Are people driving with their high beams on now?

Maybe in rural areas. I frankly forgot my car has high beams.

I think it is just that so many people have SUVs nowadays and are higher off the ground so it seems like you are seeing more lights in your eyes.

Thought it was just me...it's insane.

I’ve noticed the same, OP.

A large portion of new cars have "automatic high beams" so they turn on an off themselves. I think this technology has a ways to go.

Modern head lamps are much, much brighter and whiter than head lamps have been in the past. And, yes, they are blinding to oncoming traffic.

Standard headlights on most newer model cars these days are LEDs, which are much brighter than the old halogen lights. They cast a wider pattern too.

I too have noticed this. I was driving down a side street and this car had their brights on, it was at a stop sign and as I started in to the intersection, I got nearly half way through before realizing a woman and her dog were crossing it. It freaked me out that I could get potentially not see someone due to being blinded by brights. I now avoid side streets as the busier streets have better lighting and more people are apt to use normal lights.

Around here, it often seems that more drivers keep their high beams on all the time than don't; plus, they're the new whiter than white ones. Lots of them also have fog lights that are almost like a second set of high beams, and so many keep those on all the time also.

Whatever you do, don’t flash your high beams at an oncoming car, or they will follow you home & kill you as part of a gang initiation!

OH MY GOD —THANK YOU

What about the double rows of blinding lights?? How is this legal?

What's worse, they're all LED and their white intensity is blinding -- not only to other motorists, by pedestrians and bicyclers. Why there hasn't been any legislation brought in to limit LED intensity in vehicles bewilders me. I particulary hate the new "L" shaped half-lights for daylight use on car headlights: coming at you they look like devil's eyes. And they are the devil. The very devil.

Why don't they test this shit before selling it? Do they WANT people to have more accidents or road rage fights?

I'm in Massachusetts. In the evenings it seems that everyone has their high beams on,even in urban areas.

Here's the problem that most of you are experiencing. Old eyes respond more slowly to changes in light. You really are getting more light in your eyes than you used to. You're old.

My Chevy Trax has automatic headlights. Soon as it gets dark they turn on.

It's a way for the lizard people to summon each other OP

[quote]Advances in lighting technology have improved nighttime driving for many, but the introduction of brighter lights that also sit higher on S.U.V.s and pickups has given rise to widespread criticism that headlights have become overpoweringly intense.

[...]

[quote]The report said 11 percent of those who rated oncoming glare as disturbing were older than 65, and 45 percent were between 35 and 54 years old. Drivers 18 to 24 years old complained the most about glare from vehicles behind them.

[...]

[quote]Lights have gotten smaller over time, and “any given intensity appears brighter if it’s emitted by a smaller apparent surface versus a larger one,” said Daniel Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News, a technical journal that covers the automotive lighting industry.

[quote]“Tall pickups and S.U.V.s and short, small cars are simultaneously popular,” he added. “The eyes in the low car are going to get zapped hard by the lamps mounted up high on the S.U.V. or truck every time.” (Almost half of the 280 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States are S.U.V.s or pickup trucks.)

[quote]LED and high-intensity discharge headlights can appear more blue in their output spectrum than halogens, and they often provoke “significantly stronger discomfort reactions” than warm white or yellowish lights, Mr. Stern said.

[quote]“Blue light is difficult for the human visual system to process because blue wavelengths tend to focus just ahead of the retina rather than on it,” he said.

[...]

[quote]“Brightness” is not a term generally recognized by scientists and researchers, who refer instead to lumens, or the output of a light. Halogen lights put out 1,000 to 1,500 lumens, while high-intensity discharge lights and LEDs can measure 3,000 to 4,000 lumens.

[quote]“It’s the concentration we need to pay attention to,” said M. Nisa Khan, president of IEM LED Lighting Technologies, a research and engineering company based in Red Bank, N.J.

[quote]“What falls on your eyeball is what matters,” she said. “The lumen density, when it really aggregates and goes through the roof, that’s when our eyes will start to complain.”

Yes, I'm seeing more and more people driving with their high beams on. At the other extreme, I'm also seeing more people who forget to turn on their headlights while driving at night.

Jeez people…they are not driving with high beams on. They’re xenon lights which are intense white or bluish lights. Almost all new cars have them now so you need to adapt. Most cars have adaptive lights now as well.

R9. I'm so stoned that I keep reading your post and the way its signed and can't stop laughing :)

[quote]Almost all new cars have them now so you need to adapt.

like hell I do r20. They are annoying.

My car turns high beams on automatically if it's super dark and turns them off when a car comes near me.

I sent a note to NHTSA. They responded by saying they are aware of the blinding due to LED though they noted that they are of the same brightness as existing non-LED headlights. Their note said they are studying the effects and they are looking at how the eye perceives the LED lights differently. Typical bureaucracy. They will only take action if Congress bans such lights and imposes a fine on people driving with high beams on them.

The problem is elderly people who don’t belong behind the wheel. They leave their high-beams on 24/7 because they’re blind as bats and think the brights will help them see better.

Thank you, R24. I’ve been having to work the graveyard shift for the first time in years and night driving is a horror show. I’m still under 40, but my eyes can’t process how bright some of these highlights are. And yes, some dim when your drive directly past them…about twenty feet away. But there are so many time where I have been tailed by an SUV with these harsh lights and I’ve had to slow down so I could take bigger precautions since I couldn’t see.

This was a stupid idea.

Yes, the LED and Xenon HID lights mounted high on trucks and SUVs are blinding. It is a load of bs that they are the same brightness as halogens. It is like the difference between cool light bulbs vs warm light bulbs. Warm lights are easier on the eyes.

Thank you for this. I thought it was just me and I was going blind. I only realized they weren't all on bright when I flashed a car the other night and they flashed back the *actual* brights which illuminated the sky like a meteor. It's nuts.

They need to be banned. It will cause accidents. Call your congressman. Of course congress doesnt give a rats ass about us , so there we go.