Also headlights are simply higher on average than they used to be (larger vehicles). Very noticeable if you drive a low car. Yet another "arms race" dynamic.

99% of it is people not adjusting the pitch of their headlights or turning on their brights and leaving them on. I had a truck and it was fine, because I cared enough to watch a 5 minute video on how to adjust the angle after a new install of bulbs

We have a newer Subaru and were getting flashed like it was Mardi Gras. I started looking into adjusting the lights and found several places talking about how the Subarus are to high right from the dealer and their service department. That was enough to convince me to just do it.

I don't have a level spot with the recommended distance so we went with some tape on the garage door as a reference. We got them a tad low the first time and raised them up a bit. I can still see and apparently everyone else can too because nobody is flashing their lights at us.

Our other vehicle is a 2014 3/4 ton Ram pickup. Nobody ever flashes me in it.

Not sure if it’s still a thing, but the STI in the mid-00s had a physical slider wheel on the driver side console that changed the pitch of headlights. It was probably a geeky race thing, adjust the pitch when you add weight to the rear maybe?

Either way, it’s genius. I don’t know why that isn’t offered in more vehicles.

> adjust the pitch when you add weight to the rear maybe?

That is exactly the purpose and required (or via dashboard electronics) in most vehicles in the EU after a certain date (don't know which exactly and also I do not know the exact rules but every car i've ever owned had those). Automatic is also fine. They are not meant for "Alternative High beam" as what some people use them for.

The "clip" on the rear view mirror is also not meant for looking at your kids in the rear. It's meant to flip the mirror up so the reflection is not by the mirror but by the refractive index of the glass any you see a "dimmed" image of the high beams behind you.

Yeah they’re all automatic over here. I’ve just never seen a physical, mechanical wheel that controls it. And I’ve never met anyone that dimmed their rear view mirror for the purpose of child monitoring. That’s.. odd.

It is not a race or geeky thing. It's there so that when you are towing a trailer you can lower the headlights.

Usually it is supposed to be calibrated so that the highest position is the default no load in the back position, but you can recalibrate so that it is in the middle if you want.

Nobody is towing a trailer with an STI.

Interesting, every single car I've ever driven over here (Europe) has had that slider/knob, I'm pretty sure it's required by law. Newer cars with xenon headlights above a certain wattage must have self-leveling + headlight washers to be road legal.

I have family in Europe and visit quite often, never noticed that. Most of the time I get stuck with a Renault even when I try to reserve a nicer rental. I don’t know how those cars are legal. It’s like someone put a car engine in a broken shopping cart.

Well I don't know which Renault you have had, but the Austral and Arkana have a button instead that cycles between 5 different levels.

I wouldn't call them shopping carts either but if you come from the US you might have different size expectations.

In my country I get them adjusted at the yearly technical inspection, don't they do that over there?

This is indeed a regulation failure. Vehicle lights should have a height limit, but instead, their placement is dictated by aesthetics. SUVs and pickups should have their front lights placed at the bottom front corners, but instead, it's the top front corners.

Some new vehicles come way to bright too, the absolute worst for this seem to be teslas and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was poor qa on bulb alignment

Hmmm, the worst I've seen are german cars with laser and matrix LED lights. Followed by cars fitted with chinese lights off ebay, whose manufacturers don't care about any local regulations.

Subaru has theirs adjusted too high from the factory. They are nice, bright lights, but now that I adjusted them down nobody flashes their brights at me.

I often think that the need for superbright headlights could be avoided if the owners just realised they could drive with “full beam” on all the time.

I would pay for some moon glasses just for this, don't need to be as dark as sun glasses but something you can grab in an emergency with the super brights where the owner didn't know (or didn't care) to adjust the angle of the headlights to something sane. I'ver had to literally grab my rearview at times and angle it completely and the shit was still reflecting partially on the window and chrome components in my car annoyingly

i wonder if some adapted cheap 'automatic welding goggles' would work...

I cannot see the road safely at night anymore, so I avoid driving at night entirely.

Complete failure of government to regulate and enforce headlight position and brightness.

Since I don’t drive an 8ft tall truck with permanent high beams, I eventually got forced off the road.

> Complete failure of government to regulate and enforce headlight position and brightness.

In my state the only thing they check is the diagnostics to make sure your car isn’t polluting too much otherwise you can drive around just about anything that starts…

I flash my headlights at cars whose lights are too blinding, under the assumption that the driver accidentally left their brights on.

If I’m wrong and their lights are always like that, my assumption is that they would appreciate someone letting them know anyway. If it happens a lot, maybe they’ll figure it out and correct their embarrassing problem.

And if they’ve jerks who know they’re blinding others but just don’t care (or savor it) oh well they should still hear about it.

The way I do it is not flashing, which can be misinterpreted as police ahead or something else. I just turn on my high beams until they lower theirs and it works most of the time.

In my experience this leads to the realization they don't have meaningful low beams at all. Just high beams and higher beams.

Someone flashed their lights at me this very morning at around 5:00 am. At first I thought it was because my lights were off, then realized they thought my brights were on. They weren't, it's just that my new car has LEDs that are - apparently - quite bright.

You’re endangering yourself by temporarily blinding oncoming drivers and you should get your car serviced.

I cannot upvote this comment enough. I can't stand these blue/white LED headlights. What an abomination in the night. To top this, in India highways are littered with white LED street lights. I really miss cruising at 65-70 mph on a dark highway, with just the reflectors to guide my path, lit by the the pleasant yellow headlights.

This has also become a problem as a cyclist. I live in a bicycles-first city, commute that way almost every day, and over the past decade when LED lights became the norm, almost every day during this time of the year there's at least one person that just mindlessly snapped their headlight onto the handlebar. It might just fully shine into your face. Back in the days of those dim incandescent bulbs powered by whimsy generators, it basically didn't matter which direction the light pointed, but with super efficient battery-powered lights, this is annoying. And if both of you are traveling at even just moderate speeds, you don't even have time to communicate the issue in a proper way, except for maybe shouting "it's blinding" and hoping the other person can put two and two together.

Scooters are worse. They are severely over powered as they put car lights in them.

Maybe 'dip your light'?

Thank you. I thought my eyes were the problem. But I noticed meeting olders cars is not as bad.

Often times I think it's just me and my eyesight getting older, which is certainly the case, but it kind of reassures me to see that there are other people noticing this insane phenomenon, too.

And I say it is insane because in many, many cases I just have to slow down when encountering those lights coming from the opposite direction, for the sole reason that I get blinded by them and I can't see the road for one, two, God knows how many seconds. It's insane, from a safety perspective, that we're allowing blinding devices out there on the road.

It also gets worse year over year, as more and more of these vehicles accumulate.

Which is the same pattern as your eyesight gradually degrading. But no, the lights really are blinding everyone. It’s utterly stupid.

I totally agree.

What exactly are government safety agencies for exactly, if they can't even sort this obvious problem out?