Road users say headlight glare is an issue - but experts warn a solution might not be straightforward.
  • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Could’ve sworn Europe and the UK had already approved that automatically point downward in oncoming traffic.

    • PoopBuffet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I once had a van driving behind me that had those autodipping ones. Except one side was broken and was basically a strobe light in my rear-view mirror. Very annoying and distracting.

    • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      They bring up the very valid point of various vehicle heights. Some vehicles are smaller and shorter, others are bigger and taller.

      Let’s consider an analogy, where a larger taller vehicle is an adult, and a smaller shorter vehicle is a child. Now you, as an adult, aim a flashlight forward, but somewhat downward, you’ll still be shining your flashlight right into the eyes of children in front of you.

      Now back to actual vehicles, they also have rear view mirrors, meaning that the driver and occupants of smaller vehicles are getting blinded both from in front and behind.

      If only there was a standard for how high the headlights are off the ground, regardless of vehicle height. Sigh, that ship apparently done sailed though…

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        If only there was a standard for how high the headlights are off the ground, regardless of vehicle height. Sigh, that ship apparently done sailed though…

        Can’t change it for existing vehicles, but can for new ones. The existing ones will eventually age out.

        EDIT: I suppose that it might also be ultimately obsoleted as an issue on the receiving end if either:

        • Everyone winds up using a self-driving car.

        • If we shift to vehicles that don’t have glass windows, like, just rely fully on cameras and displays. We already have vehicles doing things like providing radar HUD warnings and camera displays. We could move all the way to displays. It does make the continued functioning of the camera and display system functioning life-critical, which is not a trivial move to take — if it fails, you’re now fully blind at highway speeds — but it could solve a lot of other issues, like helping older drivers with degraded vision. And for self-driving cars, the computer vision system is already life-critical, so…shrugs it’s a problem that has to be dealt with anyway. If you’re using cameras, then you can post-process the stuff and do whatever you want, merge data from infrared cameras, outline people and vehicles, get the blind spots from the pillars out of the way, whatever. Would also permit for cars to be a lot more secure and have better thermal and sound insulation.

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    How many accidents are caused by glare? And how many more than decades in the past? Pretty sure it’s almost none.