we REALLY need some regulation of these lights. Both brightness and color band. ASAP.

This is going to cause accidents and kill people.

This is an exceptionally frustrating arms race because there are no winners other than the manufacturers. Drivers are less safe, pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users are less safe, wildlife is less safe (and almost certainly more affected by the brighter and generally bluer light), the skies are emptier, and life after dark is generally more irritating.

What's worst is that I can't see a path back from this. That "use dimmer headlights" ad campaign will be a tough sell...

This is the future that they took from us: The Polaroid Headlight System

polarization.com/land/land.htm…

This is so true. I'd rather drive at night in some super rural area with no streetlights these days than anywhere near a city.

(I mean this is true in general, but especially at night).

The problem has indeed gotten worse. Five years ago, I was thinking the problem with the nighttime glare or car head and taillights was because of my aging eyes.No, it's because the lights got brighter.

When I am out inline skating after dark (which is often), I regularly have my left hand ready to block the light of an oncoming vehicles, and that includes the handle bar lights on many bicycles.

nytimes.com/2021/06/05/busines…

yes, i had a scary incident a few years back when i was driving down the highway at night in winter, on an icy road. i saw flashing emergency lights ahead but because they were so dazzling i literally could not tell that the vehicles were parked in the middle of the road (and not driving along with the rest of traffic) until it was almost too late to stop.

wtf good are lights so bright that they blind the people they're supposed to be warning?

Interesting to note the spike in nighttime pedestrian fatalities starting in 2014. Daytime fatalities increased 16% in the 2010s, but night went up 54%.

See p.17 here, but don’t take this as an endorsement of GHSA or the overall report: ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2…

Brighter is not always better.

You really, really don't want to be blinding the other people on the road. Or yourself. Honestly.

@thegibson We’re driving an older car and what the hell happened to new headlights?

They should really be regulated to a maximum brightness federally. It is straight up unsafe.

When I lived in San Jose, CA the city was lit at night by very orange sodium vapor light, because the color was easily filtered out by the Lick Observatory overlooking town. People complained because it looked odd; but one could easily see the streets magically because night vision wasn’t impaired. I could actually see the stars at night from my house downtown in one of the largest cities in California.

They’ve started replacing them all with LED.

The history of headlights is actually really interesting; back when regulators were less scared to create rules, we had standards that basically meant every car had the same lighting system, designed with glare in mind. That was done away with in the 80s, and for 30 years, no one could really make too much of a mess because of the limitations of incandescent lightbulbs.

LEDs changed that, and so, in the quest to see better individually, we collectively see worse. Oops.

I like to take a walk after dinner, and at my latitude it's dark then at this time of year.

If I'm walking along a road, I spend the entire time holding up one hand to shade the headlights of oncoming traffic. If I didn't do that, I couldn't see the sidewalk. The glare is astonishing.

I don’t know if it’s visual or some sort of mental thing but there is a point for me when driving at night becomes very difficult. My astigmatism makes it worse.

Regular night driving is okay, but it’s getting unbearable in the rain. I will actually avoid it. Newer cars with limited visibility and auto dimming mirrors help. Driving my car from the 90’s with great visibility is actually way worse at night.

when I am driving at night,
Am often quite taken aback at how bright other drivers set their instrument/dashlights.

no wonder they never dim their headlights, they're driving utterly blind from the dash glare, which also reflects onto the windscreen

@rgulick

those of us who have already fairly photosensitive eyes are doomed. I hate driving at night and my vision isn't even bad!

Between the hyper white lights and the cheapest possible non reflective paint that Oregon chooses along with a lack of road reflectors I'm certain it's not a matter of IF but WHEN I have an accident at night at this point

I remember when they started first using them when I was a teen/young adult and I remember CONSTANTLY complaining about how they both give me headaches and make it impossible to see the road or traffic at all.

My opinions haven't changed in the least regarding this. I feel like people are blasting strobe lights in my eyes when the sun goes down.