I am on a road trip this weekend and have been doing some nighttime driving in inclement weather on poorly and unlit roads. Granted, I am getting older and my night vision isn't what it used to be, but holy cow it seems like all the LED headlamps of cars coming the other direction are freaking way too bright. It is like EVERYONE is driving around with their high-beams on. And I am sitting up high in a van, not down low in a sedan, so I am usually (or used to be) above the beam pattern of the old headlamps.

Has anyone else experienced this? Anyone else notice that new OEM LED headlamps seem to be way too bright and poorly aimed? Are the new beam pattern "standards" different than old incandescent bulbs? Or am I just getting more crotchety?

Agree 100%. I've been wondering whether I'm getting cataracts.
It seems like almost everyone (but, not everyone) has his high beams on.
I'm afraid I'm doing it to them, too, but I can see that my lights have a sharp cutoff, and it's generally below the other cars' window line.

– Eric

I agree. I hate these LED headlights on other vehicles. But it is not only LED's. The ones I hate the most are the newer Ford "F" series trucks, with 4 headlights, and 4 wheel drive. I don't know if it is in the design, or if none of these owners worry about the aim. It's the worst when they are behind you, and their lights are in both side view mirrors, and the rear-view mirror for miles. You would think with today's technology they could devise a method to keep the lights properly aimed.
PS: I had to buy a headlight aiming setup for my own use, as there is no shop in my county that has headlight aiming equipment. Every shop told me they just aim against a wall.
Maybe Uncle Dan will chime in.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

Yes me too!

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2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

I've noticed it as well. I wonder, though, if it's a phenomenon of those convex "fisheye" lenses in factory installs, rather than a flaw of the LED's. Seems many of the aftermarket lamps (that don't replace sealed beams) have a lens designed to trim the beam pattern for a lower profile if aimed correctly.

Waiting for Dan to chime in.....Roger

Years ago I got lucky at a school district surplus auction and won a profession headlight aiming tool for $50. I use it, too.

The aiming tool uses a beam pattern target and a photosensitive backdrop to show the exact beam pattern of the headlamp and how it is aimed. Someday I want to make a video comparing the beam patterns of old standard headlights, Cibies, and modern and aftermarket LED headlamps.

Where I am at right now is a part of the country where lifted trucks are very popular. I have dealt with numerous newer trucks with LED headlamps where the truck is lifted to the point where the headlamps are pointed directly at either my side rearview mirrors or my face if I am facing the truck. It is beyond obnoxious, it is dangerous. Doing 70 on a highway and suddenly being blinded by some jerk wioth a lifted truck will lead to accidents.

Yeah.......uncivilized dolts that throw craploads of money into lift kits and massive tires just so they can cruise the local malls and fast food joints. They add better lighting, but aren't smart enough to actually get them aimed correctly, even though the lamps are another 8-12 inches higher than stock. I feel ya, Reed.

Roger

Well, back home now. My conclusions:

(1) A huge thanks to SlantSixDan for cluing me in to Cibie headlights and the importance of relays and aiming. Driving home I ran into some truly terrible rain and fog that hovered directly over the roadway and caught the glare of traffic in both directs. It was white knuckle driving in the Columbia Gorge where there isn't much street lighting to speak of.

(2) Another huge thanks to Dan for sharing his knowledge on this and his website about beam patterns, auxiliary light function, and placement of auxiliary lamps on vehicle. While on my trip I bought a pair of el cheapo fog lights and mounted them below my bumper and wired them up with a relay. Even though they are Autozone specials, they significantly improved the visibility of the road markings in the poor weather, especially when I was facing the glare of oncoming headlamps. Mounting them low under the bumper let them throw their beam down at the road surface, exactly where I needed more light to see the lane markings.

Another thing I hate is the idiots that mount a LED "light bar" high on the front of the vehicle and leave it on all the time, and the cops do nothing about it.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

Probably 1/3 of the cars I saw over last weekend had one of those LED light bars.

It's a complex, difficult problem to practically solve, despite social-media circus barkers claiming otherwise.

Today's low beam patterns are much wider than those of the past; in particular, today's low beams extend a lot further over to the left. There is also a lot more light in today's beam patterns (the highest-intensity part of a low beam of today can equal or exceed the peak intensity of past-model high beams), and the light-emitting areas of the headlamps are smaller, and the light sources are bluer. All of these factors increase headlight glare.

Also, today's headlamps are much more sensitive to aim in terms of both how well the driver can see and how much glare they are causing for other traffic participants. Unfortunately, in North America almost no attention is paid to headlamp aim. Most places don't have periodic aim inspections, and it's very difficult to get a good, correct aim job done even if you try hard and call around to shops. Even if you find a shop willing to take your money to aim the headlamps, they usually won't do anything like a proper job of it.

Also, past technology was such that a single glare-control point in the low beam specification effectively served to create a large low-intensity glare-controlled zone covering most of the angles corresponding to the area most frequently occupied by other drivers' eyes. Today's technology means the glare-controlled low-intensity zone is much smaller; the regulations have not been adjusted to take account of this.

And the types of headlight beams in use today were developed with the assumption that vehicles would be equipped with systems to keep the lamps aimed correctly even when the vehicle is loaded down in back (passengers, cargo, towing/hauling). However, the regulations do not require such systems, and most vehicles don't have them.

And the regulations on headlamp mount height are quite permissive in the US and Canada, and high headlamp mount height on trucks, vans, and SUVs (relative to driver eye height and sideview mirror height in smaller vehicles) is one of many causes of headlight glare. 

All of this adds up to a lot more headlight glare than there used to be, and that just barely skims the surface. I spent the first quarter of this year writing a thorough report on headlight glare (38,000 words, 243 references, 37 figures) commissioned by a national government. Revisions have just been commissioned and if all the stars line up, it might get published before the SAE meeting next Spring where I'm scheduled to lead a panel discussion on the matter.

Don't expect any relief any time soon. There are no legitimate simple solutions, and although US regulators are notoriously inactive with regard to lighting, the incoming US administration ("We're gonna delete whole agencies/destroy the administrative state", etc) looks likely to make a fix less likely, not more.

If you encounter someone makin' out like glare can be addressed with clever memes and foil-hat type rants (industry and government colluding to deliberately blind drivers, stupid regulators don't know what they're doing, LEDs are unnatural light sources, all LED headlamps are technically illegal because something something regulation written in 1968 something something nonplanar blah blah blah) just smile, nod, and close the browser window.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Sounds like I just need to buy a good pair of sun glasses to wear at night since nothing is going to change? It sure sounds like a big mess.

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2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

Go, Dan, go! Glad to hear you are taking this issue seriously and working in the system to make things better. I just got done with a 3+ year stint as an administrative law judge and I know how glacially slow it is to get any kind of regulatory changes made.* It makes me happy to know that there is at least one well-informed critical thinker with a backbone working to make things better.

I am doing my part to reduce glare by running non-LED headlamps for as long as possible.

It has been a few years since I drove at night in inclement weather and I was truly stunned at how really really bad the glare was from oncoming drivers. Beam pattern, intensity, and color all were horribly disrupting to my ability to see the lane markings in my own lane.

Maybe they can tackle the obnoxiously bright LED taillights, too?




*I don't want to get into politics, but if anyone thinks that entire governmental agencies can be eliminated with the stroke of a pen then they are sorely mistaken and have no idea how the administrative state works. That's all I'm going to say about that.

I have the same issue as you and most others who offered experiences on the issue.

Thank you Dan for your tireless efforts in persuading the agencies and persons who can make meaningful change here on this issue.

Hereis an Eye Doctor's take on the issue. I am not sure how valid his observations are, and he is selling eye vitamins in the middle of the video, but it seems many eye doctors engage in the practice of selling vitamins.
Unless I have a whitepaper study with complete data sets published, I tend to be weary of folks selling things in general.

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http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Greg, your link doesn't work—maybe edit/retry?

Sunglasses at night: I get that it was pretty much a joke, but people have tried this. It's a super extra bad idea, and that also goes for the overwhelming majority of the "anti-glare glasses" on the market. Just about all of them block way too much light from reaching your eyes, which is very dangerous. Any lens that's orange or amber or brownish is an automatic no. There is a way to make lenses that effectively reduce headlight glare without causing new problems, but it's not an off-the-shelf deal; it requires an optometrist able and willing to follow directions and not just sell whatever's on the shelf or in the catalogue. Costs some money, too.

Most lenses that have a visible colour to them are coloured by a dye. The exceptions are polarized sunglasses, which are inherently dark, and glass lenses, which have to be made of coloured glass. Dying the lenses requires special equipment and expertise.

BPI "Filter Vision 450/Winter Sun" is the right dye for this task. Product page is here (to direct your optometrist). Look at the transmissivity curve of a lens treated with this dye:
This is a "sharp cutoff" or "highly selective" filter: just about zero transmission of the blue-to-violet, and over 90 per cent transmission of green-yellow-orange-red. The result of having lenses done with this dye should look just like these camera lens filters, type "K2" or "Y2" (other designations from some makers):
See how the yellow colour is saturated, not pale, but it is yellow, not leaning at all toward orange.

I have a pair of these—I used a pair of big plastic frames, for the obvious reason that I don't want glare sneaking in around small lenses. They have an antireflective coating on the front and back surface of the lenses. They make driving at night a lot more comfortable, and I can still see the difference between yellow and white road lines, can still see people wearing blue clothes, etc. They do not cause the weird grin you see in this pic here; that's there because the world's burning up and society's burning down so I'll just be over here writing about car lights and stuff:

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.