NHTSA Inaction on Headlight Glare

SubLGT

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http://www.landlinemag.com/Magazine/2016/MarApr/story/blinded-by-the-light.aspx

The linked article (pub 2016) is from a magazine aimed at professional truckers.

Prompted by complaints [about glare], the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted a number of studies during the 2000s. The last report issued in July 2008 said, among other things, that "The relation of light levels and glare to crash risk cannot be quantified directly." The report also noted that "Light levels are a compromise. A glare source to one driver is a source of seeing light to another driver."

...When asked about complaints it receives, NHTSA said it "does not keep the number of complaints regarding headlight glare." The agency also said it has no research or rulemakings in the works on headlight glare.

Looks like glare is not a problem, according to NHTSA. It must all be in my head.:shakehead
 

-Virgil-

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All kinds of problems with that lazily-written article. Not a shred of science in it. They quote some random truck driver as saying "These lights need to be rolled back to about the 1980s light levels" and they quote "a California man named Don Berry" who's signed on with the ignorant, whining Lightmare kooks in England and spews completely unfounded, unsupported, and unsupportable nonsense about the uptick in traffic fatalities being due (and only due) to headlamp glare. They get facts wrong: no, HIDs did not first appear on American roads on the 1996 Lincoln Continental, they first appeared on American roads on the 1993 BMW 7-series, and while a 1996 Lincoln did offer optional HIDs, it was the Mark VIII, not the Continental. No, there was no "change to NHTSA standards" to allow HIDs on American roads. And more errors besides that.

Glare is a real thing. It's a complicated thing that needs and deserves appropriate coverage and consideration. Lazy garbage like this article doesn't help.
 

-Virgil-

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Is NHTSA giving glare appropriate consideration?

I think they are, these days. Their main obective in evaluating Adaptive Driving Beam (the camera-driven headlamps now available in Europe and elsewhere that run full-time high beam, but shade out other road users in real time) is making sure they don't cause glare. They brought over a bunch of ADB-equipped vehicles from Europe and put them through a whole lot of test miles on all kinds of roads and their main finding was that the systems fail to sufficiently protect other road users from glare in all cases when they should.
 

fastgun

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First HID headlight was the 1991 BMW 7 and first made in USA was midyear 1995 Mark 8 LSC
Glare accounts for roughly 16% of pre crash events.
 
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Sadden

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their main finding was that the systems fail to sufficiently protect other road users from glare in all cases when they should.

Something i thought would be very challenging too successfully implement. Thats without even throwing inclement weather into the mix...
 

Magio

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I understand that auto-highbeam is not the same as ADB( auto highbeam is much simpler) but even the current generation of auto-highbeams have a lot of issues. So many times now my Accords auto-highbeam has flashed oncoming cars, or turned on the highbeams while I was driving behind or beside a vehicle, or confused a road sign with a vehicle and dimmed the lights when no car was coming, that to me its obvious that automakers still have a ton of work to do to get autonomous headlights even close to the point of being called perfect. I have gotten a little wary of running them around other traffic now, there are so many variables that the computer is not able to into account that causes them to do things they are not supposed to do. And with the lights being so bright the drivers who have gotten flashed tend to get really pissed off or scared. I'm waiting for the day someone tries to start road-rage because they got flashed them....
 

-Virgil-

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That's too bad that your Honda's system doesn't work well. It's especially a shame that it dims in response to road sign reflections; that problem was licked in the early 1960s by a rather famous American inventor named Jacob Rabinow (though the solution was not commercialized; the automakers all had NIH syndrome, that is Not Invented Here). There are auto high beam systems that work well. It sounds like Honda didn't put a good system on your car, but that does not imply anything about ADB's state of development.
 

Magio

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I would say it gets it right about 75% of the time. In ideal conditions it works good enough to useful but you have to really watch it so as not to offend other drivers.
 

jaycee88

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Jan 13, 2015
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I would say it gets it right about 75% of the time. In ideal conditions it works good enough to useful but you have to really watch it so as not to offend other drivers.

Can the automatic high beams be disabled?
 

Magio

Enlightened
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Can the automatic high beams be disabled?
Yes you can, but I find that to be a little annoying too as the means of disabling them is by pulling the light stalk towards you which also momentarily flashes the highbeams while also disabling/enabling the automatic mode. Since the automatic mode tends to work great when not around traffic, I like to keep it enabled in those conditions, and then ideally disable them when entering a higher traffic area. But since the only way to disable them requires flashing them its kind of tricky to do it when around other traffic without the other drivers thinking I am signaling to them. I think there should be a totally seperate switch somewhere on the dashboard that allows the auto highbeam to be disabled/enabled without having to flash them.
 

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