IR is between 780nm-1mm.
These aren’t exact numbers.
Probably something in that overlap was damaging them somehow. Or it might be something totally different and the person had misdiagnosed.
What I’m uncertain of, is if the led is intended to produce a certain color (white, blue) how much it would be emitting on the IT spectrum.
Example: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/semiconductor/knowled...
While there are guides available on adjusting headlights, they can only help so much when there's a bad combination of LED bulb, halogen housing, and high headlight height. Merely angling the housing downwards won't solve the problem of improper equipment combinations. Wish places like AutoZone offered free or inexpensive a beam pattern analysis service like they do with checking batteries and error codes. Lots of people don't even know their bulb swap is causing problems for others.
Throughout Europe it's either straight prohibited to retrofit LEDs in place of halogen bulbs, or it requires special certification where beam patterns are checked.
The policy is probably the de facto assumption that driving is a right: the United States has been rebuilt around the need to drive everywhere and the entire system tends to implicitly assume that anything which would impede someone from driving is unconscionable unless you get to the point of a serious collision or fatality.
The vast majority of states don't even have safety inspections, and some have recently discontinued them.
They take away driver licenses all the time in the US though. DUIs being the most notable, but even getting enough tickets can result in losing your license, or having it suspended. I know at least a dozen people who lost their license at some point.
Sadly this is not the case with headlights and most of things in the US… unless youre a minority, then you cant even walk down the street without being worried.
That's why it is penalized by driving license cancellation in some countries. And people do get stopped for too bright headlights, because it's so easy to notice and check.
So someone just trying to make it easier to see at night cheaps out and spends a fraction for a LED bulb replacement for a few hundies, tops.
You can buy brighter halogens but they burn out much faster.
I personally suggest everyone save up for the housing and do it proper if you’re gonna do anything. At least try replacing your current halogens first because they do dim over time.
Plus halogens melt snow with all that waste heat :)
This is one of the main reason why I hate trucks. Their "I will walk on your face" makes their high mounted lights right at the level of my normal-sized car's rear view mirrors. When approached from the rear, this is blinding enough that I can't tell the difference between a truck and someone with full beams on. Same goes when crossing them. If it's raining or foggy, those new white lights are outright dangerous.
I'm wondering if they could simply mount them lower so that it's at a normal size car.
They certainly could, but they're not going to because that's not the look that truck buyers want. They want to look and be intimidating.
The trick is to briefly direct your gaze toward the right edge of your lane rather than the center, while you pass. You won’t be blinded that way.
> I doubt my high beams even pierce through their LED headlights, to be honest.
I don’t think this is how light works.
But back on topic: light cannot block light. First result on google. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/456409/can-a-lig.... Though I'll concede you a point in that, if their pupils are contracted more because they're using a brighter source, then the impact of your beam on them will be lower than theirs on you. That being said, I'd wager to say that the difference would probably be marginal, given that we're talking about light reflected at night (which would leave you with a pretty big dilation in both LED and halogen) vs. looking directly at a light source.
Did I just read what I think I read?
The whole point of the annual inspection the state makes me get is shit like window tints, and that's where it should be checked. I don't have a ready solution for aftermarket headlights (especially as I support right to repair), but a start would be regulating what the manufacturers do so it's not a safety issue by default.
The problem is too far gone at this point to stop it via random stops. That would have been a good thing to do about 6 years ago. At this point the only solution is recalls and manufacturer regulation.
Also, for what you said to make sense you have to do better than speculating that brighter headlights allowing people to see further is outweighed by them causing glare for oncoming drivers. It's entirely possible this is a good safety tradeoff.
Still, from a very cursory bit of reading it seems that these are designed to detect other vehicle headlights only. How about pedestrians and cyclists (or even motorcyclists)? I'm really not convinced that these sorts of technical solutions are the best way to address the problem (in the same way that forward and reverse cameras - while helpful - aren't a proper solution to good old fashioned line of sight).
There's no reason matrix headlights can't block light for any reason, the Teslas and other ADAS systems see bikers and pedestrians so I don't see why that wouldn't be possible.
And I don’t know that they’ve shown this for pedestrians on the pedestrian path, at distance, at night.
It's possible that this awareness is what's used as input for the matrix headlights. Either entirely, or in coordination with detecting oncoming headlights.
I'm confused about your mention of technical solutions. What would a non-technical solution look like?
Something like ensuring that headlights are lower. I'm not against technical improvements, but I think that simple, less error-prone improvements should be given higher priority.
Pedestrians?
It's a whole different ballgame having a pedestrian blinded vs having a driver blinded. I'm not saying it's good for a pedestrian, but we have to consider the inherent risk of that vs t hem not being seen at all because the light gives no opportunity to reflect off of them.
The answer is that the technology is advertised as not dazzling oncoming drivers only.
Further, the little explanation of the technology I could find stated it worked by detecting headlights and taillights of cars.
The remaining area will be lit with modern high-intensity beam.
Thus, I conclude that the pedestrians and cyclists will be blinded.
> matrix headlights, consist of numerous small LED elements and mirrors that can control a light beam in complex ways. This allows the lights to be more precisely aimed, illuminating what the driver needs to see without blinding other motorists, pedestrians, or cyclists.
[0] https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1135084_us-finally-allow...
That matches my lived experience in the UK. Not that every driver will dip for pedestrians, but matrix ones certainly don't
I think the use case is supposed to be hunting and camping, but these assholes seem to no blinding everyone around them!
>A small city in New Zealand plagued by “siren battles” – cars decked out in loudspeakers commonly used in emergency warning systems and often blaring Céline Dion hits – is calling on authorities to step in and end the noise.
>The battles are part of a New Zealand subculture where music enthusiasts cover their cars in up to dozens of industrial speakers, loudhailers and sirens, then compete to have the loudest and clearest sounds.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/24/porirua-siren-...
Those people ain't "music enthusiasts", they are "noise enthusiasts". Music enthusiasts do not intentionally destroy their ears or those of others.
Is that what the US military dished out to Noriega in the Panama invasion? No wonder he surrendered! It was alleged to be 'heavy metal', but is there acoustic evidence? I bet Celine would've got faster results.
From what I can tell (in the USA) it's not necessarily illegal to drive with the fog lights on at all times. The main requirement for all headlights anywhere is that they're positioned and aimed correctly.
Specific states or regions may technically have restrictions, but it seems pointless to enforce if it's a stock vehicle that meets the requirements. High beams are way worse than the typical fog lights. I don't think most people should have to worry about their fog lights unless they're aftermarket.
Reminds me of those signs that say "no engine braking". They're specifically referring to jake brakes on commercial vehicles, not dropping a gear on a normal car or truck.
I remember reading about this in an article written by a rally driver in ADAC magazine maybe 20 years ago now.
> I remember reading about this in an article written by a rally driver in ADAC magazine maybe 20 years ago now.
I've seen those arrays of fog lamps installed on rally cars, and I'm not sure what they're about but they're a pretty different paradigm than anything that comes installed by the factory on a passenger car.
They're not the same light pattern as fog lights (well, not all of them). Some are "pencil" beams that reach far, some are closer to fog beams for close-in. Coverage is the name of the game.
They need them because the goal is to be driving as fast as possible, so you need as much light as you can get onto and down the road.
The reason they're on pods on the hood is because they're removable. They only put them on when needed, because they're very expensive and you don't want them getting damaged when not in use.
most laws appear to be based on direction and aim.
Why do you think they're from the city?
I hope they equally don't appreciate it when locals do the same.
I find the sales listings on these trucks hilarious tho. They are the ultimate custom McMansions, listed with extremely high premiums for all the custom work, that essentially never sell. If you are in the north a great description to add is “Texas truck” or really any state south of where you are. They also commonly have well over 200k miles. It’s a crazy phenomena.
I will say tho, the base model trucks and just about any trucks aren’t made for work anymore. The boxes are like 6ft long as opposed to 10. The tow power on base models isn’t great. Work vehicles today are becoming more and more those vans. Not saying work trucks are obsolete, just they aren’t what they used to be.
You get an infrared camera and on the screen a coloured bounding box is drawn over each identified pedestrian or animal etc. Green no threat, red sounds an audible alarm so you don’t need to drive looking at the screen to get benefit of it.
It sees things that just cannot be seen by projecting a light source from near you, no matter how bright.
EDIT: see from 2:25 in https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kQqCDjxYFVc
Retrofitting one system in my car which had the option code was a yak shave.
Most automotive systems get by this by limiting night vision to 8fps(!). Similar to how GPS was limited to 100m accuracy in the first civilian models.
What blows my mind is one can get Chinese models off Taobao with 60fps for 1/10th the price of US products like FLIR.
A benefit of those same restrictions means TSMC is building foundries in the US for a change.
GaAs sensors are awesome. Combine those chips with ML optimized compute on a silicon interposer and drone warfare gets a hockey stick in adoption.
As civilians we get functional self driving cars via trickle down.
If the US government wants to encourage domestic chip production, it has other ways to incentivize that.
And like sister comment says, ITAR is not about industrial or economic policy. It’s about maintaining a qualitative edge in weaponry. How is there a qualitative edge when you can buy the restricted components freely from China?
Just noticed the other comment on GP saying they’re restricted through a different list (EAR). It serves the same purpose so I’m leaving my response as is.
There are three types of night vision, and the consumer grade active illumination stuff using infrared light is covered by EAR (Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations) instead of ITAR (which is still significant, but less strict). Which doesn't detract from your point, which is that night vision is hamstrung by regulations. With all the advances in technology, the consumer grade stuff should really be more accessible because it would save lives if drivers could see better in the dark.
This might be a good use for that new transparent TV technology.. Infared HUD in 4K.
ding ding ding. Not much revenue there, and it's not protecting rich people's wealth, so...
I’m still shocked that regulations haven’t put lower limits on headlight brightness.
I (unfortunately) have been doing a lot of driving on highways at night during the last four years. There is a noticeable trend in people watching video while driving. It is really obvious at night. This has obvious outcomes.
At least he was stopped. I've seen people watching Netflix on their phones on a mount or something while driving. Unbelievable.
And yes, you should be driving past them slowly, but with everyone slowing down at once, that presents its own problem of trying to avoid slow downs and merges while being blinded by the emergency vehicles.
Or being blinded by them in a parking lot.
Lately, I've noticed a few turning from flashing into solid light, which is somewhat better.
During COVID shutdowns, there was a massive drop in frequency (obviously, hardly anyone was driving) but a significant uptick in severity. This was attributed to higher speeds with emptier roads.
After re-opening, frequency is significantly higher per driver than before. So is severity. Everyone I talked to in the industry was convinced this was due to loss of skill during shutdown as well as people driving much more aggressively. This is on top of the serious increase in parts due to supply chain issues.
I find it strange that this isn't discussed in the article when it's a pretty widely-held belief in the industry.
A dramatic increase in amount and severity of accidents after a major world-impacting event like the pandemic seems like exactly the sort of thing that would make sense to be some change in the way people drive. This isn't "Oh, the users just hate the new Slack design. What idiots." For 90+ percent of the US, nothing has changed about the cars or roads in the last 4 years any more than the 4 years before that, and yet the outcomes of driving have changed.
Bear in mind that the auto insurance industry is quite distinct from the auto manufacturing industry.
Due to increasingly pedestrian-unfriendly designs, like "grr I'm a bad boy" grills on trucks, crashes becomes more damaging to what they crash into. More, previously non-severe crashes becomes severe crashes.
The purported timeline is: Pandemic hits, people stop driving, incidents falls drastically. Pandemic stops, people starts driving again, but incidents and severity increase drastically compared to pre pandemic.
The companies are saying internally "people forgot how to drive properly", which granted, sounds weird. But it also sounds weird that people upgraded their cars, while not driving them, or that there was a huge spike in car sales as people upgraded post pandemic.
Sales data doesn't suggest that consumers went out and changed their fleet [1]
Well, first of all it doesn't need to be what any person is convinced is "large", it just needs to be nonzero. Second of all, it's not about customers, it's about manufacturers. As your own data indicates[0], a nonzero number of people replaced their car during that time period, just like in every other time period. If more people choose electric than did decades ago, there will be more electric cars than decades ago. And there are[1]! Electrification is increasing, therefore weight is increasing, therefore crash severity is increasing.
So the timeline is, each year, more and more people are buying electric cars, and it looks like severity increased, too. Do we have data on people's ability to drive over time? Maybe, but I haven't seen it, so that's what seems unconvincing so far. We definitely have data on vehicle weight over time, though.
[0]: "Sales data doesn't suggest that consumers went out and changed their fleet" – by my viewing of the data, it shows that a lot of consumers, in fact, went out and bought a car during that period. Millions did, tens of millions even, and it only takes a single car difference to affect the population average.
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-12/charging-into-the-fut...
I'm not trying to be mean, but the adage in poker of spotting the fool at the table here applies. And as a person who rides bicycles, motorcycles as well as drives cars, and has driven in the EU with much stricter driving requirements I'd say there has been a massive drop in aptitude over all.
So much so that I just want to live a life that allows me to be car-free now. EVs are nice, but having everything I want within walking distance is much more preferable.
Come back to Europe.. ;-)
I've beaten spelunky 1, and 2. Im also sporty and coordinated. I know what good motor skills look and feel like, and what being bad at something feels like.
If there is a suspicion of skill loss in the population, i dont know why so many people in this thread would blindly accept that. We should all put our good boy skeptic scientist hats on.
Are the changes in chrash severity and frequency even for all types of people? Doubtful. In what age ranges and occupations are the biggest changes in.
"People crash more now because sudden population wide skill loss" doesnt even pass the basic sanity test. Im gonna need some evidence.
Given that summary, I'm not surprised that you cannot detect any degradation in your driving skill during a period of not practicing.
Actually I think most people are significantly safer driving in a way that completely removes opportunity for skill expression. Waiting for other drivers, going normal speeds, not doing something else while driving, etc. Driving should be pretty unskillfull and boring if safe.
And that is exactly the premise of one proposed mechanism by which serious accident rates (and insured losses) may have increased during a period when a great many people who previously practiced something daily then did not do so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247101
I doubt that but the question is whether or not you're competent enough to ride a bike and how quickly can you get back to that level of skill.
We all know the answer is that it wouldn't take long at all, it's literally why the phrase "just like riding a bike" exists.
If the skill level takes ten seconds to reachieve I dont really consider that skill loss. Same for driving. Americans spend an insane amount of time driving, tens of thousands of hours from a young age. This is just not a skill that obviously weakens in any meaningful way if you dont do it for a year.
I need hard evidence, not just your unreasonable contrarianism.
We're all just asserting anecdotes here about how easy/hard things are. I tend to agree that the act of driving a car isn't so hard that people forgot how to physically drive over the pandemic. What I think is the much more likely thing that changed is the habits of awareness of other drivers. The instincts of which corners have low visibility or your general sense of how fast people drive on various roads. Driving is ultimately a social activity in some way. Most people who get in accidents aren't just failing to "hit the right button" on their car, they're trying to drive well and avoid something unexpected.
It seems entirely reasonable to me that some number of people kept driving daily during the pandemic on mostly empty roads with mostly absent rules enforcement and picked up some bad habits. Maybe that's speeding, or running red lights, or being on their phone while driving because there's less risk of running into another car. Then as people who didn't do that started driving again, their memories from 6-18 months before didn't match the current driving culture any more. Different people adapted in different ways, but the bounds of what's "normal" has changed somewhat.
I don't think I'm worse at physically driving now, but I have definitely been surprised by drivers running red lights or being overly deferential to cross traffic a fair bit in the last couple years. I've adapted, but I'm definitely driving with a different mindset now than I used to.
What that sounds implausable to you? Seems unlikely huh? You require hard evidence?
How dare you disagree with me im a pro ghost watcher for ten years.
Not convinced? Sounds ridiculous. Exactly. Youre not gonna convince me people lose driving skill over a year. You can speculate to infinity. We need real evidence. If you dont have it, weve got nothing.
I don't really care what you claim, it's not true.
Everyone else was already bad.
In theory, the lanes further left should be at about the speed limit and the lanes to the right could be for slower long haul or dangerous loads driving, such as large and heavy trucks which might have a lower speed limit on some sections of road. In practice, please keep right except to pass and don't cause a traffic hazard trying to enforce slowness upon speeders with a rolling roadblock.
Unfortunately there’s many drivers that drive below the (already low) speed limits.
Add to that curvy road and it becomes much worse (you can drive much closer to the limit by accelerating and braking dynamically).
I do this to save time, it cuts ~25% from my commute. My only recommendations are that slow traffic keep right (which is still me, traffic moves fast here), and be mindful of the flow of traffic. The most dangerous aspect of speeding is the speed limit, some people are inclined to follow the speed limit whatever it is, and become a serious hazzard when people are trying to cut through traffic at twice (or faster) that speed.
I have defintely seen private drivers watching tiktok on the highway, and ride share drivers either trying to manage jobs across multiple smartphones, or spending their shift in a discord/group call with some friends.
I've driven in 3 major cities over the last decade (LA, SF, Seattle) and in all of them the local police departments have been ignoring a lot of traffic infractions that they would have pulled people over for before. The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests.
No surprise there, it's not the first time police unions have decided to just not enforce any laws at all to get politicians to do what they want.
https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits...
> In March 2021, a new Virginia law went into effect that prohibits law enforcement officers from making traffic stops for certain minor offenses.
This law prohibits police from stopping you if you are e.g. missing a taillight or a brake light, which for me feels insane.
There are similar things in DC/MD as far as I can recall
‘The City Attorney’s Office will stop prosecuting tickets for driving after suspension when the only basis for the suspension was a failure to pay fines or fees and there was no accident or other egregious driving behavior that would impact public safety.’”
As someone who only drives in Minneapolis every few months the change that happened around 2020 was ridiculous. I regularly saw cars doing well over 100 in the city when I had never seen that before.
BLM got what it "wanted"--there's a definite drop in police shootings where they were active. But it was a cat's paw result: The increase in criminal black deaths was far greater than the decrease in police black deaths.
These are all likely factors which is why I can't just claim everyone forgot how to drive during COVID shutdowns. At the same time the shocking incompetence I've seen (anecdata) the past year or two haven't seemed to involve people fiddling with distractions but just being hyper aggressive shitheads.
I've also noticed many cars with tinted windshields and front seat windows, which probably reduces visibility.
I understand why they might do it though given the blinding LED headlights. ;-)
And my personal experience is that the driving culture in the US (east coast) is more aggressive to start with (except, maybe, sparsely populated remote areas).
I understand you work in the insurance Industry, but I worked in the auto Industry before and after COVID and just went through 2 total loss claims with my insurance and handled a lot of these third party warranty policies for my customers and think I have a more nuanced perspective than your own as mine is multi-dimensional.
I can tell you that while it's true people may be driving more aggressively, not after but during COVID as police weren't pulling people as frequently due to fear of contamination coupled with emptier streets, but the real reason claims are being declared a total loss (resulting in higher costs) is exactly because of the disruption in the supply chain and the shortage of parts kept in inventory for even 5 year old vehicles.
After dieselgate, Mitsubishi US was absorbed by Nissan US, who has been undergoing a great deal of pain since the ousting of Carlos Ghosn who left it in economic shambles with bad financing policies that resulted in lots of cost cuts during and many more after the Renault feud. Trying to get parts for a 2017 Mitsubishi after 2020 in the US was futile as the two dealerships merged together.
It was often the case that you were better off purchasing parts from Hyundai for shared platforms as getting them from Japan were difficult if not impossible as they had severe COVID restrictions and the plants stopped and the catalogs/inventory seemingly vanished in a matter of months during the first year of COVID.
I have had many battles with submitting adjusted insurance claims for service/parts that made me think the burden of a owning an imperfect new car was best solved by selling it back to the dealership at the inflated offer they were paying back then and getting a 'good enough' used car from us or elsewhere given how much time was being wasted dealing with these policies. One customer I inherited had a 3 year old VW CC was using our loaner for over 6 months waiting for an ECU and a harness which was covered by parts and labour by VW, and this was in 2023!
My Italian motorcycle was broken into and it's main wiring loom was ripped apart in the process, and declared a total loss: the cost to repair and replace was projected to be about $1500, which is reasonable but the problem there was over a 2 year waiting list and it was unlikely to ever be found since the part was made by Ducati before it was absorbed by VW Audi Group and was impossible to be found in even the HQ in Bologna according to owners because demand for it was low as it was known to be a defective part and best to solve by swapping out with parts from more widely available Suzuki models but meant changing everything from the stator onward to work reliably which easily tripled the initial estimate. Add to the fact that this bike had low sales figures outside of Italy and I took the settlement offer and gave up on ever owning one again.
The same thing happened to my much less rare Japanese motorcycle, which was much older and less expensive but the same thing occurred: deemed fixable but no parts can be found so is declared a total loss.
My insurance rates just went up by 25% 2 months ago, despite them not having gone up during these two events (over 6 months ago and months after my policy renewal) or even after 2 tickets several years back as I have an otherwise clean record and I'm beyond the risk age.
The response given to me by my insurer was that 'everything is going up' and that servicing my policy was naturally also subject to a price increase but was not a direct result of the aforementioned reasons which makes me think that in fact no... insurance in the US is not too cheap but incredibly convoluted and subject to arbitrary price increases.
I'm a dilettante who passes through industries for a few years at a time, so I have no doubt your perspective is more nuanced! I may have understated how much impact that supply chain issues are, I'm going through a similar issue.
Do you know if the timing was significant? Did anything significant happen with driving stats happen in June of 2020?
Not April 2020. Not July 2020. June (and very late May) of 2020.
Part of the issue was that lots of roads were blocked. Both protestors and police were blocking roads. Large portions of downtown were shut down. Bus services were mostly canceled. And the police were very very stretched thin.
So there are reasons other than “attitude” why these protests might be affecting traffic.
But it was shocking how bad drivers got so quickly. It didn’t seem gradual.
"The most frequent symptoms seem to affect memory, attention, and concentration" [4].
We generally suck at assessing our level of impairment (see drunk drivers), so if we're used to driving a certain way and no longer have the capacity to do so safely, eventually something's going to happen to some of us.
Given the magnitude of ongoing covid infections and the still very low per capita accident rate, this could be the single best explanation of an uptick in accidents. It's not a surprise it's overlooked though, as statistically we don't really track cognitive abilities except in education contexts and individually we tend to downplay or ignore any changes in how we think. Cognition is largely invisible as a measure.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/upshot/long-covid-disabil... or https://archive.ph/RnBZ2
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/
If a change happens gradually you're not going to notice it until there's some glaring indication of it. And you often won't notice that things haven't returned to baseline when you know there was a deviation. (Observation: Long Covid is more common amongst athletes. Really? Or are they actually measuring a baseline and seeing they aren't what they used to be?)
More likely is that due to distracted driver growth since the advent of smart phones, we’re all just getting a little worse every year, so every year is a new high watermark.
As someone who has driven before, during, and after I think it's silly to think Covid didn't change how people drive. It's a night and day difference from 2019 to 2023 (first year of "back to normal") that cannot be explained by a gradual shift of people becoming more immersed in technology.
The attitudes in society towards law and order and what is acceptable day to day have massively shifted. Enforcement (at least where I am from) seems to be nonexistent too - and I think COVID laid that fact bare. People realized no one is actually watching or caring about what they do. Why not drive 55mph on the shoulder to get around that traffic jam if you know there are zero social or legal ramifications?
And in any case, the plural of anecdote is not data. there’s just really no data to support the idea that everybody not driving for a month, and then driving less for a year or two, has made people worse at driving.
Unless you're arguing that Covid had ramifications for everyone's brain, there's no reason to think that's anything but superstition.
"Covid" can refer to either the worldwide pandemic, or the specific disease. "Covid", the event which was a world wide pandemic, did affect everyone's brain. You know how? Because that's where memories are stored. Memories are stored in the brain, and memories influence belief systems which affect behavior. What people remember, and what they have now learned, is that they can get away with a lot more illegal shit while driving than they are used to, and what they have learned through experience (which are formed through memory) is that people are super aggressive when driving after the worldwide pandemic, which causes them to change their behavior too.
> no reason to think that's anything but superstition.
Pretty ballsy to say that hard data of drivers getting more reckless (which is furnished in the article you're replying to) is superstition.
thankfully, that's not what I said.
What I said is that this idea that everyone forgot how to drive is stupid and superstitious.
blowing smoke up ones ass used to be a medical treatment until we learned differently.
Something may be going on but it sure as shit isn't that people forgot how to drive.
Or people began driving differently when the roads were empty (even if less frequently) and continued doing that even the amount of traffic increased significantly
People who had to still had to drive through the pandemic could have gotten used to driving faster on emptier roads, and therefore are more frustrated and aggressive with the traffic/slowdowns today.
Or maybe it's because the population of drivers has shifted, there's still a lot of people working from home (either full time or part of the week)
Or maybe lowering of social empathy we've seen since the pandemic has bleed over into drivers' attitudes (people are notably more rude/less considerate in public)
I don’t think half as much for a year would make me any worse either. The average American is 40 years old and has been driving for 25 years. The average American who drives is even older. It’s hard to imagine them cutting their commute in half for a couple years. Will make them any worse than they had been before.
In instances, like this, there is neither nor logic, just subjective feeling, you can be pretty sure it is incorrect
Roughly a quarter of drivers are maniacs, and drive until there is another car actually impeding their progress, or the get a ticket. Over covid, the empty roads taught these drivers to expect that that can drive 50 in a 30. Now that the traffic is back, these morons are still trying to drive 50 in a 30, and weaving around stopped or turning traffic to do it.
Literally cannot drive 10 minutes without encountering a vehicle with high beams on (can tell by the location, not brightness alone). I’m talking about busy urban areas, not the boonies.
This happens far more often than cars with no headlights (which used to be more common).
At first I thought this was some sort of signal for drugs/etc. Of course that makes little sense…
However, in reality it’s probably worse than that…
I have noticed that in the last 5 years more and more people just don't know that your headlights are supposed to be pointed downward and not straight ahead.
This becomes more obvious when you look at bikes, the amount of bikes I have seen with their blinding LEDs pointed straight ahead 'because they want to be seen by cars" is insane. They don't understand that you don't need to be directly in the beam to see a light source.
What I thought was common knowledge seems to have been disappeared
I have two theories:
1- They are trying to compensate for their hazed, plastic headlight enclosures. Unfortunately not only are the high beams brighter, they point up.
2- It’s a stick it to the people with newer cars and their obnoxiously bright lights mentality.
LED lights aren't a problem if they are adjusted properly.
Both of the dramatic increases of car accidents from the past decade coincided with BLM events: Ferguson and Floyd. See figure 1 - https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
I would say someone blows a red light at least 50% of the time at a red light.
There might just not be enough cops now though demographically. That would be my guess. The same way there aren't enough nurses.
This happened at the same time screen's got distracting, so any correlation is likely coincidence.
Similarly the United States once introduced a maximum highway speed that lowered highway speeds everywhere. Fatality rates went down, but it turned out to be unrelated, Similarly the United States once introduced a maximum highway speed that lowered highway speeds everywhere. Accident rates went down, they just happened to do it at the same time legislators were responding to the unsafe at any speed era. They lifted the maximum speed, speeds went up, and rates of accidents and fatalities kept going down.
And from what I understand the level of accidents we are seeing now is basically on trend with what you would have expected if you just followed the trendline forward from 2019, even if the pandemic never happened.
There are known places where cops pull people over a lot and you’ll see people go from 15 over to driving the speed limit there, then accelerate right after.
Of course, this isnt a problem in countries that dont have such asinine rules around headlights, where an actual modern headlight can identify cars/pedestrians and selectively not cast light directly at them.
You are probably right though, forget about how these noble regulations have kept us in the automotive stone age, we have a big stick so lets use it! Its not like the government is going to get out there and fix the roads anyways, all they seem interested in is stealing money.
And yes, I feel the same as you do.
One thing I find blinding is those "auto-dip/intelligent" full beams which people don't dip. They simply don't work as well, but people don't bother dipping.
I accidentality forgot to dip the lights in my 2005 yellowish micra the other day past going past some traffic. In times past I'd be flashed, but I wasn't. So I carried on. Not a single flash over 12 miles. To me that suggests that normal car lights is about the same level as full beam lights from 20 years ago.
[0] https://news.sky.com/story/headlight-glare-is-getting-worse-...
[1] https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving/2024-01/modern-car...
That will be the only solution, truly.
We should all install these annoying headlights so they get banned
Looking directly in my mirror now feels like a hazard rather than helpful.
Those are the worst. Actually, I take that back. There was a trend a number of years ago of people putting in these super-bright headlamps that were usually tinted purple/blue. Those were the worst -- cars using them were basically telling oncoming traffic "I hate you and hope you die". But, at least in my state, they were made illegal.
But those superbright LED headlamps come pretty close.
OTOH, I get flashed by other drivers often when I don't have my high beams on and I don't have after market lights. Ironically, it seems to happen less when I drive the car with the brightest lights (Land Rover LR3 HSE) because it seems to shape the beam best to keep the light out of the opposing lane. It happens the most when I drive my 2005 Mustang which by far IMO has the poorest road illumination of any vehicle I have access to drive.
The article mentions some of the reasons but the one I find personally annoying the most are white LED headlights. What in the absolute seven hells is wrong with every manufacturers these days? White light may give you extra vision but it blinds everyone else. Eventually, everyone starts using it and then no one will be able to see properly at night anymore. Truly, a tragedy of the commons. A swift intervention at the Federal level seems like a must.