To be happy about this...re headlight glare..link attached

[Ihateboris]

Finally something is (hopefully) going to be done about these bloody awful and dangerous headlights. I hate driving at night as these lights literally blind me for a few seconds.

BBC link here:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn971jlpvvro

Try riding a bicycle home and being blinded whilst actively being overtaken.
Absolutely dangerous.
I have had to avert my eyes away from the road with alarming frequency.

Woohooo, I wrote to government a few years ago about this assault on our eyes.
Hopefully something will be done now, go Baroness Hayter 👏

Will be pleased if there is a change in their design/brightness. I struggle with night driving as a result of the glare, especially on busy dual carriage ways - and if it is raining (ie light is refracting through water on the windscreen) it is awful. I’ve now stopped night driving unless I can find a longer/slow route to where I need to go.

Like many posters here I thought it was maybe due to aging but I’m only in my fifties!!

There's something which people need to admit or acknowledge but I doubt many will...

The "four headlights" craze which has been going on for a few years now.

You know the one - where you see headlights, as normal, but then the fog lights on underneath, so that four bulbs are lit up.

I see it every single day at night in the South East and in the North East where I travel to.

It's not only "scene lads" doing it either - I saw a middle aged woman with a Kia Picanto with fog lights on, at 16:30 when it is broad daylight.

And the thing is, before anyone blames "automatic headlights", I have had auto headlights for a decade and they have never, ever turned on fog lights. You have to wilfully do it to get that effect.

Seriously, if anyone is reading this and has this setup on their car? Please stop.

It's not just headlights either. Years ago cars had lights, stop lights and indicators. Now every car has a different set up of lights. Strips where lights move along, whole panels of lights down and across the back of the car, lights in the top and bottom of the back window.

Nothing is standard. What with that and the multicoloured road work barriers, multiple signs and road furniture everywhere it's so confusing. At a red light on an A road last week I counted 11 written signs all within a few metres of the car. How are you meant to take all this in?

To me driving has become like falling into a computer game and the way and speed some people drive make me feel that everyone feels the same way.

If you KNOW your car is a problem and you cannot remedy it yourself you really should take it to a garage

This is good news, yeah
I had given up thinking they were going to do anything about it

I don't actually drive anymore, though - but as a pedestrian, it's awful too!

nobody seems to understand how to dip them. I've never had them as I had an old car. But yeah, nobody understands how to use them so I've been puzzled by the number of posts here saying that will solve the problem.

Ive recently bought a new car and discovered that the blinding (from ours at least) is because the auto dip function just switches off the led lights that are directly hitting the car coming towards me. So the drivers side light creates a dark patch whilst the passenger side just dips a little but still lights up the verge.

Needless to say that I don't use the auto dip function and just use main beam when theres nothing in sight. Chances are half the people doing the blinding don't even realise they're doing it. All this cars thinking for themselves is ridiculous and bloody dangerous, common sense and courtesy has disappeared.

I was driving on the A19 recently and the car behind has such bright headlights they were making a shadow in front of my car. It was very weird and very difficult to gauge distances.

I have a RAV4 and that came with the automatic beams. I’ve turned it off as I found it slow to respond to cars and was worse than useless when there were pedestrians/cyclists about.

This is exactly the problem: so many higher vehicles with dipped headlights that are as dazzling as a main beam.

It isn’t just you, this is the problem being finally addressed.

I sometimes flash my beam at vehicles like yours as long as there is no one else in the vicinity. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I am saying ‘your lights are a problem’, I KNOW you have them on dipped, I don’t need you to shine an even brighter light to reassure me that you have them dipped!

I hope a garage can assist, and good for you for acknowledging that your car is part of the problem.

Finally. My car filled up with white light to the point I could see nothing when I passed a bus on a country lane that had it's high beams on.

It's all and good for a driver to be able to see more clearly at night, but not at the expense of other road users.

I have to say this isn't a problem for me, I've never been dazzled by oncoming vehicles since the days when dipping headlights was done manually and people forgot. And my rear view mirror automatically dims when there are headlights behind. I'm middle aged, so maybe it will become more of a problem as I become older.

I have matrix headlights on a small car. Pretty sure I'm still dazzling most other drivers though if this thread's anything to go by 😬

I hope action is taken, but I also hope it extends to cyclists who have excessively bright lights on their bikes/helmets - and a complete ban on the flashing front lights too!

If you know you are blinding people to the point they feel the need to flash you then why on earth would you then "flash them back". How stupid.
And why not speak to a garage and get the issue sorted?

I often flash drivers if they are blinding me.

Agree I actually stopped my car the other day to recover after a cyclist's crazy lights hurt my eyes.

I was driving down the motorway late at night last week. First time I’ve done that in a while. Most cars were fine but the odd one came up behind and my rear view mirror was just pure white. It was horrible.

It is! Or at least, astigmatism makes it worse. I've always had problems with headlights at night and only recently learnt that astigmatism means the light is scattered weirdly for us, and makes the glare worse than for other people.

A pp mentioned that some cars indicators are too small. I hate the pulsating ones with one LED tall . As you can miss it. Give me the blinking ones.

It's fantastic news that something is being done about this. I hate driving at night because of the glare.

It’s a vicious circle.

In my 2008 car with standard headlights is awful to drive in the dark to the point where I won’t drive that one in the dark any more. Vehicles behind me with much brighter lights cause a ‘shadow’ in my lights right in front of me making it quite difficult to see the kerb and where the road goes.

My newer car (and any hire cars I have for work, which is regular) have newer brighter lights and it isn’t difficult for me to be able to see. No doubt to the detriment of those around me.

I also find that driving with glasses in the dark helps my astigmatism. I can read a number plate at the legal distance without problem but the glasses do help reduce the star effect and sharpen up things in the dark. It’s been a game changer. So even if you don’t legally need glasses it might be worth an eye test and getting some. Mine is a weak prescription but it does really help.

Auto-dip is also a problem. Without auto-dip a decent driver on an unlit road dips their beams when they see beams appearing at a corner, well before the car itself comes around the corner. Auto-dip only recognises that there is an oncoming car well after that car has come around the corner, by which time you’ve dazzled them. Auto-dip doesn’t always recognise rear lights (potentially dazzling the driver ahead of you) and is confused by some road signs reflecting back at you (so your beams flash repeatedly as you approach the sign).

I tend to drive with auto-dip disabled.

I hate these LED lights. We got a new (to us) Kia Sportage last year after an artic lorry wrote off my little Fiat 500 and I wanted a bigger car as I was driving the Fiat when it got hit (driver didn't see me and cut me up). Unfortunately the Kia has these horrible lights. I kept getting flashed by other drivers thinking I had full beam on which really stressed me out. My DH figured out how to adjust the height/angle of the lights which has improved it and I don't get flashed anymore (apart from after the MOT a few months ago when they must have reset the lights 🙈).

I flash them back so they know that I know that I've genuinely not got my high beams on, that I've got the message and they don't need to flash me again and again as they drive towards me. I know my car lights are bright, to the extent that I've bought stickers from Halfords to put over my headlights and read the manual to see how to alter the position of the beams.

It's clearly an industry wide problem with newer cars and I'm glad the government is looking into it.

God I hope something comes of this. I'm sick to bloody death of cars built like tanks with headlights worthy of military searchlights. It's dangerous, intimidating and completely unnecessary. It's going to drive smaller cars (which are surely better all round) off the road just so a section of society can indulge in a vanity project.