Portable illumination
Rules:
Related:
The top one is diffused, bottom one untouched and only shining forward like a laser.
This is obviously no special flashlight, but rather a simple example of how to fix/address the obvious problems with blinding LED headlights mentioned in this post..
The largest offender group is people using bad lights in various forms. The "Fuck you, got mine" crowd that 1. Used to install HID bulbs in non-HID housings, 2. Currently installs shitty inaccurate LED bulbs in any housing (there is no factory-replaceable LED bulb), or 3. Uses aux light assemblies that have never offered dipped beam/low beam options (a driving light is a high beam; most are just apot/floods anyway).
While options 1 and 2 may appear like a glaring hazy headlight, the beam is actually fucked from the start.
As for proper OEM lights that are blinding when you're below the cutoff due to hills, that's always been a problem. Factories aim these too high though and the average driver is clueless what proper aim looks like and that they have the power to adjust it. Then add in the increase of SUVs with high-mounted low beams...
This is what grinds my gears. We're fucked.
What disappoints me is that there's basically no angle adjustment or even options for the newer proprietary specialty OEM headlights anymore.
Used to be screw adjustments to angle them up, down, left or right. But now the headlights are basically fixed in the OEM engineered position, with no fucks to give about tiny vehicles like my mom's 1994 Nissan Sentra..
At least her headlights are adjustable.
The newer cars that I've owned all had a means to adjust the headlight angle from within the car itself. I suspect that many drivers aren't aware of this. I was told that the adjustment is because if you have a bunch of stuff in your trunk, it can cause your headlights to be angled up higher than they otherwise would be.
However, I am now recalling that when I moved home recently, and almost certainly should have used this adjustment wheel, it didn't occur to me to do so. I suspect that drivers who do have the means to adjust it either don't know about it, or they forget
I find myself just recently learning that these newer vehicles actually do have headlight angle adjustments, but they damn sure don't look like it with these very custom design and engineered assemblies.
Sigh, if only modern vehicles in the USA weren't 7 to 8 feet tall for no good reason, with the headlights about 4 or 5 feet or so off the ground.. ☹️
Every USA and EU market headlight is adjustable. I don't know where you are, but you should probably read the owners manual.
Or maybe like purchase the Hayne's/Chilton manual.
Oh wait, they stopped making those around 2013 or so..
It'd be possible to mount detectors by the side of the road that automatically trip on mis-mounted headlights.
It's actually very important for headlights to not be diffuse. As their job is the very specifically throw light dozens of meters away in a very selective cone. The idea is to light up only the road and nothing else. Headlights usually achieve this by having multiple sets of lights inside. There are the main beams that light up the road in the distance. Wider broad beams (usually achieved with a lens) are used that light up more area near the car. This helps a lot with lighting up road sings and such. There's also side beams that light up the sides of the roads. Depending on the exact sort of headlights, there can be even more. Like smart lasers that selectively highlight some stuff.
If one were to just blast diffuse light in all directions, it would not light up nearly as much of the road ahead. Which means they would need to be way more bright in order to do their job. At the same time they would blast out light in useless directions, wasting energy. And would make people getting blinded by lights even worse as all that light that would otherwise be pointed down, point straight into people's eyes. But not just in the oncoming directions, but in all directions.
A diffuse light is good for being seen, but not good for lighting up a specific area. A directed not diffuse light is hard to see, except from the one direction, but is very good at lighting stuff up.
The issue with most car lights has nothing to do with the lights or the cars. It's the idiots driving them. So many headlights are set way too high or not aligned at all. People often intentionally set them higher, because it helps them see, but hurts everyone around them. Another issue is the amount of light being put out is way too much. In the past, the amount of light would be pretty low, so people's eyes would adjust and letting them see everything. However with more street lights being placed to help safety and these street lights also using leds and becoming brighter, it was harder for people to adjust to the light and thus needed more light for themselves. It's like an arms race where we keep adding more and more light, which is terrible for everyone (including nature). In the end it's lack of regulation that hurts the most. Brighter wider lights sell better, because people driving like them for the better vision it offers. Even people that get annoyed at being blinded by others. If people like them, it drives up sales, so cars get designed with brighter headlights. Same for cars getting bigger and bigger. And those bigger cars have the headlights higher, increasing the issue as well. Market drives into lunacy.
I fucking hate cars, get blinded by headlights all the time and think something should be done. But diffusing the lights is definitely not the solution.
I dunno how better to explain it, except when I had bright headlights coming up on my rear end, and I wished I had dynamite to throw back their way because they blinded me from my rear view mirror. And that was from around 15 years ago.
I was driving my own car where I very carefully adjusted my headlight angles, on an abandoned bridge in the middle of the night. Not the only time I did that either, but I always made sure my headlights wouldn't blind the driver in front of me.
But the dude behind me totally blinded me through all my mirrors.
I actually tried to adjust my rearview mirror to blind them back, not easy to do on the go when the dude driving behind you has a big truck and small dickhead behind you..
I'm sorry that happened to you. Being blinded by all mirrors is impressive, but I can imagine the kind of truck that does so.
You might want to check if your side mirrors aren't set wrong. They should be angled down a little, no sense in looking at the sky through them. This helps to prevent you from being blinded through the side mirrors. For the main rear view mirror there should be this little toggle on the bottom. With this toggle you can quickly flip the mirror down to a second shaded mirror. This way you can still use the mirror, but not get blinded by it. I don't know if all cars have this, but my old cheap car in the 80s had it, so I think it's pretty standard. My current car, and presumably a lot of modern cars, has a auto darkening feature. When there is a chance of being blinded, it auto darkens uniformly, just like a welding shield. This helps a lot.
My advice if you get annoyed by other people whilst driving, is to stay calm and focus on yourself and your own driving. Be sure you drive safe, look out for other people in the road you might have missed due to being distracted by other assholes. Do everything you can to not let it get to you and make the roads safer for everyone.
I hear you all the way around there, and yes I had my mirrors set correctly, and am aware of the rear view flipper shader thing. But what do when the douchebag behind you is in a huge truck, right on your ass and stays right on your ass with full on bright lights?
The dude was blinding me so badly from behind that I wouldn't have even been able to see a pedestrian or much of any surprise creature or object in front of me.
Honestly, in hindsight, maybe I could have turned on my emergency flashers and pulled over as if my vehicle had just broke down or something, but seriously I think that dude was getting his rocks off by deliberately blinding me. ☹️
If they diffused those headlights instead of tuning them for maximum possible forward brightness they might actually be more useful but lose out to competitors on the all important lumen ratings.
Something like that yeah. It's almost like the engineers that design headlights like that have never driven at all, never drove at night, or never pointed a laser at their eyes..
Apply sandpaper to their headlights, got it.