the high beams when you see a car?
Most Americans don't go to driving school. There are generally deeply lax requirements to be licensed to drive in the US. In Colorado, people are concerned with animal strikes on highways, so run high beams at night to see farther ahead rather than slowing down. It's dumb, but it is what happens.
I've almost given up on night driving. These super bright headlights really really messes with my astigmatisms (both eyes) with either my corrective contact or normal glasses.
Anyone else in a similar boat that's found relief? I haven't tried night driving glasses.
I haven't found a solution yet. But I find this especially crippling when our country also forces us to drive to do literally anything, even go for a walk. Particularly during the wintertime, it's crippling my ability to go anywhere or do anything.
The only solution I can think of is for myself to buy a lifted truck or other similar unnecessarily large vehicle. I haven't done this, of course, but if I did I'd then be part of the problem but at least my eye line would be above that of the majority of other drivers. We have a sedan and a small SUV - I don't drive the sedan at night ever because of the headlight problem. My eyes hurt just thinking about this.
Mostly I just don't drive at night. I'll take my e-bike or moped instead if I need to grab groceries. Also I'm really good about keeping my windshield clean and polished. About to replace my 10 year old windshield with a new one soon to reduce pitting. I also bought a dash mat to reduce the internal glare.
But sometimes, you just can't do anything about taking 10_000 lumens to the retina except slow down and pull over.
I agree about keeping the windshield clean - that helps a lot.
I don't really have the option of not driving in the dark - for most of winter it's dark well past when I need to drive to the office, and too cold for me to want to take public transit (which would also require me to wake up an hour earlier).
I think it needs to be well regulated and well enforced by police. Nothing else will work.
I avoid driving at night because of other people's headlights. My wife as well, and we're in our 40s. We've just assumed it's because our eyes are getting old and tired, but reading comments in this thread suggest it has less to do with that and more to do with an actual universal problem.
I've often thought of how cool it'd be to have a transparent LCD windshield that could use an eye tracking camera and a forward facing camera to calculate where to best draw an opaque circle in your line of sight so that'd it block the most intense points of light.
Sort of like holding your thumb up to block the light, just automatically and for multiple points of light.
There doesn't exist an addressable transparent LCD yet in mass quantities. But I'm working on a dimmed piece of plastic moving around on a stage. The computer vision is sorta straightforward actually.
If possible, I avoid driving at night. Even if the article is focused on US status, also in Europe it's becoming a nightmare, especially if you see big trucks mounting also super-bright LEDs and everyone has Xenon/LEDs nowadays
I started driving cargo vans that both sit me up straight and put me higher than a lot of the traffic. Also the lack of rear windows is pretty nice for when you're in front of a new F350 riding your ass in the slow lane.
I've heard anecdotally to just get super bright headlights on your own vehicle. That way your eyes are already adjusted to the brightness. I don't know what to if you have a conscience, though.
Retroreflecting band covering upper side of your windshield? This way anyone who shines his lights too high will be blinded with his own reflected light. Doubly so if he tries flashing actual high beams.
That's not a good solution in my experience. I recently purchased a vehicle whose stock headlights (properly height adjusted) are overly bright, and when you're stopped in traffic right behind a vehicle with a white license plate, a significant portion of that light gets reflected right back into your eyes by the white plate. Basically it ends up punishing yourself too. These days I do all my city driving with headlights off (just the daytime running lights) for this reason.
Make sure your glasses and windscreen are very clean and free of stripes from wiping them. It'll not help with the astigmatism, but at least the glasses and the windscreen aren't making it worse.
Another thing to try is the various kinds of night glasses, My mom swears by those. As a last resort you can try untinted polarized sunglasses. While those do make your view less bright they also make it lower contrast which might help.
Have you tried yellow tinted glasses? I found it helped me a lot. I think night driving glasses are supposed to do the same, filter out the blue light but not sure if they do it as effectively as yellow lenses, maybe try both?
Yep, no thanks. Not even for free when the military offered it to me as a carrot to reenlist. You only have one set of eyes. There are no guaranteed results. I have blue eyes and astigmatisms which I was told by multiple doctors could affect the results. I've met more than a couple people that have had chronic dry eye and other issues after their LASIK. I'm totally fine with my glasses and rare use of contacts. I'm not gambling my only set of eyes with perhaps half my life left on this planet.
LASIK is known for causing night vision difficulties e.g. bright lights causing starburst patterns or halos. This can happen when the pupil widens to the point where light is entering the eye from both the corrected and uncorrected areas of the cornea. I think the issue decreases over time as the eye heals but in some cases it can remain as a long-term side effect.
Not mentioned in the article; the people that have high beams on 24x7x365. What are they thinking?
Local issue; Carolina squat. Trucks lifted in the front only, back end winds up way lower than the front. Looks absolutely stupid to me but there's a lot of them out here and that puts them way out of the correctible range for headlight aiming. Seems NC is doing something about that legally, SC following soon?
I mentioned and complained about this issue about 5 months back. Going so far as to say maybe we should do away with high beams altogether because obviously we can't use the responsibly.
I got told since I'm being blinded by jackasses shining their brights in my mirror, I'm probably too old to drive and the apparently the number of people on HN who are driving in deer-infested wilderness is through the fucking roof.
But no, HN is the bastion of rationality and logic and there is no completely fucking stupid faction that dang just ignores.
A really bad one is the police lights at night. A police car on the side of the road with the lights on is so intense I can't look anywhere near it. I am convinced this is one of the reasons why those cars and officers get hit so much.
I had to look this up. Why would anyone do that? Not only does it look idiotic, but it probably messes with the crash safety technology of the car (in addition to the headlight problem).
Everyone in the car community not actively doing this also thinks it's stupid. It's objectively stupid and dangerous. The people doing it do it primarily because it's stupid and dangerous, similar to those in the "stance" community. They do it basically to get attention, even if that attention is negative, and to openly show that they have a disregard for others as for some reason American society rewards and uplifts anti-social behavior.
They do it for attention. Wearing a hat sideways looks stupid but for those who are addicted to attention, it is worthwhile. There's also a degree of chest thumping, showing that the attention seeker isn't afraid of defying society's expectations.
I think it's some combination of laziness or not knowing how their vehicle works. Some are coming equipped with auto high beams, but I'd wager those don't work on windy roads and therefore don't automatically dim.
On the other hand, I was driving at dusk last night to church and someone had his high beams on (still fairly light outside as the sun had only just set) and it was an older vehicle. So, I'm sure there's some laziness/ignorance to the high beam problem.
Wow - never seen a Carolina squat before - and certainly not here in the UK - how can you see anything close by in front of you? Must be hard to park in tight spaces.
I'd hate to have one of those driving around near kids or animals.
No problem! Just take up two spaces, or park in the way, if that what it takes.
On the one hand, parking is not a big issue in most places where this is a thing (though injuries resulting from vehicle collisions are.) On the other hand, this is the reaction of a culture that suspects it is being screwed out of something it thinks it is entitled to, but has no understanding of how or why it is happening, and responds through meaningless acts of somewhat aggressive defiance against responsible civil behavior. Yes, it is juvenile - welcome to the second millennium!
In the 24x7x365 case, it's basically "I want more light, so fuck you". It's the same principle for those who sit in the passing lane all the time and like to ride on the quarter of a car going at the same speed as they are, and I often meet people doing both.
I'm glad this is finally getting some news coverage, although the problem already existed for almost a decade (at least 5-6 years in my area).
There need to be fines/inspection for headlights, as they are safety-critical. Headlights that negate visibility of other drivers should be illegal.
Since COVID, I nearly eliminated my night-time driving for this reason. It is literally unsafe for me to drive on high-traffic roads, because I'm guessing where to go since I am blinded constantly by oncoming traffic. I can wear sunglasses, but they reduce peripheral vision, making it unsafe still, just in other aspects.
Readit News
PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) is a technique where the power to the output (bulb) is turned on and off at high frequencies in order to increase efficiency, power handling, and control of the output.
If this on/off switching is done fast enough, your eyes/brain will interpret it as a normal always on light source.
PWM is significantly cheaper and easier to implement vs current source LEDs, so it of course has become dominant in the industry.
When the PWM frequency drops below 120-240hz (cycles a second), some people can start to pick up a strobe like effect from the bulb. This flicker is known to cause additional eye fatigue and can trigger headaches in many.
What's worse is that many aftermarket LED headlights are now using PWM at 60hz. These cheap headlights are often bright blue in order to look modern and impressive. When a car with these installed is behind me at night I have to move my mirror away because the flicker is incredibly distracting and fatiguing.
But that practically singular investment in automotive optical engineering and innovation is let down by the low frequency PWM driver baling wired into the final design to cut cost by perhaps a dollar or two.
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the majority of the population doesn't seem to notice this crap, at least not in a way that affects their day-to-day happiness.
Why not vote for something that sounds good at surface level if you've never perceived that annoying sound or flicker? Why would you even think about it?
If you're old enough, you may have seen the science fiction children's show "Captain Power." The LED tail lights remind me of the target strobe meant to trigger the accompanying toys.
Of course if you're old like me, you probably only watched an episode to see what Lightwave3d was capable of, but ..
See saccade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
What % of people are sensitive to this? Any medical documentation? Is NHTSA aware?
All on the basis that “lol humans don’t notice the flicker”? Uh, okay, but animals? The 99th percentile humans? Subconscious effects on fatigue (that you mention)?
Seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.
It's more about economizing the power supply package and heatsink integrated within the bulb or lamp assembly.
Mass produced cars have reached the point that a $0.50 saving per vehicle is worth designing and building for. When you reduce the current draw from something that is always-on (like headlights) you increase the life of the LED, you can reduce the gauge (size) of the wires to the lights, you can reduce the size of the alternator, you can load the alternator less, which means increase the service life of the alternator belt and idlers, and (in theory, at least) decrease fuel consumption.
All of these are tiny, tiny efficiencies, but they do add up.
While it might seem penny-wise and pound-foolish, imagine following this same logic for all systems in a modern vehicle. This is why even such a "rugged offroad" vehicle as a Jeep Wrangler has a plastic clutch slave cylinder (weight and cost savings) and why the headlights will dim in virtually all vehicles if you turn on every single electrical device that draws current (the wires are not sufficient gauge for everything to draw max current at the same time).
They're saving actual money on every vehicle built, which is what they care about.
That’s not how it works. When charging, the alternator will put more load on the engine and that will increase fuel input to keep rpm up enough to keep the engine from stalling.
Overall, every vehicle designer will seek to minimize any and all loads (even small ones).
Worst is when they remove the spare tire, grrrrrr.
Newer construction doesn't install proper fixtures anymore. No more user-replaceable bulbs. Everything is screwed directly into the box and you have to do a minor electrical job on every unit you want to replace.
I too strongly dislike the lack of replaceable bulbs in newer LED fixtures. It's outrageous how many things in modern construction shave a few cents here and there to get the initial cost down, and the long term costs are enormous. Once the house is sold it's someone else's problem and that mentality is disgusting.
Surely someone can devise an internal circuit to disable some combination of the LEDs to do proper dimming without relying on PWM.
However, poor (or nonexistent) light source shrouding is also a common factor. Bicycle headlights make a great lower-powered example. Cheap bicycle headlights throw much less light than a car headlight but are painfully blinding due to the exposed light source point. Bicycle headlights that meet StVZO regulations shroud the light source, have decent optical design, are far more effective as headlights, and don't make anyones eyes bleed even when they're flashing.
Early composite car headlights (post sealed beam) received significant design investment involving established headlight manufacturers and worked extremely well. Auto manufacturers brought headlight design in-house by the time xenon and HID headlights showed up in general use; inexperience and cost avoidance gave those lights an undeserved reputation. A lack of regulatory outcomes rewarded that strategy, leading even established composite headlight quality to decline. Light source shrouds disappeared or became ineffective due to poor reflector design.
Headlights on new cars in the US market have declined to the point that they're effectively overpowered cheap bicycle headlights plus extra PWM induced stabbiness, while costing orders of magnitude more as a result of cost cutting. The worst have returned to sealed beam levels of utility, but at least there were aftermarket options to improve sealed beams. Modern aftermarket lights are so bad that it's normal for drivers to install them for malice against other drivers with blinding stock headlights. There really aren't any optically well designed headlights on the US market any more, except for bicycles.
They are all "for offroad use only", which is the biggest scam
A few years ago the EPA clarified that when they said “off road use only”, they meant in machines that were never intended to be on a road. So, aftermarket shit designed for a lawnmower, cool. But if you’re designing for a vehicle that was originally designed for the road, you have to stick to EPA regs. This killed a lot of those “off-road use only” disclaimers, but it also panicked the amateur racing community because they tend to use modified road cars. I’m not sure how they worked it out with the EPA, but I don’t hear them complaining any more, so I assume they did.
https://lumileds.com/austrian-drivers-can-enjoy-road-legal-p...
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And one reseller told me - "Well, they should be shielded". Practice far from granted if even the problem is not known.
The PWM I use at home on an ESP32 is supposed to be in the 1-10 kHz range and I don't see flicker when moving my eyes.
The usual ~200kHz PWM is cheaper, more reliable, smaller, and usually more powerful than anything you can build on the ~100Hz. Besides everybody sells chips for ~200kHz, but finding anything that can operate at ~100Hz is a challenge.
I can understand cheap household ones using the mains frequency to avoid an AC/DC conversion. But AFAIK, using them on a car is stupid from every conceivable point of view.
1. I'm not sure if there's a better name, but the system where the rear view mirror is a display linked to a camera at the rear of the vehicle in some higher end cars and as an aftermarket addon.
But they can switch on and off very fast, so if 50Hz is flickery, you can use 500Hz, or 5000Hz. Most microcontrollers have circuitry for this built in, so you just literally write a different constant into the controller.
I once made an LED dashboard for use in police cars. After it was rolled out, it was discovered that the flicker frequency was interfering with the radio (the only bug ever found in my code!)
My client called me back in to fix it, so I added a zero in the relevant place, and recompiled the code.
£400 for about twenty minutes work.
This is factually incorrect.
LEDs shine at a range of brightnesses. The amount of light emitted is related to the amount of current flowing through the LED, which you are free to control however you want. The cheapest way to do this is to use something like PWM and monitor the average current flowing through the LEDs. However, you can also just use a constant current source, and adjust it to provide the amount of current that you want.
I don't know where the idea comes from that LEDs are only on or off. There's no basis in fact here, as far as I can tell.
The amount of ink spilled over LEDs is incredible when you consider how simple the situation really is. For decades we managed to have cars with headlights that didn't constantly blind and dazzle other drivers. Now we don't. Regulators need to sort it out.
But I think a lot of the blinding you see day to day is actually illegal HID/LED retrofits in reflector housings. Factory LEDs are not nearly as bad as those Amazon LEDs in reflectors.
Unfortunately, perfectly flat roads are like spherical cows, so everyone is getting blinded by these newer, brighter headlights.
And now that active control is in play they're going to get even brighter and more blinding. YAY!
No one says headlights have to be just under the top of the hood. On a giant truck, drop the headlights to the level of the bumper.
that and more:
> Regulators
since forever we have had cars that did not need to beep when in reverse gear. Now, some mental damaged people think it is acceptable to live in an experimental industrial electronic concert. And there is now a market for "ringtones for cars". So the issue is, regulators must be sound minded and present and active... And be able to respond to instances of common sense...
These days, everyone is driving around in a gigantic off-road vehicle with terrible rear visibility, though again the back-up cameras mitigate this.
As for common sense and regulators, decades ago it was considered perfectly fine and normal for people to not wear seatbelts, and to be regularly impaled on the steering column in a crash. Regulators eventually decided this wasn't good enough, but it took them a very long time. Seat belts were offered back in the early 60s I think, maybe 50s, but people didn't use them. Any idiot can tell that a seat belt keeps you from being impaled on the steering column, but obviously much of the population didn't have much common sense.
Just use a nice sounding V8 recording I say. I'd prefer that any day of the week, and it's immediately identifiable as a car noise.
I dislike bright LEDs at night, but not nearly as much as when people use terms like this as an insult. I'm sure you'll agree that people making poor choices isn't a sign of mental illness, and that by suggesting as such does harm to those who struggle with mental illness.
That's some serious rose tinted glasses you're wearing there. This has been a problem for decades, regardless of the type of lightbulb. The number of cars with badly adjusted incandescent lightbulb fixtures is insane.
I found things to be better in the UK, where alignment was part of the annual MOT, but even there it was still a regular thing to find someone with lighbulbs adjusted so badly that the beam was shining on the inside roof of my car.
No one is forgetting that there were badly adjusted halogen headlights or misused high beams. The point is that despite this we didn't have anything close to the blinding landscape of the modern road.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-view_mirror#Anti-glare
...though, come to think of it, maybe the fact that manufacturers keep inventing new ways to combat extra bright lights is a sign that the problem is worsening.
It wasn't until I left the US that I realised that I drive blind most nights, either because oncoming traffic is blinding, or, the roads have so little reflection (or the opposite, when wet, it's 100% reflection), and cannot see the yellow/white lines, even US cats eyes aren't that helpful/bright.
Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
Edit: Video of said knob: https://youtu.be/t7XqQoit0EU?t=104
It is and has been for 30 years (76/756/EEC).
> Adjust the lights too high, and you will aggressively be flashed by the opposite traffics high beams.
Usually you can't adjust it high, because the purpose is to lower the beams when the boot is loaded (and thus the car is not sitting level). "0" should be the standard / reg level for a level car.
IIRC, Xenon headlights are required to dynamically auto-level because mis-adjusted ones were considered too dangerous. I'm a bit surprised that's not the case for LED headlights. The issue with manual adjustment (or even semi-automatic) is an uphill or a bump in the road will flash whoever's driving the other way.
I think a few luxury models have a local dimming feature, so they automatically dim the section facing other cars when detecting them.
I also recently rented that MG SUV in the UK, although I didn't like how it drove. The steering wheel felt loose like it wasn't connected to the wheels enough (I know nothing about cars and can't describe this better). Agree the UI sucked. Couldn't figure out how to turn the radio off??!
Driving in the US at night SUCKS. No cats' eyes on the highways, poor lane markings, I might as well cross my fingers and close my eyes driving at night. And the bright headlights are beyond ridiculous.
However when you do get on a stretch of recently resurfaced road with new cats eyes, it's bliss.
I feel the same way! Especially in a big city when it's raining at night, beautiful visuals as a passenger, but the worst thing as the driver.
Some neighborhoods around me will have a cats’ eye marking where a fire hydrant is located.
[0]http://www.motoring-into-europe.co.uk/product-eurolites.html
I'm not sure how cats' eyes are supposed to be related to driving cars, nor why US cats would be different biologically than cats in other countries. I hope you're not doing any weird scientific experiments with cat eyeballs.
But I agree to some extent that adaptive headlights are a band-aid. The real problem is the American auto market's fetish for ever-larger vehicles with ever-brighter headlights. We are a nation of adult children bereft of restraint, unable to grasp (or, alternately, unconcerned by) the fact that these vain indulgences are killing people.
That is the pain of driving a Miata :). For a regular car, for example a Toyota Camry, even the topmost headlight on a Super Duty FX4 is close to a foot below the roofline of the car.
Which is good for me, because nobody ever flashes me when I'm driving my pickup, but I do occasionally get flashed in my Model 3.
British cars need to pass a yearly inspection (called the MOT) to be legally allowed on the road, and if you drive around with a failed or expired MOT then you WILL get caught and the punishment will hurt.
It's quick and easy to get the test done yearly and it's not a big deal; the system works well. You can even go online and look up the MOT history of any car, which is handy if you're about to buy the car as it'll let you know about any historical faults.
I assume there's something similar in most developed countries... why does America not do this?
I haven't really looked into this for other states, but I suspect we're not alone.
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(Edited 'Most States' to 'Many States' since the exact number is a distraction, but in either case, millions of cars will never see an inspection)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
I fear adding yet more rules they don't enforce just adds tools to a questionable toolbag.
I'd love for things like this to be enforced, though. Often feels like the roadways are a warzone heh.
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I don't think being poor makes you a minority in this country, except in the offices where the laws are being made.
In SV as soon as it rain google maps becomes a Christmas tree because there are hundreds of red icons signalling accident, 10%+ of cars over there have diy slick tires
As a car enthusiast myself, I'm glad Mass has safety regulations and I don't have to jeopardize my safety or breathe pollution from cars rolling coal. Safety and car hobbies can go hand in hand.
What we need is real safety inspections in this country that actually look at safety critical items, rather than either phoning it in or obsessively trying to gum up people who modify their cars safely (looking at you California). The types of shit I see these days on American roadways is appalling, and significantly different than how things were 20ish years ago. I now see cars regularly that are on unsafe tires, either for the conditions or the tires themselves being bald or aged out, I see cars driving on 4 spares, I see cars with hanging partially detached body pieces, I see cars with improperly aimed or installed head lights, I see cars with massively incorrect alignment, I see cars with /obvious/ failed wheel bearings or ball joints just waiting for their wheel to fly off.
All of this is a massively worse situation than it was just 20 years ago. I don't know if it is primarily economic, or if it's that people these days don't know fuck all about how cars work or even have any clue as to what types of things they should be aware of on their own vehicle for basic maintenance, or a combination of things. I just know the situation is massively massively worse, and it's terribly unsafe. The American roadway has become a death wish, and it wasn't this way in the past.
With prices for everything rising, I suspect vehicle costs are the easiest for most households to cut (in the short term). Much easier than food, or housing, or heat, or the marginal cost of media subscriptions.
In the long term? I know a LOT of young people with cars that are basically falling apart. Bald tires, poor alignment, cracked windshields, broken climate control, overheating engines, faulty wipers, dangerous rusting, significant panel damage, 10s of thousands of miles between oil changes, and more. All to make up the cost of expensive housing, which of course is still too far away from work to get there in anything but a car. Many have stopped maintaining their cars entirely.
As someone who thinks the US is overdependent on cars: maybe this is a good thing long-term? I see a lot of people waking up to just how expensive car infrastructure is for everyone involved. In the short term, it's probably a serious issue for road safety and America's ability to travel anywhere -- even work.
I religiously maintain my vehicles, and I do it myself, and that is not something that comes out of privilege, it comes out of a rural blue-collar upbringing where people did this /for economic reasons/ because we could not afford to take a car to a mechanic or dealership. The price of 6 quarts of oil has not materially changed in the last 5 years, even though everything else has increased in price significantly. The cost of tires hasn't significantly changed in the last 5 years. Tires /are/ expensive, especially good tires, but it's always been so and any set of tires should last 4-5 years under normal driving conditions (tires age out after 5 years, regardless of tread depth). If anything, tires have gotten massively better, so while their price is still high and not going down, you get much more value for money today than 10 or 20 years ago.
When I see 90s era Japanese cars still on the road, /these are the easiest and cheapest to maintain/, which means that the folks who own them should be able to keep up with maintenance no problem. Even newer (but still old) Japanese cars are cheap and easy to mantain. I have a 2012 Honda Fit as a daily that's a bit beat up from various fender benders my wife has been in, but mechanically is in fantastic condition. Every single part or fluid I've ever needed has been available very inexpensively from any parts shop, because 2012 Hondas are exceptionally common and have a high number of shared parts between models. There's very little excuse in my book for folks letting their cars literally rot into the ground as they drive the wheels off (sometimes literally, as the marks on the highway can attest).
Is the claim that /other/ costs have risen enough people are sacrificing vehicle maintenance? I think that /might/ be a fair argument, but I feel like ignorance is a much bigger issue. We have effectively no standards for issuing drivers licenses in this country, and most people are terrible drivers (just watch them, seriously) that put little attention or thought into their behavior on the roadway, and even less into the maintenance of their cars. Based on informal surveys, I find most people have never even read the owners manual that comes with their car, much less done basic maintenance themselves.
To be clear, I agree cars are expensive, and in many ways are the primary asset for most people because many Americans don't own their home, they rent. That car is what gets them to work, so it's essential for their economic survival. This means it's something worth investing in, ensuring it's maintained well, so it lasts a long time and performs well. But I feel like most people simply don't know anything at all about cars, and really have no interest in learning. It's very disappointing.
Don't they teach in the driving school that you should turn off the high beams when you see a car?
I remember I was taught to turn off the high beams when the car (doesn't matter if you are behind the card or it's coming from opposite direction) is approximately 300m away, or when our lights start to cross each other.
Also, forgetting to turn the beams on and off at night is a good indicator that you are slowly falling asleep behind the wheel.
They do. They also teach you to not speed, to keep a safe distance, to signal lane changes, to stop at a red light, not to run a STOP sign, to yield at a YIELD sign, and generally speaking, to avoid dangerous things.
Sometimes people forget, sometimes people don't pay attention. and sometimes, people just don't care.
Most Americans don't go to driving school. There are generally deeply lax requirements to be licensed to drive in the US. In Colorado, people are concerned with animal strikes on highways, so run high beams at night to see farther ahead rather than slowing down. It's dumb, but it is what happens.
Anyone else in a similar boat that's found relief? I haven't tried night driving glasses.
But sometimes, you just can't do anything about taking 10_000 lumens to the retina except slow down and pull over.
I don't really have the option of not driving in the dark - for most of winter it's dark well past when I need to drive to the office, and too cold for me to want to take public transit (which would also require me to wake up an hour earlier).
I think it needs to be well regulated and well enforced by police. Nothing else will work.
I've often thought of how cool it'd be to have a transparent LCD windshield that could use an eye tracking camera and a forward facing camera to calculate where to best draw an opaque circle in your line of sight so that'd it block the most intense points of light.
Sort of like holding your thumb up to block the light, just automatically and for multiple points of light.
Another thing to try is the various kinds of night glasses, My mom swears by those. As a last resort you can try untinted polarized sunglasses. While those do make your view less bright they also make it lower contrast which might help.
https://lasikcomplications.com/starbursting.htm
Local issue; Carolina squat. Trucks lifted in the front only, back end winds up way lower than the front. Looks absolutely stupid to me but there's a lot of them out here and that puts them way out of the correctible range for headlight aiming. Seems NC is doing something about that legally, SC following soon?
I got told since I'm being blinded by jackasses shining their brights in my mirror, I'm probably too old to drive and the apparently the number of people on HN who are driving in deer-infested wilderness is through the fucking roof.
But no, HN is the bastion of rationality and logic and there is no completely fucking stupid faction that dang just ignores.
I had to look this up. Why would anyone do that? Not only does it look idiotic, but it probably messes with the crash safety technology of the car (in addition to the headlight problem).
https://www.wmbfnews.com/2023/02/15/bill-banning-carolina-sq...
On the other hand, I was driving at dusk last night to church and someone had his high beams on (still fairly light outside as the sun had only just set) and it was an older vehicle. So, I'm sure there's some laziness/ignorance to the high beam problem.
You're definitely not the only one noticing this!
(Don't get me started on squatted trucks...)
I'd hate to have one of those driving around near kids or animals.
No problem! Just take up two spaces, or park in the way, if that what it takes.
On the one hand, parking is not a big issue in most places where this is a thing (though injuries resulting from vehicle collisions are.) On the other hand, this is the reaction of a culture that suspects it is being screwed out of something it thinks it is entitled to, but has no understanding of how or why it is happening, and responds through meaningless acts of somewhat aggressive defiance against responsible civil behavior. Yes, it is juvenile - welcome to the second millennium!
In the 24x7x365 case, it's basically "I want more light, so fuck you". It's the same principle for those who sit in the passing lane all the time and like to ride on the quarter of a car going at the same speed as they are, and I often meet people doing both.
There need to be fines/inspection for headlights, as they are safety-critical. Headlights that negate visibility of other drivers should be illegal.
Since COVID, I nearly eliminated my night-time driving for this reason. It is literally unsafe for me to drive on high-traffic roads, because I'm guessing where to go since I am blinded constantly by oncoming traffic. I can wear sunglasses, but they reduce peripheral vision, making it unsafe still, just in other aspects.