Headlight's too bright

Older jeeps never were an issue though.

It's the HIDs that have become popular in newer vehicles. They needs to be banned realistically or limited in power.

I disagree. My eye sight is spot on the car is kept clean and there's vehicles out there within the last 4 years that their headlights are an actual disgrace.

I think this needs to be looked at at EU level. You can't have a state of play where standards that were developed for halogen beams of the 80s and 90s where the light had a short distance throw. Now apply to units that can project 90 percent of their brightness over 1km. It's bizarre

Even xenons of the 00s didn't have this problem. Might be all gravy for the driver of the vehicle thinking their lights are the best thing since sliced bread but it's extremely bad for other road users. Especially noticed this on M11. Skoda SUVs and Hyundais being stand out.

I've noticed on my own motor (2023 Octavia) that the headlights are pitched way too high on the default setting. I was regularly being flashed by oncoming traffic.

It was great insofar as I could see clearly half a mile ahead of me at night even without full beams on - way beyond most other cars I've driven - but good luck to anyone coming towards me.

From looking around I notice a lot of other recent VAG cars are completely blinding when driving towards them, and oddly it's the saloons that seem to be worse than the crossovers or SUV bodied cars.

I've adjusted the headlight control on mine down to 2 and no more flashing from oncomers, although the dipped headlights now only light about as far ahead as any previous cars I've driven. Frankly I'd rather have the person coming towards me able to see me and the road clearly at all times than me be able to see half a mile down an empty road in the dark.

I think a lot of people put too much faith in the auto dips which can be slow to react to oncoming vehicles.

said it before on another thread,some of these newer lights are like looking into the sun,way too much glare/brightness off them and while im simply delighted that the blind-er can see 39.6 miles down the road, me , being the blind-ee nearly have to stop the car until i can see again....and no my windscreen is spotless,im obsessive about it and just had my eyes checked last week,perfect and dont wear glasses and drive a mix of city and country roads alot so well used to the difference

Jusw saw above, agree with the lot.The LED lights in new cars are a real problem. It's possibly worse outside the cities on the unlit roads when the glare is more noticeable.

I find new suvs such as kia/hyundai/Nissan the worst. Also Teslas are super bright.

They have no loss of lumens on the outer edge of the bulbs as xenon and halogen do. So the cutoff is very severe. I have xenon on my car and if a new car with LED's is behind, they are almost lighting the road for me.

What can be done?

I wonder though, given that LEDs are seemingly here to stay, what CAN be done about it?

Could the shutters that define the beam edges somehow be constructed so that the light intensity fades away instead of dropping off suddenly? Maybe make them out of a transparent plastic instead of metal, and apply a black coating that blends away towards the edges?

Also regulations limiting both intensity and colour temperature would help.

Which might explain the flash effect I see regularly on these cars - on anything less than a perfectly flat road where I'm directly in front, the guy behind me looks like he's flashing his lights at me. It was much much worse when I owned a Starlet a few years back - the low position of those small cars means the SUV lights are level with your eye line.

I thought SI189 specified that headlights be "incapable of dazzling a person who is on the same horizontal plane as the vehicle at a greater distance than 25 feet from the lamp".

Having said that, I've seen cars doing it right where the light is dispersed somehow to reduce the edges, I've just never taken note of the car type.

Also sick of being blinded.

Can the brightness be manually turned down and the lights controlled manually?

If so i'm sure some rules could be brought in to curb it.

I'm sure someone will come along into the thread here to blame Irish roads shortly but I'm of the opinion if the driver can control these its on them(assuming they can).

I wonder if cars that have these fancy new matrix headlights do any kind of dimming of the LEDs on the edges of the beam?

I am Billy Bright Beams !!!!

I have 2022 Kia Sorento and I always get flashed when I have my dipped lights on. I can't blame people as obviously they think my full lights are on which is annoying.

I'm not sure if I can do anything about it. I know it's really annoying and dangerous when you are dazzled by bright lights. There should be some legislation that limits the brightness of lights on new cars.

I have LEDs and I noticed that I get flashed on frosty mornings as the frost causes the light to refract and it seems to annoy oncoming drivers.

The older halogen headlights would melt the frost on the lights but that doesn't happen with LEDS as they don't generate enough heat.

As a motorcycle rider I've given in riding the bike at night at all now tbh due to this issue. When you see some of the mickey mouse stuff the NCT will fail you for (no number plate light as an example) and yet these things are allowed pass NCT's with blinding lights it makes a farce of the whole safety first RSA stuff.

Speaking of motorcycles, they are on top of the list of blinders too! Most of them have shaky lights that blind you right in the eyes.

Just passed a 2023 range rover. Lights were unreal in terms of there throw ahead on the road for visibility.

And absolutely zero dazzle I'm rear view or oncoming. How can they get it so well and others can't.

Since 2019, 7.6% of all vehicles fail the NCT for "Light Test"

I strongly suspect there is some issue with thee data, given they've added "Tesla Other", but 22% of Tesla fail for "Light Test".

Jesus thats incredibly **** stats for vehicles that are 4 to 5 years old. Really poor. Be interesting to know the details of the fail type and does it flow into other marques with similar type lighting systems.

True but they are also a problem. The bulk of manufacturers aren't taking into account adjusting default settings to take account of LED distance throw. The settings appear to be in most case set to how a typical halogen distance throw disappates . So they are therefore angled too high .

Dunno, I imagine some (most?) do because their systems aren't offered with anything other than LEDs so wouldn't have been designed or configured with halogen as a base.

Led Matrix lights that are on Audi ect are illegal in USA and rightfully so .only yesterday I blinded by audi with those type of headlights

Probably right. just see video about be illegal it few months back .But my point still stand there blinding and I'm on road very day truck driver ect and on way home I don't care what anyone say there blinding for distance but went I got closer you could see headlights adjusting so it wasn't as blinding but as was almost passing car it was too late in my eyes

I've a one year old car with adaptive led lights....

To be honest I'm not a big fan... Even when driving around on my dipped beams i keep getting flashed by other drivers...

It's very frustrating and there are no options to lower the beam on the car like cars of old.

I'm going to raise it with the dealer at the next opportunity to see if there is anything can be done

The problem is the roads. Our roads aren't flat. They're constantly bumping up and down, dips, bumps, off camber etc. I drive unlit backroads to work and if I look at the top of my headlight beam I can see it's constantly moving up and down compared to the road in the distance.

LEDs are self leveling but can't keep up with the constant movement of the car. Very few LED headlights dazzle me, it's usually a very brief glare while the lights tilt down. I have more issues with those driving with fog lights, bulbs pointing up/towards oncoming traffic or those who modified fog lights into their headlights. LEDs are the least offensive on my commute. Although there is one Tesla SUV that is blinding, which probably isn't correctly aligned from the factory.

The only times I've been flashed are when my car is going over a bridge or bump in the road and the oncoming traffic are at a lower elevation.

Motorbikes are horrendous for being blinding, their beams are too high and often the headlights aren't secured and constantly shaky.

according to many experts, the problem with headlights is not that they’re too bright – it’s that they’re not bright enough.

😟

My other half has a Corolla with the optional automatic dipping function.

I only tried it once and it was far slower to react than I would have done manually.

A pointless feature. It really isn't hard to dip your lights.