The curse of modern super bright LEDs. Add to that list; super bright red brake lights, and a new trend for animated turning lights / indicators. Looks like something we'd have installed as teenagers after watching Knight Rider. Really distracting.

Some of the towns here also started scattering flashing LEDs over every road sign they can find. Some areas feel like driving through Blackpool Illuminations. The worst offender locally is a roundabout light that flashes blue, which of course you assume to be an emergency vehicle approaching.

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Y_Y 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Add to that rental bikes that have always-on flashing lights. My neurospice is relatively mild, but flashing lights and animations in my field of view really fuck up my ability to focus on other things. I can't be the only one with this issue, but it doesn't seem to garner much sympathy.

I still drive when I have to, but I had to give up watching soccer on tv when they added animated ads to all the pitches. I'm honestly considering some kind of AR filtering at this point.

Also shoutouts to the places in South America (esp. Guayaquil) where people modify cars and buses to have constantly flashing lights, animated screens etc. It's like having a little Times Square in every traffic jam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LOdfcJpvps

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crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

To be fair, the flashing on bicycles is intentional, precisely to make sure you are aware of them, since they're so much smaller and vulnerable, and the light itself is so much smaller than the rear light on a vehicle. It's not just on rentals, it's a standard feature of bicycle rear lights that is there for safety.

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martijnvds 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the Netherlands, bike lights _must not_ flash. The law very explicitly states that they need to be "always on" (in the dark).

The main reason seems to be that it's hard for others to to gauge your speed when your lights are flashing.

	▲	crazygringo 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fascinating. I just looked up a bit of research on it, and it seems there are two contradicting phenomena at play. Flashing helps in seeing cyclists further away and helps with visibility generally -- but it also makes it harder to estimate speed and distance. Apparently, the absolute safest solution is to have two rear lights side-by-side -- one that is always on and one that is always flashing. It doesn't seem like there's clear data on which is safer if you have to pick only one. Different countries/states have chosen differently.

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jandrese an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Blinding and dazzling oncoming traffic in the name of safety is outright stupid.

If you are riding a bike and you're lighting up the heads of oncoming riders or pedestrians you are being dangerous and obnoxious. Never shine a flashlight above someone's shoulders at night if you can help it.

	▲	crazygringo 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What are you talking about? Did you mean to reply to a different comment? Bicycle lights aren't blinding anybody. At least none I've ever seen. They're powered by little batteries usually. The subject at hand was whether they flash or not. Not their brightness.

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

Another problem is LED lights using low-frequency PWM to control brightness. If they're moving in someone's field of view, there's a strobe effect.

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

Those radar speed limit signs that blink at what seems like 50 times a second if you go 36 in a 35 zone are very annoying. To be fair the blink threshold must be configurable, but whoever installed them around here didn't have any common sense and set them all to the speed limit exactly.

	▲	potato3732842 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's one near me that's set to 45 in a 55. Every time I drive past it it gets a little closer to going missing. It's a minimum effort install on a wood post and it's right near the road to enter a new bougie subdivision in an otherwise rural area so it's almost certainly a cheap attempt to make a complainer go away.

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

Not just flashing but also flickering, some headlights that I've seen in the wild look quite aggressive if they are in the periphery; dimming gone wrong? Anything that flickers or flashes will be brighter at peak than if it was a constant light source.

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BobaFloutist 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The thing that really irritates me about the animated turning lights is that they still do it when hazards are on. The one and only possible use case would be differentiating between hazards and turn signals, and they don't do it.

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thewebguyd 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I've seen flashing third brake lights too.

I don't get adding flashing lights to brake and tail lights. It's actually worse, flashing lights make it harder for us to judge distance as now there's no steady queue needed for depth perception. It's why when cycling I've always opted for a solid taillight instead of the flashing ones.

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toast0 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Flashing third brake light (in the US) is usually a dealer profit addon. Personally, I think these violate federal vehicle safety law. I'll add a link to a federal letter that I think agrees with me [1]... But no enforcement means dealers alter the wiring harness to add these on to all their inventory and add a line item on the bill. They'll remove it if you complain, but the wiring harness has been altered.

I'm ok with factory strobing on hard braking, and I think that is permitted generally.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/interpretations/20288ztv

	▲	potato3732842 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They're not altering anything. This isn't a stereo shop in 1990. They're literally just getting paid to plug something in.

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sokoloff 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ve seen a few cars that have strobe-then-solid brake lights from the factory, where the strobe only fires under hard deceleration. That seems like a safety win to me. (Remember it being on a high-spec Mercedes SL, and I’m pretty sure it was stock; looked it up and Mercedes calls it part of “Adaptive Braking”.)

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ethagnawl 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The curse of modern super bright LEDs

I don't understand why people are allowed to drive around with blinding LED light bars which affect other drivers ability to see the road and and _oh so conveniently_ obscure their front license plates.

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mr_toad 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Housings on indicators that reflect so much sunlight you can’t see that they’re on.

	▲	jimnotgym 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Plus some cars have tiny indicators now, or weird led stripes around the brake lights