Despite US dominance in so many different areas of technology, we’re sadly somewhat of a backwater when it comes to car headlamps. It’s been this way for many decades, a result of restrictive federal vehicle regulations that get updated rarely. The latest lights to try to work their way through red tape and onto the road are active-matrix LED lamps, which can shape their beams to avoid blinding oncoming drivers.
From the 1960s, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards allowed for only sealed high- and low-beam headlamps, and as a result, automakers like Mercedes-Benz would sell cars with less capable lighting in North America than it offered to European customers.
A decade ago, this was still the case. In 2014, Audi tried unsuccessfully to bring its new laser high-beam technology to US roads. Developed in the racing crucible that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the laser lights illuminate much farther down the road than the high beams of the time, but in this case, the lighting tech had to satisfy both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, which has regulatory oversight for any laser products.
The good news is that by 2019, laser high beams were finally an available option on US roads, albeit once the power got turned down to reduce their range.
NHTSA’s opposition to advanced lighting tech is not entirely misplaced. Obviously, being able to see far down the road at night is a good thing for a driver. On the other hand, being dazzled or blinded by the bright headlights of an approaching driver is categorically not a good thing. Nor is losing your night vision to the glare of a car (it’s always a pickup) behind you with too-bright lights that fill your mirrors.
This is where active-matrix LED high beams come in, which use clusters of controllable LED pixels. Think of it like a more advanced version of the “auto high beam” function found on many newer cars, which uses a car’s forward-looking sensors to know when to dim the lights and when to leave the high beams on.
Here, sensor data is used much more granularly. Instead of turning off the entire high beam, the car only turns off individual pixels, so the roadway is still illuminated, but a car a few hundred feet up the road won’t be.
Rather than design entirely new headlight clusters for the US, most OEMs’ solution was to offer the hardware here but disable the beam-shaping function—easy to do when it’s just software. But in 2022, NHTSA relented—nine years after Toyota first asked the regulator to reconsider its stance.
Your low beams were fine 20 years ago. Don’t create this expectation in drivers that they have to turn night into day. That only adds to the problem of asshole drivers prioritizing their ability to see over other people’s ability to see. Matrix headlights are unnecessary and create orders of magnitude more light pollution
Blinding headlights are due to poorly aligned low beams, too bright LED headlights, bigger cars with their headlights mounted higher and higher. So the solutions are: low beam alignment that can’t be made to blind you by the driver, regulation on luminosity and color spectrum of lights, stop financial incentives to make vehicles large, heavier, deadlier.
I bike at night often. Very few turn off their blinders for me. It’s so bad that I have to come to a full stop until the car passes. If you have ever turned off your blinders for bikers at night: Thank you, seriously. We appreciate it more than you know.
And to all the cyclists who use a bright led lamp on their handlebar, remember to also point them down, not straight ahead. I’ve been blinded as a pedestrian and a driver by cyclists who don’t position their lights correctly.
- Install bringht LED lights which make your eyes audibly scream on your bike.
- Switch it on whenever such an idiot comes towards you.
- Avoid their sweering motion of sudden blindness when they loose control over their 4-Ton Monster truck.
- …
- Profit
Alternatively, use a welding mask when cycling at night and leave the light switched on. Avoid planes which try to land on you.
/s … just in case
The light I use on my bike is on that I attach to the handle bar for each use, so it’s not super duper fixed - just meaning I can adjust it on the fly if I need to.
I 100% angle it up and point it right back at cats driving with their high beams on. Almost every time they turn theirs off and I lower my light back down.
I suspect a lot of them now are the automatic high beams that cars absolutely should not have.
That’s the reason I think matrix lights should be outlawed. They allow plausible deniability for the driver. “oh sorry, is my matrix broken?” No, it never worked to begin with; bikes and pedestrians are blinded. Drivers on the opposite lane are blinded if there’s a divider between sensor and lamp. You’re illuminating the town like breaking dawn because your matrix doesn’t care about sleep, either!
I just want to see the day where as a pedestrian I don’t feel like my retinas are fried every time a car passes at night or has their brights on during the day (ugh). I know it is wishful thinking because apparently politicians don’t give a shit about pedestrians (or cyclists).
Oncoming drivers? I’m getting blasted by “cars” behind me. Fucking trucks or even lifted trucks with their headlights at my eye level. And it seems like lights are getting brighter as well, or people drive with their high beams on. My rearview mirror is auto dimming, which helps a lot. But since I drive the speed limit these trucks are swerving back and forth behind me, blinding me via the side mirrors.
Man we really really need restrictions on size and weight of cars. It’s getting ridiculous out there.
people actually drive with their high beams on 24/7 even on lighted roads and traffic. I was in an Uber recently and the driver did this. I already drive a relatively high riding SUV and I get blinded by those lifted trucks regularly. people are insane and only care about themselves
A driving factor is the US requirement to place low beams above (and outward) of high beams. Couple that with traditional design goals of “my eyes are up here” faces (see: not the juke), you get normal low beams blinding every car with lows higher than mirrors. Then couple that with the factory aiming the lights to the max heigh with an empty tank and no cargo and sending that off to the gen pop, which is clueless about the ability to aim them.
Ironically, the low/hi arrangement requirement went against the original RX350 headlight design. It caused the creation of one of the greatest dual-beam xenon projectors of all time because the original high beam location was noncompliant. It got used as a big DRL I believe. Those “rx350” projectors were very popular in the retrofit headlight community, a hobbyist group dedicated to improving lighting without blinding others
