Ministers urged to clamp down on bright LED headlights, as drivers left ‘blinded’ by glare

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/car-headlights-too-bright-crackdown/

by SlySquire

33 comments

  1. I don’t understand how we’ve had the technology for restricting light flow on torches but somehow car companies just went for the floodlights and all called it a day.

  2. Headlights are already heavily regulated, there are dozens of pages in the regs designers and manufacturers have to work to get headlights type approved.
    There are studies going back to the 60s about lights and it’s all about colour temperature not the brightness.

  3. Yet Street lamps seem to have gone backwards. You don’t get the light pollution nearly as much, and I assume new LEDs are saving money on running costs too (bet we never see that) yet they light up barely anything on the street.

  4. It needs to be sorted. Driving at night is just a game of hoping you make it out alive

  5. Back in the 1970s when halogen bulbs replaced plain tungsten bulbs the power was reduced from 100W to 65W. We should consider something similar for LED lights.

    Also, apparently the way the lumen output is assessed causes the brightness wars, only the light at a specific wavelength is measured, and advances in LED tech means that other wavelengths can be crammed in, keeping the lumens in spec at the measured wavelength but increasing the overall brightness.

  6. I wonder if the issue is spreading as we see more and more cars switch to LEDs and of course, these cars won’t be MOT’d for three years meaning it’s very easy for poorly configured beams to be missed.

    I also suspect some people are like moths and lack the self discipline not stare at brighter lights. I tend to feel the effect of LEDs on the rare occasion I catch myself looking at them when I should be focusing on my lane… :/

  7. A crackdown would be welcomed.

    It’s not pleasant feeling like I’ve been interrogated by the sun every time I drive at night.

    My retinas thank you in advance.

  8. It’s always fun to have a car with collapsing suns for headlights come up behind you at night on the motorway. Are you 50m behind me or 500? Can I go left or right before you overtake me or are you overtaking me already? It’s the best game of Russian roulette ever.

  9. They should be more yellow. Thanks to our Sun, we are predetermined to cope with yellowish glare, but not with the cold white one…

  10. Next, high intensity brake lights. Sitting at traffic lights, especially in the dark when it’s raining and everyone is standing on their brake pedal (yes I know lots of cars don’t have handbrakes anymore) and the whole world is bright red!

    I have contemplated putting my sunglasses on at traffic lights.

  11. Had to pull over the other day because of ford ranger lights blinding the fuck out of me in my mirrors. Maybe it was an issue with weight as they had a trailer on, but it was awful. Can’t stand these newer lights. I have the correct glasses for driving with the anti glare coating etc still doesn’t seem to help much.
    This is my most boomer opinion apparently haha!

  12. Sick of this. Sick of driving on the motorway with lights blinding me from behind, regardless of adjusting the mirror. It’s like everyone is on full beam and it sucks.

  13. It’s definitely gotten a lot worse. A few times I’ve had to pull over because I’ve been temporarily blinded by an oncoming SUV. I don’t know if it’s that more people are driving bigger cars, so the lights are angled worse or that lights on new cars are too bright but either way it needs sorting.

  14. Not just headlights. I had someone’s brake light leave a mark on my vision for a a good moment after being stuck behind them for just a minute or so.

  15. So, I have a stock unmodified 2016 Hyundai suv, top spec with extremely bright lights. It has 2 fundamental design problems with the headlights.

    1) There is no manual adjustment in the cabin for beam height. The system is connected to the suspension and automatically raises and lowers according to the road conditions, but it’s slow to change between states and it’s rubbish. Downhill is usually ok, but as soon as it goes uphill it’s ramps the beam up ridiculously. I would adjust my beam lower as i too frequently see the main beam bouncing into the rear view mirror zone of the car in front but I can’t. There is no button or method.

    2) The ambient light from my headlights is very bright. What I mean by that, is the light lights up a lot of the road that isn’t in the direct path of the beam but around the periphery. So even when the beam isn’t in the rear view mirror, the glare still makes the lights extremely bright to other road users in the rear view mirror.

    Neither issue is an MOT fail or even noticeable in any kind of vehicle test. Like I have no control of the automatic raising and lowering of the headlights and it wouldn’t ever be caught in a static vehicle MOT anyway.

    Do you see? I am aware of these problems and there is literally nothing I can do about it. I have no user controls to adjust and nothing is technically wrong with the car.

    And if I’m struggling with this issue average Joe is driving around completely ignorant.

  16. While we’re at it, can people not flash to thank you at night any more. You’re welcome for me waiting for you, I need to wait a bit longer now to be able to fucking well see again.

  17. Addressing this problem could be so expensive and nobody wants the bill.

    The drivers pay for new lights when there is nothing “wrong” with them, still working?

    The car companies pay for free replacements of customers lights?

    The government who mandates the new rules about brightness pays since they made the change to law?

    Really hope all higher ups have a conversation and come to reasonable compromises that aren’t dumping the entire problem on each other.

  18. put a mirror right infront of you on the dash to let them know how it feels

  19. The worst is that my car is auto leveling only. There are no manual controls. I could see how high the beam was on my new car and spent ages looking for the manual controls to change it but it turns out there are none. 

  20. Seems like there’s overwhelming support here but I’ll go the other way.

    The article suggests there is no statistical correlation here, and actually collisions where dazzling was a factor is trending down. There’s also the flip side where brighter lights help a lot when driving on the most dangerous and treacherous roads (I.e. Rural roads at night).

    This just feels like people moaning about it, and the data doesn’t appear to support taking any action. Of course if that changes we should look at it.

  21. Until there is a concerted effort by regulators and manufacturers to address the situation, as a wearer of glasses I can recommend yellow polarised filters which clip on the frame. Game changer. Reduces the problem significantly for me. Just cheap ones I picked up on Amazon

  22. They should be warm light by law

    headlamps, torches and lanterns have been for centuries and there wasn’t this issue, headlights and street lights were the same until very recently

    Warm light good(yellowish, firelight)

    Cool light very bad(white/blue, bright sunlight)

  23. I have to wear prescription anti glare glasses for driving at night now because of this problem. Multiple times in one trip I loose the road completely because some idiot with either high beams comes up behind/ in front of me blinding me completely Or has retina blasting headlights that make it impossible to see anything. it’s so bad I can’t even see where their car is anymore I just have to slow down and hope I’m not too close to them when passing. Something badly needs to be done about it.

  24. Anyone noticed that road signs are now seemingly too reflective? I’m getting dazzled by my own car lights hitting them.

  25. I have found a bigger issue is that some drivers never dip their lights at all

    The LED light issue is largely one, at least in my opinion, of skill, if drivers weren’t so ruddy lazy and dipped their lights as they should, it wouldn’t be an issue

  26. I sing in a choir with a lot of older people. Unfortunately, rehearsals in the evening often requires night driving in the winter months, and many of them simply don’t show up because they’re not comfortable driving at night – I asked one lady recently (I know she is a reasonable driver even well into her 70s) and she said the headlights from other cars are “torture”. It’s sad because this is their social activity and keeps them in good mental condition. I’m much younger and don’t wear glasses, so if it’s bad enough for me, I can understand why it would be debilitating for someone older.

  27. Some top tips.

    1. It isnt illegal to have highly reflective tape anywhere **inside** your own vehicle. Such as on the back of your backseat headrests and the front of your sun visor as arbitrary examples.

    2. If you angle your wing mirrors outwards to the point you cant see the side of your own car, they will reflect headlights back at the driver behind you, and you’ll see them drop back pretty quickly when they keep getting sudden flashes of their own lights back at them every time it lines up right.

  28. Wont happen, we share international standards. No-one is rewriting them just for us, or having specific UK lightsets.

  29. Can we also ban those awful LED billboards? They’re an absolute hazard at night as well, ridiculously bright, and often very poorly positioned. Don’t advertisers get to bombard us enough already?

  30. It’s the blue light in the LED headlamps that cause most of the problem. (‘White’ LED’s are actually blue, with a phosphor that absorbs much of the blue, and re-emits it as other colours).

    So, I wear yellow glasses, which block all the blue light. (Cheap yellow safety glasses, cost a few quid, rated to block 1 MW of blue laser!). That turns the ‘too bright’ headlamps from dazzling (with after images) to just ‘annoying’, and can see fine after they pass.

    Does take a smidge of getting used to – it throws colours off a tad; and technically makes everything a bit dimmer, so might not work for everyone. Since I started wearing them for night driving, never had a problem.

  31. James

    Yeah?

    That’s not a headlight that’s a collapsed sun isn’t it?

  32. How about we take them out of buildings that don’t need them, like schools, non surgical or treatment rooms in hospitals, supermarkets who can turn down the brightness of their lights as they do it for an hour a week for people with ADHD.

    I work with people on the spectrum and I am on it myself, super bright LED lights cause migraines for millions of people and yet we have them all around us.

  33. People with these headlights must know how bad they are? You do not need headlights that could cut through sheet metal or fucking shoot down satellites.

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