I used to think it was a lot of people doing it. I drive an older car with what I call "normal" brightness headlights, and the warm color too instead of the annoying blue/white.

But then I had to rent a newer car, and it came stock with super bright blue/white headlights. They were so bright to what I was used to I had to double check the high beams weren't on. The standard lights were as bright as my old car's high beams.

Lights in newer cars are literally just that bright, and I think it's a result of car safety culture being a matter of "I only care of the car protects me" instead of "the car should also be safe for others on the road as well"

I mean, I have those types of lights on my car, but I am VIGILANT about checking that they have a slight DOWNWARDS slope (and I'm in a relatively low sedan to begin with). There's a T-intersection near my house with a retaining wall at the end - very convenient for checking the angle.

Even when I upgraded my old car to HIDs (because I could barely see anything over the other cars), I checked over and over to make sure I was low enough. Also, I ensure I never light up the TOP crease of the trunk of any sedan behind me. If I light up anything inside another car, it's bad.

> Lights in newer cars are literally just that bright, and I think it's a result of car safety culture being a matter of "I only care of the car protects me" instead of "the car should also be safe for others on the road as well"

This theory can't work on its own terms. It'd be hard to make the car less safe for the driver than by automatically blinding oncoming traffic. Brighter headlights aren't a safety improvement for anyone.

They represent car manufacturers unilaterally making the product worse for the sake of having a worse product, just like the replacement of physical buttons with touchscreens.

Unless the testing scheme involves only testing the single car and nothing else.

When my taillight burned out, I went to the local autoparts store to get a replacement. The first light I picked up had printed on the packaging, in not-terribly-visible writing, "For Off-Road Use Only." I had to go back and hunt longer for the light that was legal for road use.

There's probably a decent contingent of people replacing their lights with out-of-spec lights not realizing that the lights are not actually road-legal.

That's not how it works. They can write whatever they want on the packaging. It's the final assembly that's compliant. They're covering their ass in case you put their 5W bulb in some application they've never heard of where it technically fits but a 2.5W bulb was supposed to be used or something.

It's like how aftermarket brake hoses all say "off road use only" despite pretty much all of them vastly exceeding the FMVSS for brake hoses.

The correct bulb will not say that, aftermarket LEDs do. The light reflector housings are designed and tested for specific bulb standards. There are LEDs which try to output light from the same place as the filament in the bulb they are mimicking. But there is no guarantee they function properly, hence the warning and illegality.

If you swap one side and walk around your car, you may see that they are significantly dimmer than the stock bulbs from some or all angles. Or it may work fine. Often times the aftermarket LED dual intensity tail/stop lights have barely any difference between the two brightnesses which is egregiously unsafe

Most Teslas come mis-aimed from the factory and expect their owners to "calibrate" them - they just never tell them that.. Guess how many owners actually figure it out? A vanishingly small percentage.. (or they're all assholes who want to blind others on purpose)