- cross-posted to:
- australia@aussie.zone
- cross-posted to:
- australia@aussie.zone
The Queensland town of Winton has been certified as an International Dark Sky Community.
The town has committed to managing its light pollution and installed warm bulbs in its streetlights.
Winton Shire Council and tourism operators believe the certification will attract stargazers wanting to experience the natural night sky.
I miss when most cars had halogens and all street lights were mostly sodium besides a few mercury lights. Night driving used to be something I actually enjoyed doing and now it’s something I despise…
What crazy is that, due to the US’ outdated laws around headlights, we aren’t allowed to have the best headlight technology. Matrix/Adaptive headlights can turn off just the portion of headlights aiming at other vehicles, meaning the driver gets full brights, and doesn’t blind other drivers. It’s the best of both worlds. It’s super cool tech, but not allowed in the US. Some cars sold here even have the hardware, but have it disabled due to regulations, with the headlights just functioning as normal dumb headlights.
They are allowed now. I’m pretty sure Audi uses them in the us, and Tesla enabled theirs a year or so ago.
While I don’t entirely trust them, a lot of the time it’s pretty clear. You can watch an oncoming car with a dark spot around it, moving with the car
Are they? No way, that’s cool. And yeah, I have seen videos of them in action, it’s pretty neat.
That’s still assuming the detection of oncoming vehicles is good and the window/camera system is cleared and quick enough.
The auto high beams on my in-law’s new Honda doesn’t instill confidence that this will always be the case.
I’m not sure Honda has developed a system like that yet. It’s mostly associated with European vehicles, from what I’ve seen.