• zener_diode@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    Ok, so this sent me down a brief rabbit hole on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp), from which I learned that the US is the only industrialzed country who have a different standard for headlights.

    The US SAE standard allows for much more glare on low-beams than the ESE standard used in other countries. That explains why I see so many complaints online over low-beam headlight glare, something I have only really found to be a little annoying over here in Europe. (Also, combine the “worse” standard with significantly larger cars to get even worse glare, I guess.)

    But what I was actually looking in the article (didn’t know what it was called) was Glare-free high-beam, which is a system that dynamically shades and lights parts of the high-beams to provide as much light as possible without lighting up other cars.

    From experience using it, I’m kinda torn. On the one hand, it does work, is really cool, and makes driving at night quite a bit easier and safer. On the other hand, it’s not perfect, and sometimes (not often, but still) it takes a bit to recognize another car or fails to recognize it completely. And when that happens, I am effectively blinding that other driver with my high-beams, which is bad.

    So far, especially on the Autobahn, it works well enough that I tend to use it, because being able to see nearly everything brightly at night is so much safer for me, and the few times it fails I can manually intervene.

    • Venat0r@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It’s definitely a problem with European and Japanese cars too… But I guess it might be even worse in the USA 😅

  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Ford F9500 Super Ultra Duty Orphan-Muncher Limited Edition lifted pickup truck with flashbang headlights shining straight into your mirrors.