> Out in the country, you still don't really need brighter headlights. Other cars' headlights will always be visible and they have reflectors, so it's not as if you'll struggle to spot other cars. The road lines are actually reflective, so it's not as if you'll struggle to see the road lines. And generally speaking out in the country, there won't be pedestrian foot traffic, so it's not as if you need the bright lights for them.

I don't know about the UK, but out here in France, this is wrong on most counts. Many country roads have no lines, reflective or otherwise. There will be pedestrians walking around. Also, roads are not always in tip-top shape nor clean, so you need light to be able to see.

However, I do agree that maybe extremely bright lights mounted high are a nuisance.

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bunderbunder 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road.

But I find that bright white headlights actually make that second problem worse. The bright white light means your eyes don't adjust as well to the dark, so you can really only see straight ahead. So it's much harder to spot deer standing in the relative gloom along the side of the road than it is with older halogen headlights.

	▲	vladvasiliu 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're right, and it's actually even worse when the road has very reflective white lines. Basically, everything outside of the road is invisible. However, in France, they somehow haven't figured how to not have their lines disappear when it rains ever so slightly. I think that there's some kind of middle ground. Older cars used to have pretty dim lights. When my dad got a Citroën C5 with Xenon lights many years ago, it was a game changer. That car and one almost identical one (Peugeot 407) were fairly popular around these parts when they came out, and I don't remember ever having issues with their headlights blinding me. But something started to shift some 5 years ago: more and more cars started having blinding lights. Combined with taller and taller cars, it started being a pain. I also think that people pay less attention to the state of their cars. Some (like that C5) have auto-levelling lights, and the Xenons seem to last forever (never had to touch them in almost 20 years of service). However, I have the impression that there are more and more cars with headlights which are simply out of whack. I base that judgement on the fact that most of the time, only one of the headlights will blind me, while the other seems fine. And I'm mostly talking "basic" cars, not some high-end mercedes with matrix lights or whatever they're called which may be misdetecting something.
	▲	masklinn 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Same for rural parts of North America, and you also have to worry about animals on the road. You very much have to worry about that in europe as well in the conditions GP talks about (source: hit a deer in the dark not two weeks back).

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1718627440 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is also true for Germany, but your ability to see in the dark decreases at some point with increasing brightness, since you don't allow your eyes to get used to the darkness.

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haspok 5 hours ago | parent [-]

But you are not supposed to see in the dark while driving! If you were, we would all be driving by moonlight...

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1718627440 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Adapting to the darkness is not a binary thing. You are supposed to see beside the road by light reflected from your beams. Otherwise you would only see animals when they come into your beam, which is generally too late, you want to see them when they are to your side.

When the lights are essentially so bright that I need sunglasses at night, so my eyes don't hurt, the additional brightness definitely makes me see less, not more.

	▲	haspok 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You are supposed to see beside the road by light reflected from your beams. I don't think so. If you are driving at normal speed (100 kmh in most of Europe) on an unlit country road, with a low beam, maybe with oncoming traffic, you have 0 (zero) chance of spotting a deer by the road jumping out from the dark in front of you. Zero. Nada. Null. LED or halogen lights, doesn't matter. But regardless, I still remember driving with a halogen low-beam, it wasn't any better in that regard than with LED. At least with the LED I can see the road properly now, unlike with the halogen.

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Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But for the truly dark areas, you can turn on your high beams - which you aren't allowed to have on when there's oncoming traffic. Smart / adaptive lighting is another option, lower / yellower light in well lit spaces.

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vladvasiliu 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Smart / adaptive lighting is another option

These may actually be part of the problem. My dad's 2022 Toyota has "smart" high-beams. That means that when it detects a car in front, it'll switch off the high-beams (as opposed to adapt their pattern).

This is supposed to work with cars going both ways. In my experience, it will detect cars going the same way about half the time, and incoming cars about 3/4 of the time.

Now, since it's not completely broken, I suspect many people who only pay the minimum attention to their driving, and the rest to their phone, will simply leave the high-beams on and figure the car will deal with traffic. So, when the car fails to detect the oncoming car, its pretty bright lights will completely blind the driver.

	▲	sokoloff 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My 2020 Lexus has the same system. I’m amazed at how well it works for same-direction traffic and how terrible it is for opposite direction traffic (which seems like it should be a vastly easier problem to solve). I wish it was usable, but I think it’s not.

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abyssin 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All roads in France except very small ones have white reflective lines.