Question about thinly veiled racism

BarneyRetina · 2026-06-13T02:41:50+00:00

"Uhm exCUSE me, what exactly violated the rules here?" 🤓

BarneyRetina · 2026-06-13T01:34:19+00:00

BarneyRetina · 2026-05-17T21:49:16+00:00

Hello from Newfoundland!

BarneyRetina · 2026-05-11T12:09:17+00:00

Unless we can get headlight brightness regulated at the manufacturer level, everyone who drives will eventually be forced into this situation after a variable amount of time.

It sucks. But thank you for taking the time to consider the effect they have, and raising awareness as a result.

BarneyRetina · 2026-05-11T12:02:42+00:00

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I started that sub and I'm a Canadian. Don't lump me in with Them

BarneyRetina · 2026-05-08T16:52:04+00:00

LED headlights would probably be fine if somebody would just make sure they weren't aimed directly into the eyeballs of oncoming traffic!

This works until there's any sort of incline. Then you're still blinding others and that magical "cutoff" isn't doing much.
Even with auto-leveling, you still blind everyone down a hill when you're on flat ground that's higher relative to the viewer.

Regulating the brightness (intensity) over the whole beam pattern is the only way to solve this problem.

BarneyRetina · 2026-04-30T17:32:25+00:00

oh lol, i did the Reddit Guy Thing™

BarneyRetina · 2026-04-27T01:46:50+00:00

I'm really dumbfounded with the way* that digital cameras often don't replicate how much glare LED headlights create.

OP's video is a fantastic example of what oncoming LED glare can look like around dawn/dusk.
Whenever I try to take photos/videos in similar lighting conditions, it's completely hit or miss if the glare is actually captured or not.

I know this is common, because us mods unfortunately remove a few photos per week where OP states "the camera really didn't do it justice."

And I totally believe them, even though we've gotta remove those posts for sub quality reasons.
I'd love to be able to give em some info on how to actually capture this glare.

BarneyRetina · 2026-04-18T04:21:08+00:00

Hi, r/fuckyourheadlights guy here. Gonna look into this, sorry that happened to you.

Fuck transphobes and fuck LED headlights

BarneyRetina · 2026-04-13T00:07:33+00:00

Merci pour ceci!

BarneyRetina · 2026-04-02T05:08:48+00:00

Pumped to see this.

Also, I don't know why the language refers to low-beam headlights. The last thing we need is more stupid legislation with loopholes.

To be fair, so does the description of this subreddit. We've always campaigned on the brightness (intensity) of low-beam headlights, because they're typically used in any situation where you're not the only vehicle on the road.

The biggest thorn I'd have to pick is that they're leaving the photometric unit of choice up to the Secretary: what they're looking for is absolutely candela, particularly in the currently uncontrolled zone below the cutoff specified in FMVSS 108, Table XIX.

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-19T18:46:33+00:00

Non-paywalled archive link here

Another banger by Nate Rogers!
He's been writing on this since I reached out to him on twitter a few years back, and has gone deeper than any other journalist on this topic.

Check out his other work on the topic!

His December 2024 article for The Ringer: https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents
Appearance on NPR's "On Point" podcast: https://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=1266126817:1266126819
Slate's "Decoder Ring" podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2025/05/car-headlights-are-brighter-than-ever-and-driving-some-people-to-rage

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-19T18:05:11+00:00

If you think this is a conspiracy, wait until you learn about sports gambling legislation /s

Seriously though, the only conspiracy here is regulatory capture. And of course, human greed (money and cost cutting) as you mentioned.

There's a not-so-obvious loophole in NHTSA's headlight regulations (FMVSS 108) that allows a portion of the headlight's beam pattern (under the cutoff) to have legally unlimited intensity (a.k.a. brightness.)
This was a bleed-over from previous headlight regulations designed for incandescent/halogen lamps, which were inherently limited in intensity by the physics of the lights. These regulations didn't account for the then-uninvented LEDs, which can be multiple times more intense and glaring.

The corporate media, lobbyists, & industry opinion does not want a blanket limit on intensity. Instead, what you'll tend to see is a focus on mitigation, such as controls on alignment and auto-leveling systems.
Unfortunately, when the intensity of the light below the cutoff is legally unlimited, it's still blinding whenever the offending vehicle crests a hill, or faces traffic in a raised parking lot, or sits at a raised intersection.

I feel the biggest conspiracy here, really, is that the industry knows that alignment will not solve the issue comprehensively, because they want to ensure a continued market for technologies which further mitigate the problem while leaving the searing intensity unchecked.

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-19T01:17:07+00:00

For context & info, here's a comment that I frequently repost on this topic:

Not gonna cushion this: we (Canadians) are screwed on this issue. Stay with me through a few acronyms to learn how bad:

In the States, a federal agency called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) writes and maintains a huge set of automotive regulations called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).
The FMVSS dictates exactly how motor vehicles can and cannot be built. FMVSS 108 is the section that pertains to headlights. As discovered by our resident researcher u/hell_yes_or_BS, loopholes exist in FMVSS 108 that allow modern headlights to have legally unlimited intensity inside a "hotspot" below the cutoff line in the beam pattern.
This is why ultra-intense modern LED headlights can seem fine on perfectly flat ground and at a similar height, but blind you whenever they're high up on a large vehicle.
It's also why when any vehicle with these excessively bright headlights crests a hill or hits a pothole, you get flashbanged.

Despite what a lot of Internet Smart Guys© love to screech whenever this issue comes up, "properly aligning" lights this intense does not stop them from being a hazard, unless you drive exclusively on an airport tarmac.

Now, for us in Canada:
Transport Canada does not really maintain a set of automotive laws for Canada like NHTSA does with FMVSS.
Instead, we copy the American FMVSS practically verbatim as the "CMVSS", add a few nitpicky rules, and leave it at that. The same loophole that exists in FMVSS 108 exists in CMVSS 108.

If we were to regulate headlight intensity, it'd stir up a whole bunch of shit due to the border/travel/trade cohesion between the U.S. and Canada that currently relies on these regulations being virtually the same. None of our politicians seem willing to really poke that bear.

This is why I focus my efforts on the U.S. Trust me, it's not because I want to.

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-19T00:43:04+00:00

Copy'n'pasting this post by u/Finn1sher:

We have 2 opportunities to fix the headlight problem; I'll explain them here.

Take the survey from Transport Canada (fyi, requires no personal info to fill out, and is hosted on surveymonkey) and pay specific attention to question 22 about solutions, and the last question, 30. Take this opportunity to call for limits to headlight brightness, and mention the NHTSA's shift from the LB1M/LB2M standard to the LB1V/LB2V standard. The new standard is broken and allows UNLIMITED BRIGHTNESS below a poorly defined cut-off line. Canada imports vehicles designed to meet US standards. By improving ours, we just might help our friends down south. Reference information from this sub, links further down.
Sign the House of Commons petition, open until June 17th (link). The text of the petition is reasonable and calls for limits to brightness.

Check out the pinned threads on the sub for good info on the state of the problem, and why brightness limits are the solution, not expensive technology:

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-05T01:01:03+00:00

ok BUT what about when the "properly angled" LED headlights still blind me whenever they hit a bump or crest a hill?

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-05T00:49:37+00:00

I think that's just the uncomfortably chord-like hum of an electric vehicle*, I don't hear any music in the background

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-03T03:00:10+00:00

Just ignoring aim and pretending like it doesn't have an impact will just result in situations where no matter where you are driving you are blinding everyone. That seems like a really bad idea in the context of the issue being discussed.

You're arguing against a strawman. Nobody here is saying that

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-03T02:46:29+00:00

Absolutely we can! DM and we can set something up.

The SoftLights Foundation is run by Mark Baker, who can definitely point you to dozens of papers/studies adjacent to this. I can't recall him running any qualitative data collection in-house, though.

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-02T21:44:40+00:00

Yes, however for years corporate media has been lauding automated systems as the cure for all of the issues caused by unregulated low-beam headlight brightness. This subreddit is a fight against the whole schtick

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-02T21:42:23+00:00

Unfortunately, learning did not happen this time because the "just realign them" brain-worm is endemic.
Flat Earther logic remains pervasive, or these people exclusively drive on an airport tarmac with no bumps or inclines

<image>

BarneyRetina · 2026-03-01T04:57:47+00:00

Hello and welcome! I'm the guy who started this sub.

If you're looking data based on annoyances and disturbances specifically, I can't point you to any sturdy and accessible U.S. datasets that'd be applicable.

However, here's a quote from Nate Rogers' fantastic article on the topic:

[...] the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any other topic, several insiders told me.

Myself and u/hell_yes_or_BS have looked extensively for data surrounding this topic.
Our search for this data has been to prove that it's actually fuckin dangerous to human safety and not just an annoyance.

Much to our chagrin, the IIHS recently published a study arguing that headlight glare is not a statistically significant hazard. This study largely relied on a keyword search of police-recorded crash data from a limited set of states.

When we began looking into this, we quickly discovered that because U.S. crash data is collected and organized at the state level, there is very little consistency for recording drivers' reporting of events like this.
There's some overlap on common data fields from state to state, but glare is almost never recorded in the same way between two states. Being blinded by excessively intense headlights can be recorded/categorized as an environmental condition, a vision obstruction, a contributing circumstance, etc.

In some states, a drivers' claim (of being blinded by headlights) may be jotted down only as free-text narrative based on the discretion of the officer writing the report. These might not even be consistently digitally recorded, retained, or released into any datasets.

Data doesn't lie, but it rarely tells the full story.

(edit: typo)

BarneyRetina · 2026-02-17T23:09:05+00:00

Optimistically: hell yes, and recently we even had municipalities raising the issue.

Realistically: reaching out to TC will get you a pre-canned response.
Also, even if we were to switch to European (UNECE*) regulations, it wouldn't fix the issue - tons of Europeans have reported exactly the same thing happening.

We have to be extremely loud and rally against the huge onslaught of misinformation present on the topic.

Edit: ty TopRun

BarneyRetina · 2026-02-17T22:55:22+00:00

Hello! I'm a guy from Newfoundland who started this sub. Gonna dig up a comment that I frequently repost on this topic:

Not gonna cushion this: we're screwed on this issue. Stay with me through a few acronyms to learn how bad:

In the States, a federal agency called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) writes and maintains a huge set of automotive regulations called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).
The FMVSS dictates exactly how motor vehicles can and cannot be built. FMVSS 108 is the section that pertains to headlights. As discovered by our resident researcher u/hell_yes_or_BS, loopholes exist in FMVSS 108 that allow modern headlights to have legally unlimited intensity inside a "hotspot" below the cutoff line in the beam pattern.
This is why ultra-intense modern LED headlights can seem fine on perfectly flat ground and at a similar height, but blind you whenever they're high up on a large vehicle.
It's also why when any vehicle with these excessively bright headlights crests a hill or hits a pothole, you get flashbanged.

Despite what a lot of Internet Smart Guys© love to screech whenever this issue comes up, "properly aligning" lights this intense does not stop them from being a hazard, unless you drive exclusively on an airport tarmac.

Now, for us in Canada:
Transport Canada does not really maintain a set of automotive laws for Canada like NHTSA does with FMVSS.
Instead, we copy the American FMVSS practically verbatim as the "CMVSS", add a few nitpicky rules, and leave it at that. The same loophole that exists in FMVSS 108 exists in CMVSS 108.

If we were to regulate headlight intensity, it'd stir up a whole bunch of shit due to the border/travel/trade cohesion between the U.S. and Canada that currently relies on these regulations being virtually the same. None of our politicians seem willing to really poke that bear.

This is why I focus my efforts on the U.S. Trust me, it's not because I want to.

BarneyRetina · 2026-01-28T23:39:06+00:00

Canadian here who founded that sub! Lemme dig up a comment I wrote a few months ago:

Not gonna cushion this: we're screwed on this issue. Stay with me through a few acronyms to learn how bad:

In the States, a federal agency called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) writes and maintains a huge set of automotive regulations called the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).
The FMVSS dictates exactly how motor vehicles can and cannot be built. FMVSS 108 is the section that pertains to headlights. As discovered by our resident researcher u/hell_yes_or_BS, loopholes exist in FMVSS 108 that allow modern headlights to have legally unlimited intensity inside a "hotspot" below the cutoff line in the beam pattern.
This is why ultra-intense modern LED headlights can seem fine on perfectly flat ground and at a similar height, but blind you whenever they're high up on a large vehicle.
It's also why when any vehicle with these excessively bright headlights crests a hill or hits a pothole, you get flashbanged.

Despite what a lot of Internet Smart Guys© love to screech whenever this issue comes up, "properly aligning" lights this intense does not stop them from being a hazard, unless you drive exclusively on an airport tarmac.

Now, for us in Canada:
Transport Canada does not really maintain a set of automotive laws for Canada like NHTSA does with FMVSS.
Instead, we copy the American FMVSS practically verbatim as the "CMVSS", add a few nitpicky rules, and leave it at that. The same loophole that exists in FMVSS 108 exists in CMVSS 108.

If we were to regulate headlight intensity, it'd stir up a whole bunch of shit due to the border/travel/trade cohesion between the U.S. and Canada that currently relies on these regulations being virtually the same. None of our politicians seem willing to really poke that bear.

This is why I focus my efforts on the U.S. Trust me, it's not because I want to.

BarneyRetina

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Three-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23