March 4, 2025 • 45 mins
This week, we look into why car headlights seem like they've gotten so much brighter in recent years than they used to be. And, is there any hope for a shift back to a more reasonable brightness level? Our guest today is Daniel Stern, a lighting expert and chief editor of Driving Vision News.
Additional music by Certain Self.
For more, including links to some of the research cited in this episode, visit our website.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Devin. I just want to thank all
the new listeners. We've got a huge influxcept our search
engine collab and we're to mouth over the last couple
of weeks, so welcome. Make sure you're actually following us,
so hit the follow button wherever you're listening so that
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And please give us a five star rating. It really
(00:21):
truly is just me, Manny and now are working on this.
So every post, every TikTok cut, every interview, every email
is being sent from us. If we don't have a
studio backing us, so any beta support really really makes
a huge difference to us. All right, let's get into
this week's episode. I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is Devin,
(00:42):
and this is no such thing the show where we
settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research.
On today's episode, why are headlights so motherfucking bright? And
can Biden's infrastructure bill actually be the thing that saves us?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
There's no such thing, no such thing, such thing.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Touch So the other day, it's about seven o'clock at night,
I was I was out on long Island visiting the family,
and I was driving back to Brooklyn, and this time
of year gets start pretty early, which is fine for
(01:30):
most of the driving until I live by this expressway
we called the Jackie Robinson. It is notoriously a difficult
road to drive on. The lanes are more narrow, and
it's really windy, so and there's a lot of okay,
you got to go from your far right to your
(01:50):
far left to your far right because the exit's over here,
and then you need to exit on the right. So,
especially for someone who's inexperience, it is a difficult express
to be driving through. But what makes it even harder nowadays,
especially at night, is that everybody has the fucking brightest
(02:11):
lights you have ever seen in your entire life. So
you got people behind you whose lights are so bright
they're reflecting off your rear view mirror, and going in
your eyes, got people to the rid of you their
lights are so bright it's shine in the mirror in
your eyes. And then you got people on the opposite
Saturday Expressway coming towards you, and it looks like everyone
(02:33):
just has their high beams on. It's also a road
where you just gotta go or you'll get in an
accident if you go too slow. Based but you just
gotta drive fast, even if you don't feel comfortable driving fast.
There's so many times where, especially this time I'm driving
on it, I'm like, I can only see the car
in front of me. My visibility is about ten feet.
(02:53):
I don't know where the road is going outside of that.
Luckily enough, I've done this drive enough times that I
sort of know.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The direction that's gonna go.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But in my mind, I'm like, this feels so unsafe,
and I'm like, is this something I know?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I'm getting a little bit older.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I turned thirty two and last year I'm like, is
my eyesight.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Just so bad?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Or is is this just like a thing that everybody's
lights are just way too bright nowadays? It's making it
really hard to see.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
No I have that. I've had so many similar experiences.
There are a lot of roads in Ohio that don't
have street lights. You're only relying on your headlights.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
It's like when you're driving upstate.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, it's not just unique to Ohio, I suppose.
But I also have a stigmatism is very common. You
have it as well. Noah's been blessed with great genetics.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
I think I bad eyesip, but not that way.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And uh, you know, at night time when I'm driving,
I so often I can't fucking see and I feel
a little crazy. I don't know if this is true,
but it feels like it's gotten worse over the past
like ten fifteen years. I've been driving since age seventeen,
(04:13):
and I don't remember it being this bad.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I don't either, and that's why I'm like, is my
eyesight getting worse or the light's getting brighter?
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, because I.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Used to remember my parents complaining about driving at night, right, like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Know, driving and that's hard.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And I used to be like, what are you talking about,
Like it it's a little bit darker.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Yeah, it's darker. It's harder than the day.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, time it's fine and you can see. Yeah, And
now I'm like, oh, I get it. Yeah, like I
don't like driving it, like I only drive at night
when I absolutely have to.
Speaker 7 (04:40):
Yeah, my mom my mom My mom says she won't
drive at night anymore at all, Like.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I expect it, yeah, because like I'm when I'm driving
at night, it is just sort of like hoe I
don't crash.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, fully putting your life at risk.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, it's like I cannot see.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
And it's not just people with their highb on, no,
you know where it's like that's a whole other issues
exactly too bad. But it's like, all right, those are
people being inconsiderate. Yeah, the whole other issue. This is
just regular lights.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Regular issues, regular headlights.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Now it seems like everyone's headlights now are like those
really bright lights you would see when we first started
driving on like those pickup trucks that you'd be like,
what type of who is this like for like off
roading that they would be using on like you know,
like a normal street. It's like this is too much.
Now it feels like everyone that camera has those lights now.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
And then sometimes I'm like, you know, when I'm driving
my mom's car is kind of nudes a few years old.
Am I contributing to this? I don't even know how her.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
That's the funny thing, right, because I like to say
what y'all doing? Yeah, but I never I've neveryone else
is this moment and not think.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
It could be the case that like like no one
thinks it's them, yeah, of course, but or it's like
it's great, Like, wow, these lights look fantastic for.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Me, like being able to see so yeah, like oh
am I blinding everybody, But I'm wondering, you know. It's
like I guess it's great when you're driving when there
are no other cars, right, yeah, because that is true,
Like on I have experienced that on like when you're
driving a newer car versus an older car on like uh,
like you know streets like Ohio or upstate somewhere where
(06:26):
there's no street, like you.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Hit the high beings and it's just exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
It's like I can see the entire road, but then
you don't think about, oh yeah, what are the other
people who are seeing me coming at them? See, especially
like we're saying we're not even talking about hypings, we're
just talking about regular highway driving.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, we've all accepted the facts that we're just temporarily
blinding each other when we pass each other on the roads,
and that feels bad.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That's something that's like it's everyone like I can't I
have no idea where I'm going and I'm just following
the person in front of me and hopefully I don't crash,
and like we're all just like I'm like at first,
I was like, Oh, it's just me being anxious, you know,
like it's chill out like everyone else obviously can see
they're driving.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Yeah, not hundreds of accidents around me. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I feel like a conspiracy, Like what does this concerted
effort to do brighter lights?
Speaker 8 (07:24):
Where?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Why?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
And then Yeah, I'm also wondering what like the danger
levels are, like the risk?
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Have people been.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Hurt by this?
Speaker 6 (07:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (07:34):
And I'm curious to know if this is a US
issue or world wid like are we the only ones
suffering through this or in you know, in Europe and Asia?
What's it like over there because we're driving you know,
Japanese cars, Yeah exactly? Or are they making them different
for us versus over there?
Speaker 8 (07:52):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Is this legal?
Speaker 8 (07:54):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
How is this legal? How is this legal? Is this legal?
Or are people like it? Are we dealing?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Like is the brightness of the lights just stock at
this point?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Or is everyone? Is it?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Like I'm not a car guy at all, So is
everyone just changing their headlights and making them super bright?
Speaker 7 (08:12):
And I'm just not yeah like getting the upgrade? Yeah
exactly brightness?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, Like I'm I'm gonna go buy some lights off
Amazon and you know, take it to the shop, Like
are people doing that or is this just like out
the box?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
This is what the cars are coming with now.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Such after the break, we talked to someone who's been
obsessed with car lighting ever since he was seven years old.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, we're back.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
I'm Noah Devin.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So we're trying to figure out why the hell headlights
seem to be so bright and why is there so
much glare when we're driving on the roads at night.
So I spoke with one of the industries leading car
lighting experts. So can I have you just start by
introducing yourself.
Speaker 8 (09:05):
I'm Daniel Stern. I am the chief editor of Driving
Vision News, which is the global vehicle lighting world's technical
and trade journal of record.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
He first realized his fascination with headlights when he was
seven years.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Old and my father was driving me somewhere after dark.
I think it was maybe like a like a musical presentation,
was in first or second grade, and he showed me
how there was a low beam for when there were
other cars around, and high beam for when the road
was clear, when it was empty.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
So that was the root of it.
Speaker 8 (09:37):
And then many years later I went off to school
in dark rainy Oregon at the University of Oregon, and
it seemed to me that I really could not see
as well as I thought I should be able to
when I was driving after dark, and so I started
sort of poking around into how headlamps work and you know,
maybe how they don't work. Around that time, I made
my first trip to Europe and I saw that they
(09:59):
did a whole lot of things differently with car lighting,
and so the interest took hold, and I transferred to
the University of Michigan, where at that time, the University
of Michigan Transportation Research Institute had a terrific library full
of decades worth of research, not only about lighting, but
lighting was a lot of what they did, and so
(10:20):
I would spend hours in this library just systematically devouring
these decades worth of research, and then i'd take the
elevator up to the second or third floor and ask
questions of the researchers who were working up there. They
were very patient with me, and so that was sort
of my three year long independent study on vehicle lighting
right at one of the world's foremost research institutes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
For it, to be honest, I thought the solution air
would be pretty simple, just like turn down the LED
lights and then you'll get rid of glare. But after
talking to Daniel over the last couple of weeks, it
turns out this issue is way more complicated than any
of us anticipated in and wide so complicated. You have
to know some of the recent advancements we've made of
(11:04):
car aliding technology.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
Starting in nineteen forty, all vehicles in the United States
had what are called sealed beam headlamps.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
There for our purposes, we'll fast forward to the nineties.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
In the mid nineties, high intensity discharged headlamps came along.
Now you can have three times more light within the
headlight beam, and the light color was it had a
radical shift from sort of a warm white to a
cold white, a bluish white, and that started that There
was a spike in glare complaints when that happened, and
the official response was, yeah, you'll get used to it.
Speaker 6 (11:36):
You're only noticing it because they look different. Just look
away from the glare.
Speaker 8 (11:40):
And then in the early to mid two thousands, LEDs
advanced to the point where we could use them for headlamps,
and so headlamps once again grew brighter and bluer, and
the glare complaints spiked, and the same response sort of
came down. Yeah, you'll get used to it. It's not
really hurting out, you know, it's just just look away
(12:02):
from the glare.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And today our most headlamps led.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
Yeah, and new cars are pretty much all designed new
cars trucks as these new road going vehicles are pretty
much all designed with LED headlamps right from the start.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All right, So for our question, why is headlight glayer
so bad? The first culprit LEDs. So the first question
I had for him is our LED lights just brighter?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Right? Is that the issue? The lights are just brighter?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So this may be, you know, a dumb and obvious question,
but our LED headlamps technically brighter.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
Well, it's a little.
Speaker 8 (12:41):
Difficult to answer that question has asked because this isn't
really when you say brighter and you think of it
in terms like you're in your dining room and you
turn the dimmer up or down to make the dining
table brighter or dimmer, this is a lot more complex
than that. A headlight beam isn't just a floodlight or
a spotlight that you know that is brighter or dimmer.
It's actually a very complex pattern of light with areas
(13:04):
defined by what are called test points. A test point
might have a minimum required intensity, a maximum required intensity,
or both, and a low beam in particular is super
complex because you need to have high intensity for the
driver to see far enough down the road right next
to low intensity to protect other drivers on the road
from glare.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
So I'm actually gonna share this video if you guess
that'll sort of exemplify what he's saying.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Here, Great, because that didn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Or yeah, when it's shining on the wall to a
little bit before, just like pause it on that, Okay,
I mean trying to break in this down because I
know this is kind of hard to visualize, especially for
a podcast. But imagine you're shining your headlights in a
garage on a wall. You're probably thinking of something similar
to a flashlight, right, like pretty even light, maybe a
little bit more oval or rectangular, because these are headlamps
(14:00):
versus a flashlight. But that's not really the case. So
what do they actually look like? All right, So let's
imagine for a second and stick with me that you're
some abstract artists and you're painting Luigi Manngioni's latest mugshot.
Because you're an abstract artist, you're not just gonna draw
straight lines and fill on the eyebrows completely. Instead, you're
(14:23):
gonna put maybe a blob of paint here, maybe no
paint on this area of the eyebrow, maybe a little
bit of paint down below. And that's how the headlight
beam operates as well. There are parts in the beam
that have really intense light, and there are parts within
the beam that have almost no light at all. And
his varying degree of light intensity is really purposeful. The
(14:45):
headlight is designed so that the person driving has maximum
visibility but limiting the amount of light that's being thrown
to other people from oncoming traffic.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Oh okay, so the gradient is like you're on one
side of the highway driving north, the other side of
the highways driving south, and the gradient is blocking people
who are going south from like being blinded by your
light exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Yeah, because if it was all that intensity, it would
be really impossible to see.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
So it's really very complex.
Speaker 8 (15:16):
That said. Yes, in a word, yes, today's headlamps are
their higher intensity, They put a lot more light out,
They put out much wider beams.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
For our purposes, we'll say they're brighter, although technically, you know,
I don't want I don't I don't want Daniel to
yell at me.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, it's not so simple.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
They're more intense.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Is that a good yes, Yeah, we'll say intense.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I don't know if people be okay with that. And then
there's another reason why they appear so bright. You talk
about how with led lights it's more intensity from a
smaller I don't know with the technical term for it,
but like a smaller opening, right, it's coming from a
smaller space.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:54):
The technical term is luminance, and in real simple words,
it means how right something looks. You can also think
of it as light density. If you have a certain
amount of light coming from a small area, uh, it's
going to look brighter than that very same amount of
light coming from a large area because that given amount
(16:18):
of light with a large area, it's spread over a
over a big surface, whereas with a small area it's
sort of condensed into a point instead of a large surface.
You can sort of you can think of it as
you say, you're putting a certain amount of water through
a hose.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
If you have a.
Speaker 8 (16:38):
Tiny little hole at the end of the nozzle you're
going to have like a jet stream.
Speaker 6 (16:41):
You can you can powerwash.
Speaker 8 (16:43):
Your driveway if if you have a big sort of
a big watering looks like the end of a watering can,
sprinkling end of a watering can, well you'll have a
nice sort of gentle rain shower, same amount of water,
but it's but it's behaving very differently and light does
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's a really good visual way of thinking about it,
all right. So that's the second reason why LED's a
pair rider is because the light.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Is coming from a smaller opening.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And then the last culprit is the color blue.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
This is really interesting, actually, there's a lot of really
sturdy science showing that for any given intensity white light
that contains more blue creates much greater discomfort clayer than
light that has less blue. So with that on the table,
it's been found that just to put rough numbers on it,
if you have two headlamps that measure say a thousand candela,
(17:38):
the candela.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
Being the measurement unit for intensity.
Speaker 8 (17:41):
Two headlamps putting a thousand candela towards an oncoming driver's eyes.
One of the headlamps is a halogen lamp and it
has sort of a yellowish white, warm white light color.
The other headlamp is an LED. It has a cold white,
a bluish white light color. In order for those two
headlamps to feel the same to the oncoming driver in
terms of how they experience the glare, the halogen headlamp
(18:02):
would have to be producing at least sixteen hundred candela
to match the feeling of glare created by the LED headlamp.
And the kicker of that is the sort of the punchline,
maybe it's a punch in the gut or a punch
in the eyes, is that you don't get sixty percent
better seeing with the bluer light. You don't get any
(18:22):
better seeing with the bluer light. You just get you
do have a sort of a feeling as though it's brighter,
and you have this much greater sensation of glare caused
by the bluer light.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
This was really crazy to me, right, because our eyes
are more sensitive to blue light, so it appears brighter
to us, but it actually doesn't help us see any better,
and then it just causes more glare when we're on
the road.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Well, so then why why do we have them?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Because it looks cool.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Okay, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So let's recap for LEDs. Yes, they're more powerful than
previous headlamps. They are here to be brighter because they're
coming from smaller openings.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And then we got blue, which creates more glayer. And
it also brings us to our second culprit, which is
called headlight.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Aim hhmm you know what that is.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You don't want to be headlight aim.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I can guess if you want.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
I've noticed some headlights have like lids on them, all right.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Is it like the direct spot where it's most intense
closer closer.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, you guys didn't do the research.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
What I looked like a car lighting specialist, all right.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So we talked about blue. We talked about how people
like the look of the blue lights.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
A lot of people with older cars will go out
and buy LED light bulbs and put them in their
older cars.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I remember that with like James Bond movies, they made
it a point for blue lights in the head.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Blue lights, right.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So Daniel said, there's a very big problem with this,
which is the LED lights are not designed to go
in these older cars.
Speaker 8 (20:15):
You can go on Amazon eBay. You can walk into
parts stores all over the place you can buy these
LED bulbs claiming to update your halogen headlamps. In the
United States, the major brands market them with a nudge
in a wink, saying, you know, these are only for
fog lamps. Don't put them in your headlamps, right because
(20:38):
fog light bulbs are not regulated in the United States
where head light bulbs are. Of course, fog lamps and
headlamps use a lot of the same types of bulbs,
and people are you know, people put them in their
head lamps and they think, oh, hey, well now I've
got led headlamps.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
And look how bright they are. It's a different kind
of legs.
Speaker 8 (20:55):
It's very much like putting on somebody else's eyeglasses. You
might find someone else's eyeglasses that look terrific on your face,
but because the lenses are not for your eyes, you're
not going to see properly, and you're going to give
yourself a headache and you're going to injure your eyes
doing it. So in the same way, you put LED
bulbs in a halogen headlamp, you might think they look
(21:17):
terrific and they have that blue white appearance just like
the newer cars, and you might even think you can
see better, but in fact the light distribution is all
screwed up. You've got way too much light in places
where that's dangerous, you've got not enough light in places
where that's dangerous. And most of all, you've got a
whole lot more glare. So and it's very poorly policed
(21:37):
in most of North America. So you know, these things
widely available and nobody's giving tickets. Well, yeah, that's a
major source of glare.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
On the road.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Back on this alignment bit, right, so people are getting
bulbs that aren't meant for their cars. Is there also
just an issue with alignment period with people who have
led headlamps initially, very much so.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
And it's not just with people who have legitimate lab headlamps.
Headlamp aim is, by a giant margin, the primary main
determinant not only of how well the driver can see,
but how much glear they're throwing around. And headlamps, as
they have evolved over the last five six decades, as
they've grown more and more intense, they've grown more and
(22:26):
more sensitive to miss aim.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
This could be from something small like say you have
a lot of people in your car, so you know,
the car shifts a little bit, so not the lights aren't.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Exactly where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
It could be from when you're driving, if you hit
a bump, if the road is angled a little bit,
or it could be something that you know over time,
your headlights shift.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
In the past. You know, a headlamp of the nineteen
sixties or seventies, maybe eighties, if it was aimed you know,
a degree or two this way or that can't really
exert a huge change in the amount of light that
the driver had to see on the road or the
amount of glare they.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
Were throwing around. Might look a little brighter.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
As it passes you, but it's still a low beam headline.
But a modern headlight beam which is very wide and
has a sharp cut off at the top.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Of the low beam, where below this.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
Cutoff line is very high intensity and above the cut
off line is low intensity is dark. Low beams have
such high intensity below that cutoff, the low beam aimed
a degree or to too high could easily qualify as
a high beam.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But that explains why we were saying. When the first
time we talked right it felt like, why are people
driving around with their high beams on. Right, It's like, oh, no,
they're not. Their alignment is just off and the low
beam now is you know, so much more advanced than
it was in the past that it feels like people
have their high beams on when they're driving at you.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Wow, this is this is nuts. That's huge because I
had no faith in humanity.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Really thought everyone was just driving around.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I thought people were just like their eyesight was getting
worse to something and they're just ripping the lights on
like every time.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, feels like headlight aim is not part of the
inspection process. So when you go get your car inspected,
headlight aim is not something that they're checking.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
Yeah, the the aim is super important, and unfortunately it
is almost impossible in North America. We just don't pay
attention to headlight aim. It's almost impossible anywhere in North America.
Even if you're standing there with a fistful of cash
and saying, somebody, take my money and aim my head
lamps correctly, it's really hard to get it done.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
People had to auto shop aren't trained for that.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No, it's a really request exactly, at least in the US.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
And some states you don't get your car inspected at all,
like the Great State of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's why people get uh, the car is registrated in Ohio, right,
the shitty cars really?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Okay, So to recap, because led have lamps have such
a small margin of error before they create a ton
of glare, alignment is super important. But in the US
this is not something we traditionally care about. And then, lastly,
so our last rezone. Why is glare more intense now
than it seems like it used to be?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Part of it is.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
Us as we get older, and this is really unfortunate.
This really sucks. As we get older, we need a
lot more light to see any given thing, and at
the same time, we get a whole lot more sensitive
to glare.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
So when we're.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
Sixty, we need about triple the light that we needed
when we were twenty to see any given thing under
any given conditions at night, and we are massively more
sensitive to glare. So, you know, if only one of
those two things were true, it would be really easy
to fix. But both of them are true, and so
(26:02):
if you address the one thing, you aggravate the other.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
So we're more sensitive to light, yes, and need more,
I need it more. Yes, it's not a good place
to be.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Is not a good place going to be.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
This dichotomy sort of speaks to the really, really tough
situation that the United States federal government finds itself in
right now. They have to balance people seeing with also
thinking about lair, which makes it harder for people to see.
(26:35):
So I was curious, like, are is somebody working on this,
you know, someone in the Trump illustration, like going to
create a rule that your headlights can be only but
so bright because you know there's so much claire in
it's causing a huge issue.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And he said that something like.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Lair is both hard to define and then also hard
to make.
Speaker 8 (26:57):
Rules for the fact is this is this is not
symmetrical safety situation. Yes, glare can be unsafe, absolutely no
debate about that, and reach sure can be uncomfortable, but.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
It's not a one to one thing.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
Unfortunately, up to a fairly large degree, more light from
the headlights means better safety, means less likelihood of a crash.
So let me sort of address how this knot is tied.
I think Unfortunately, for a long time, particularly in North America,
there's been a tendency for the official response to glare
(27:32):
complaints to be you'll get used to it or you won't,
but just look away from it, just deal with it,
grate your teeth. It's not actually a safety thing. We
think glair is bad on principle, we're going to regulate it.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Can't do that in North America.
Speaker 8 (27:43):
You have to say, well, here is concrete proof of
the costs of glare in terms of the crashes that
it actually causes, and so can we can regulate to
the degree necessary to countervail those costs and that damage.
It's essentially impossible, and so that's why we have so
much less regulation of headlight glayer in North America than
(28:07):
they have in Europe and in Asia and Australia and
other countries that use a different regulatory system.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So you're saying that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
so they have not addressed this glare because there's not
a lot of concrete sort of numbers that we have
that glare cause x amount of accidents. Therefore we need
to address it by doing this.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
But it gets a lot more interesting than that, because
for most of the twentieth century from the dawn of
electric headlights on cars. Europe had much more stringent glare
control than the United States did.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Can Europe actually save us? We'll find out after the
break in Europe they have much more stringent their controls. Okay,
(29:27):
so here's three things that Europe does that we do
not do. Number one, so their headlight aim is much
lower than ours.
Speaker 8 (29:38):
You're in your Honda Civic, You're in your Chevrolet Corvette.
You're in You're in a car. Well behind you is
a pickup trucker, an suv, and it's head lamps are right,
and they're way up in the air, and they're right
even with your car's mirrors. Yeah, you're gonna get blasted.
The rest of world regulations do two things to address that.
(30:00):
You can't you can't completely cure it because this is
just physics.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, some cars are taller than others.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Some cars are taller than others. The regulations in the
rest of the world do two things to limit that.
They have a lower maximum headlamp mounting hype and they
say if you have a headlamp that is mounted higher,
it must be aimed lower. Whereas in the American regulation,
the maximum mounting height is higher, which automakers like because
(30:31):
you know, big tough trucks and SUVs, and any given
headlamp gets aimed the same, whether it's way up high
on a forward exclusion or way down low on uh,
you know, on a corvette.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Number two, So inspections in Europe they have headlight aim
as part of that process, you know we talked about
in the US, we don't do that.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
They have periodic vehicle inspections that include headlamp aim and adjustment.
The cars with high output headlamps have leveling systems to
compensate at least for vehicle loading, and the fancier systems
compensate for irregularities in the road.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And in number three, they have this magical system called ADB.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
ADB a dB.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
What is ADB, you.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
May be asking, Am I am actually a dirty bastard?
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (31:28):
ADB Adaptive driving Beam has been around for it's getting
on for two decades now in Europe. A good ADB
system can give the driver thirty meters about one hundred
feet greater seeing distance without more glare than a low beam,
which is a huge accomplishment. I mean, that's you know,
(31:50):
the problem has always been that low beams don't give
long enough seeing distance for the speeds that people actually drive,
so we overdrive our low beams and we hit things,
while high beams produce way too much clear for use
in traffic, and so ADB adaptive driving beam meekly resolves
that problem to a great degree.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
And for those who.
Speaker 8 (32:11):
Don't know what ADB does is it takes that high
beam pattern and it puts dark spots and slices in it,
following the locations of other road users' eyes.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Gotcha, Okay, so there's a if there's an oncoming car,
it'll try to limit the amount of light that's going
into that oncoming drivers.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
Hot, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Listen to the lengths that Europeans go through to just
like have like basic care about each other. It's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
This kind of blew my mind when I found out
this was a thing that existed, especially because we talked
so much about clear Obviously, he said there's some limitations
to it. Yeah, if you get in a city and
there's just cars everywhere, Yeah, there's only so much it
can do, and there's you know, then it.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Just results back to the lot.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
But I was like, oh, this is really interesting because
it's a combination, but it also reduces glare. It seems
like best case scenario, right, It's like you get as
much visibility as possible, but you're also not obstructing other
people driving.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It used to be.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Just in high end cars, but now it's in you know,
like the version of a camera essentially, so it's in
all all the cars. We do not have this technology
in the US, So.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
This isn't it's not like a regulation, is it, Like,
do they need to have it?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
It's optional.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
Yeah, But because it's so, but it's common, yeah, yeah,
I mean why not.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
So if you're, for example, Toyota and you're making the
same fucking car, but one of them is going to
Europe and ones going to the US, they're like actively
keeping ADB in the European one and not in the
American one.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So I looked into it, and this is true. We
have cars in the US that have ADB functionality, but
it's been disabled. As people have been complaining about glare,
there's been a growing movement in the US to get ADB.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
ADB movement in or version of ADB in the US.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
The US devises and promulgates its own regulations, which are
in many cases quite different to the rest of world regulation.
When it looked like ADB was going to gain traction
and be a thing, NITSA went to the Society of
Automotive Engineers.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
So the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration otherwise known as
NITSA told this group, hey, translate to European ADB for
US regulations. And the group was able to do it
in record time.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
And NITSA said, yeah, thanks, but psych we're not going
to use that. And then things got really interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
So here's what we get to President Biden in his
infrastructure bail, which eventually became an infrastructural law, Congress tilled NITZA, Hey,
actually you need to adapt this ADB system that that
group put together. Is this actually Joe Biden's legacy instead
of the stubborn old man who refused to drop out
when it was clear that he shouldn't be running anymore,
(35:11):
can he be the president who saves us from headline
Blair turns out Now NITA said they're not going to
use that system.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
We're instead we are going to devise our own standard.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And they are saying we're not going to do it
because actually we have a version that is more stringent
than the version that you guys found off on. So
I was like, Okay, more stringent, So yeah, maybe it's
even better. Sure, you know, we do a lot of
things better over here exactly, so maybe we're going to
have a better version.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
It exerts requirements that don't exist in terms of system design, construction,
and testing it in the rest of the world regulation,
and so it makes for a more expensive of less
performance system.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So you're saying that they're thinking that their system is
better because it is more restrictive, but you're saying that
what they're proposing is not going to reduce GLAR more
than the Euro version.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
It's actually going to do.
Speaker 8 (36:15):
It can't because the sort of a key difference is
that the rest of world system says that the shadows
for other drivers on the road that the system creates
shall be as dark as possible.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
The US specification says you.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
May not make that shadow any less intense then a
regular static lo being would be at that same point
in the beam. So if the other driver or the
other road user happens to be in front of your
car in a location where a regular lo being would
be very intense, well there's still going to be very intense.
(36:55):
It will be less intense than it would be from
a high beam, but it'll still be very intense because
it's as though it's a full intensity.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
LOWBOO is the baseline in the US version of what
they're proposing here, that's right. I can't do anything less
than that, whereas in the europe system, like you said,
you can get as close to as dark as possible.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
That's right.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
Maybe NITSA looked at everything and had a good reason
for deciding that the US needs a different ADB system
that that does not reduce glare as much and is
more expensive to make.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I reached out to NISA for comment, but they didn't
respond because it's going to be more expensive and it
seems like not as effective. It doesn't seem like automakers
are going to voluntarily adapt the system in the US
anytime soon.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
Well, I think I think we will see it.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
I mean, and the first US system is on the road.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
The Rivian has it, Okay, I don't know anything.
Speaker 8 (37:56):
About the the how how good the performance might be
of that system by having driven it, so I definitely
think it will be offered on premium, high end vehicles
at a high cost. I don't think it's going to
filter down to the popular priced vehicles.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, no one is. He doesn't have much hope for it.
But there's another curve ball, what's what next run. Even
in places like Europe that have ADB and you know,
(38:35):
think about glare a lot more than we do in
the US, glare complaints are still going up.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
Wow, this is a gut punch.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
This is.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
This is hard to hear. So they've got all these precautions,
all these regulations and all these stipulations are still and
people still feel like we feel.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
The fact that glare complaints, headlight glare complaints are up
all over the world, even in countries with stringent glare
controls and leaving ADB aside for the moment, because it's
it's still most cars still just have low even HIGHBI
all over the world. The fact that the glare complaints
are increasing, both here in North America where we don't
(39:17):
care about controlling glare, and in Europe and Australia and
Japan and all these other countries where they do, that
tells me that it's probably down to aspects that are
not regulated anywhere in the world, which is luminance driven
by headlight size and color, which say the bluer.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So if you had the wave of magic wand that
it is its first two things you're addressing. You're you're
changing the color of the headlands, and you're you're making
a rule about luminance.
Speaker 8 (39:44):
Ooh, that's a tough question. I often think about it
in those very terms. What you know, how many wishes
do I get with this magic wand before it burns out?
I think it's it's a really tough call.
Speaker 6 (39:57):
If I only get one.
Speaker 8 (39:59):
But if if I only get one, then it really
has to be. I wave the magic wand and poof
all cars headlamps are aimed correctly and kept that way
no matter what.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
Okay, Now if you start to tell me I have two.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Or three, you'll give you three.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
Okay, great, all right?
Speaker 8 (40:17):
So that was that was That was my first one
that you know, I waved the magic wand once poof
all vehicles have their headlamps aimed correctly and they stay
that way.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
No matter what. Ye two and three.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Yeah, they're probably going to be a limit on luminants,
which is going to mean headlamps have to get bigger again.
They can no longer be this you know, tiny little
strip of light or tiny little you know, three dots
of light and uh, sort of roll back this this
incessant trend towards bluer.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
Light, get a get a warmer white light color.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
So I asked him where do we go from here?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
We just screwed.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
He compared it to kind of like pollution and the
evolution that I had right, Like, pollution was bad for
a while and then eventually people are like this kind
of sucks.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
We don't want to live this way.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, and it was enough of a ground spell and
then things started to change. But he's like, you got
to be careful with this stuff because it's not a
simple solution. And a lot of people think glare is
so easy to solve, just do X, but it's not
science backed. He says, science is slow and incremental. You're
(41:24):
not going to have change overnight, right, so, and you
need to make sure to change that you were asking
for actually backed by science, not motion based.
Speaker 8 (41:31):
And yes, glare is infuriating. It's infuriating. You can't get
in the car and go to the grocery store for
a carton of ice cream without getting assaulted by headlight.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Claire, that is infuriating.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
And it you know, you spend time on Facebook or
Reddit or wherever, and you want to vent and you
want a rant, and it's easy to get on side
with these charlatans, and they wind up sort of using
up all the oxygen in the room and polluting the
discussion space. I want to make it really clear that
light clear is real. Yeah, it is a problem. It
(42:03):
is a very complex problem because about all these moving
parts and real lives are at stake no matter which
way you go.
Speaker 6 (42:12):
But I am.
Speaker 8 (42:13):
Optimistic because I see political will developing. I see groups
of respectable scientists really thinking about the problem in ways
that they haven't before. And so I mean, leaving aside
the fact that we're at the start of at least
a four year period where regulators and regulatory agencies are
(42:35):
are on the chopping block and scientists are likely to
be muzzled, leaving that aside for the moment, if we
can sort of carve out that luxury, I am optimistic.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (42:48):
I mean it's interesting just kind of honing in on
the why don't we just make them yellow lights instead?
Like I do wonder if that's just a kind of
a taste thing that could seems like the most realistic
thing to actually change like based on just habits or
taste where people might think it's cool and retro even
to have like that more natural light thing. So maybe
(43:12):
just out of that more than the safety glare issue.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Well, they're shooting the new fast and fears now right,
call it then, Diesel. Yeah, let's tell them, Hey, man,
for these l eds, we need to We're gonna do
some yellow light shit, get the kids thinking that yellow
is cool again.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, it's your point.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I think I would love to make yellow cool again.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Maybe that's how we change things.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
Up Fast eleven or twelve, whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, I don't know which.
Speaker 5 (43:41):
Were they might be. Yeah, I think it's eleven.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
When they were just like, well, we're gonna shoot this
in La now.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, no such thing. As produced by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman,
(44:13):
and me Devin Joseph. The theme song is by Manny.
Additional music this episode provided by Certain Self. Special thanks
to our guests this week, Daniel Stern. Daniel, thank you
for the countless hours texts, emails you sent back and
forth to make sure we get everything right for this episode.
And we're working on an episode right now about why
(44:35):
guys don't ask follow up questions, So if you have
experiences with this strong opinions, send us a voice memo
to Manny Noah devinat gmail dot com. That's d e
v a N. Make sure you're spelling that correctly. We
getting a lot of people spelling d e v o N.
Sorry that is incorrect. And make sure you go to
(44:55):
no such thing that show. You can subscribe to our
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in there as well. All Right, see you guys next week.
Hey, this is Devin. I just want to thank all
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And please give us a five star rating. It really
(00:21):
truly is just me, Manny and now are working on this.
So every post, every TikTok cut, every interview, every email
is being sent from us. If we don't have a
studio backing us, so any beta support really really makes
a huge difference to us. All right, let's get into
this week's episode. I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is Devin,
(00:42):
and this is no such thing the show where we
settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research.
On today's episode, why are headlights so motherfucking bright? And
can Biden's infrastructure bill actually be the thing that saves us?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
There's no such thing, no such thing, such thing.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Touch So the other day, it's about seven o'clock at night,
I was I was out on long Island visiting the family,
and I was driving back to Brooklyn, and this time
of year gets start pretty early, which is fine for
(01:30):
most of the driving until I live by this expressway
we called the Jackie Robinson. It is notoriously a difficult
road to drive on. The lanes are more narrow, and
it's really windy, so and there's a lot of okay,
you got to go from your far right to your
(01:50):
far left to your far right because the exit's over here,
and then you need to exit on the right. So,
especially for someone who's inexperience, it is a difficult express
to be driving through. But what makes it even harder nowadays,
especially at night, is that everybody has the fucking brightest
(02:11):
lights you have ever seen in your entire life. So
you got people behind you whose lights are so bright
they're reflecting off your rear view mirror, and going in
your eyes, got people to the rid of you their
lights are so bright it's shine in the mirror in
your eyes. And then you got people on the opposite
Saturday Expressway coming towards you, and it looks like everyone
(02:33):
just has their high beams on. It's also a road
where you just gotta go or you'll get in an
accident if you go too slow. Based but you just
gotta drive fast, even if you don't feel comfortable driving fast.
There's so many times where, especially this time I'm driving
on it, I'm like, I can only see the car
in front of me. My visibility is about ten feet.
(02:53):
I don't know where the road is going outside of that.
Luckily enough, I've done this drive enough times that I
sort of know.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
The direction that's gonna go.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But in my mind, I'm like, this feels so unsafe,
and I'm like, is this something I know?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I'm getting a little bit older.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I turned thirty two and last year I'm like, is
my eyesight.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Just so bad?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Or is is this just like a thing that everybody's
lights are just way too bright nowadays? It's making it
really hard to see.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
No I have that. I've had so many similar experiences.
There are a lot of roads in Ohio that don't
have street lights. You're only relying on your headlights.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
It's like when you're driving upstate.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, it's not just unique to Ohio, I suppose.
But I also have a stigmatism is very common. You
have it as well. Noah's been blessed with great genetics.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
I think I bad eyesip, but not that way.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And uh, you know, at night time when I'm driving,
I so often I can't fucking see and I feel
a little crazy. I don't know if this is true,
but it feels like it's gotten worse over the past
like ten fifteen years. I've been driving since age seventeen,
(04:13):
and I don't remember it being this bad.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I don't either, and that's why I'm like, is my
eyesight getting worse or the light's getting brighter?
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Right, because I.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Used to remember my parents complaining about driving at night, right, like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Know, driving and that's hard.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And I used to be like, what are you talking about,
Like it it's a little bit darker.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Yeah, it's darker. It's harder than the day.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, time it's fine and you can see. Yeah, And
now I'm like, oh, I get it. Yeah, like I
don't like driving it, like I only drive at night
when I absolutely have to.
Speaker 7 (04:40):
Yeah, my mom my mom My mom says she won't
drive at night anymore at all, Like.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I expect it, yeah, because like I'm when I'm driving
at night, it is just sort of like hoe I
don't crash.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, fully putting your life at risk.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, it's like I cannot see.
Speaker 7 (04:58):
And it's not just people with their highb on, no,
you know where it's like that's a whole other issues
exactly too bad. But it's like, all right, those are
people being inconsiderate. Yeah, the whole other issue. This is
just regular lights.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Regular issues, regular headlights.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Now it seems like everyone's headlights now are like those
really bright lights you would see when we first started
driving on like those pickup trucks that you'd be like,
what type of who is this like for like off
roading that they would be using on like you know,
like a normal street. It's like this is too much.
Now it feels like everyone that camera has those lights now.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
And then sometimes I'm like, you know, when I'm driving
my mom's car is kind of nudes a few years old.
Am I contributing to this? I don't even know how her.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
That's the funny thing, right, because I like to say
what y'all doing? Yeah, but I never I've neveryone else
is this moment and not think.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
It could be the case that like like no one
thinks it's them, yeah, of course, but or it's like
it's great, Like, wow, these lights look fantastic for.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Me, like being able to see so yeah, like oh
am I blinding everybody, But I'm wondering, you know. It's
like I guess it's great when you're driving when there
are no other cars, right, yeah, because that is true,
Like on I have experienced that on like when you're
driving a newer car versus an older car on like uh,
like you know streets like Ohio or upstate somewhere where
(06:26):
there's no street, like you.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Hit the high beings and it's just exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
It's like I can see the entire road, but then
you don't think about, oh yeah, what are the other
people who are seeing me coming at them? See, especially
like we're saying we're not even talking about hypings, we're
just talking about regular highway driving.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Yeah, we've all accepted the facts that we're just temporarily
blinding each other when we pass each other on the roads,
and that feels bad.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That's something that's like it's everyone like I can't I
have no idea where I'm going and I'm just following
the person in front of me and hopefully I don't crash,
and like we're all just like I'm like at first,
I was like, Oh, it's just me being anxious, you know,
like it's chill out like everyone else obviously can see
they're driving.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Yeah, not hundreds of accidents around me. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I feel like a conspiracy, Like what does this concerted
effort to do brighter lights?
Speaker 8 (07:24):
Where?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Why?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
And then Yeah, I'm also wondering what like the danger
levels are, like the risk?
Speaker 5 (07:31):
Have people been.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Hurt by this?
Speaker 6 (07:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (07:34):
And I'm curious to know if this is a US
issue or world wid like are we the only ones
suffering through this or in you know, in Europe and Asia?
What's it like over there because we're driving you know,
Japanese cars, Yeah exactly? Or are they making them different
for us versus over there?
Speaker 8 (07:52):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Is this legal?
Speaker 8 (07:54):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
How is this legal? How is this legal? Is this legal?
Or are people like it? Are we dealing?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Like is the brightness of the lights just stock at
this point?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Or is everyone? Is it?
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Like I'm not a car guy at all, So is
everyone just changing their headlights and making them super bright?
Speaker 7 (08:12):
And I'm just not yeah like getting the upgrade? Yeah
exactly brightness?
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, Like I'm I'm gonna go buy some lights off
Amazon and you know, take it to the shop, Like
are people doing that or is this just like out
the box?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
This is what the cars are coming with now.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Such after the break, we talked to someone who's been
obsessed with car lighting ever since he was seven years old.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, we're back.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
I'm Noah Devin.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So we're trying to figure out why the hell headlights
seem to be so bright and why is there so
much glare when we're driving on the roads at night.
So I spoke with one of the industries leading car
lighting experts. So can I have you just start by
introducing yourself.
Speaker 8 (09:05):
I'm Daniel Stern. I am the chief editor of Driving
Vision News, which is the global vehicle lighting world's technical
and trade journal of record.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
He first realized his fascination with headlights when he was
seven years.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Old and my father was driving me somewhere after dark.
I think it was maybe like a like a musical presentation,
was in first or second grade, and he showed me
how there was a low beam for when there were
other cars around, and high beam for when the road
was clear, when it was empty.
Speaker 6 (09:35):
So that was the root of it.
Speaker 8 (09:37):
And then many years later I went off to school
in dark rainy Oregon at the University of Oregon, and
it seemed to me that I really could not see
as well as I thought I should be able to
when I was driving after dark, and so I started
sort of poking around into how headlamps work and you know,
maybe how they don't work. Around that time, I made
my first trip to Europe and I saw that they
(09:59):
did a whole lot of things differently with car lighting,
and so the interest took hold, and I transferred to
the University of Michigan, where at that time, the University
of Michigan Transportation Research Institute had a terrific library full
of decades worth of research, not only about lighting, but
lighting was a lot of what they did, and so
(10:20):
I would spend hours in this library just systematically devouring
these decades worth of research, and then i'd take the
elevator up to the second or third floor and ask
questions of the researchers who were working up there. They
were very patient with me, and so that was sort
of my three year long independent study on vehicle lighting
right at one of the world's foremost research institutes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
For it, to be honest, I thought the solution air
would be pretty simple, just like turn down the LED
lights and then you'll get rid of glare. But after
talking to Daniel over the last couple of weeks, it
turns out this issue is way more complicated than any
of us anticipated in and wide so complicated. You have
to know some of the recent advancements we've made of
(11:04):
car aliding technology.
Speaker 8 (11:05):
Starting in nineteen forty, all vehicles in the United States
had what are called sealed beam headlamps.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
There for our purposes, we'll fast forward to the nineties.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
In the mid nineties, high intensity discharged headlamps came along.
Now you can have three times more light within the
headlight beam, and the light color was it had a
radical shift from sort of a warm white to a
cold white, a bluish white, and that started that There
was a spike in glare complaints when that happened, and
the official response was, yeah, you'll get used to it.
Speaker 6 (11:36):
You're only noticing it because they look different. Just look
away from the glare.
Speaker 8 (11:40):
And then in the early to mid two thousands, LEDs
advanced to the point where we could use them for headlamps,
and so headlamps once again grew brighter and bluer, and
the glare complaints spiked, and the same response sort of
came down. Yeah, you'll get used to it. It's not
really hurting out, you know, it's just just look away
(12:02):
from the glare.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And today our most headlamps led.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
Yeah, and new cars are pretty much all designed new
cars trucks as these new road going vehicles are pretty
much all designed with LED headlamps right from the start.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
All right, So for our question, why is headlight glayer
so bad? The first culprit LEDs. So the first question
I had for him is our LED lights just brighter?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Right? Is that the issue? The lights are just brighter?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So this may be, you know, a dumb and obvious question,
but our LED headlamps technically brighter.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
Well, it's a little.
Speaker 8 (12:41):
Difficult to answer that question has asked because this isn't
really when you say brighter and you think of it
in terms like you're in your dining room and you
turn the dimmer up or down to make the dining
table brighter or dimmer, this is a lot more complex
than that. A headlight beam isn't just a floodlight or
a spotlight that you know that is brighter or dimmer.
It's actually a very complex pattern of light with areas
(13:04):
defined by what are called test points. A test point
might have a minimum required intensity, a maximum required intensity,
or both, and a low beam in particular is super
complex because you need to have high intensity for the
driver to see far enough down the road right next
to low intensity to protect other drivers on the road
from glare.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
So I'm actually gonna share this video if you guess
that'll sort of exemplify what he's saying.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Here, Great, because that didn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Or yeah, when it's shining on the wall to a
little bit before, just like pause it on that, Okay,
I mean trying to break in this down because I
know this is kind of hard to visualize, especially for
a podcast. But imagine you're shining your headlights in a
garage on a wall. You're probably thinking of something similar
to a flashlight, right, like pretty even light, maybe a
little bit more oval or rectangular, because these are headlamps
(14:00):
versus a flashlight. But that's not really the case. So
what do they actually look like? All right, So let's
imagine for a second and stick with me that you're
some abstract artists and you're painting Luigi Manngioni's latest mugshot.
Because you're an abstract artist, you're not just gonna draw
straight lines and fill on the eyebrows completely. Instead, you're
(14:23):
gonna put maybe a blob of paint here, maybe no
paint on this area of the eyebrow, maybe a little
bit of paint down below. And that's how the headlight
beam operates as well. There are parts in the beam
that have really intense light, and there are parts within
the beam that have almost no light at all. And
his varying degree of light intensity is really purposeful. The
(14:45):
headlight is designed so that the person driving has maximum
visibility but limiting the amount of light that's being thrown
to other people from oncoming traffic.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Oh okay, so the gradient is like you're on one
side of the highway driving north, the other side of
the highways driving south, and the gradient is blocking people
who are going south from like being blinded by your
light exactly.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
Yeah, because if it was all that intensity, it would
be really impossible to see.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
So it's really very complex.
Speaker 8 (15:16):
That said. Yes, in a word, yes, today's headlamps are
their higher intensity, They put a lot more light out,
They put out much wider beams.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
For our purposes, we'll say they're brighter, although technically, you know,
I don't want I don't I don't want Daniel to
yell at me.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, it's not so simple.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
They're more intense.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Is that a good yes, Yeah, we'll say intense.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I don't know if people be okay with that. And then
there's another reason why they appear so bright. You talk
about how with led lights it's more intensity from a
smaller I don't know with the technical term for it,
but like a smaller opening, right, it's coming from a
smaller space.
Speaker 6 (15:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:54):
The technical term is luminance, and in real simple words,
it means how right something looks. You can also think
of it as light density. If you have a certain
amount of light coming from a small area, uh, it's
going to look brighter than that very same amount of
light coming from a large area because that given amount
(16:18):
of light with a large area, it's spread over a
over a big surface, whereas with a small area it's
sort of condensed into a point instead of a large surface.
You can sort of you can think of it as
you say, you're putting a certain amount of water through
a hose.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
If you have a.
Speaker 8 (16:38):
Tiny little hole at the end of the nozzle you're
going to have like a jet stream.
Speaker 6 (16:41):
You can you can powerwash.
Speaker 8 (16:43):
Your driveway if if you have a big sort of
a big watering looks like the end of a watering can,
sprinkling end of a watering can, well you'll have a
nice sort of gentle rain shower, same amount of water,
but it's but it's behaving very differently and light does
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's a really good visual way of thinking about it,
all right. So that's the second reason why LED's a
pair rider is because the light.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Is coming from a smaller opening.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And then the last culprit is the color blue.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
This is really interesting, actually, there's a lot of really
sturdy science showing that for any given intensity white light
that contains more blue creates much greater discomfort clayer than
light that has less blue. So with that on the table,
it's been found that just to put rough numbers on it,
if you have two headlamps that measure say a thousand candela,
(17:38):
the candela.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
Being the measurement unit for intensity.
Speaker 8 (17:41):
Two headlamps putting a thousand candela towards an oncoming driver's eyes.
One of the headlamps is a halogen lamp and it
has sort of a yellowish white, warm white light color.
The other headlamp is an LED. It has a cold white,
a bluish white light color. In order for those two
headlamps to feel the same to the oncoming driver in
terms of how they experience the glare, the halogen headlamp
(18:02):
would have to be producing at least sixteen hundred candela
to match the feeling of glare created by the LED headlamp.
And the kicker of that is the sort of the punchline,
maybe it's a punch in the gut or a punch
in the eyes, is that you don't get sixty percent
better seeing with the bluer light. You don't get any
(18:22):
better seeing with the bluer light. You just get you
do have a sort of a feeling as though it's brighter,
and you have this much greater sensation of glare caused
by the bluer light.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
This was really crazy to me, right, because our eyes
are more sensitive to blue light, so it appears brighter
to us, but it actually doesn't help us see any better,
and then it just causes more glare when we're on
the road.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Well, so then why why do we have them?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Because it looks cool.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Okay, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So let's recap for LEDs. Yes, they're more powerful than
previous headlamps. They are here to be brighter because they're
coming from smaller openings.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And then we got blue, which creates more glayer. And
it also brings us to our second culprit, which is
called headlight.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Aim hhmm you know what that is.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
You don't want to be headlight aim.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I can guess if you want.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
I've noticed some headlights have like lids on them, all right.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Is it like the direct spot where it's most intense
closer closer.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, you guys didn't do the research.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
What I looked like a car lighting specialist, all right.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So we talked about blue. We talked about how people
like the look of the blue lights.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
A lot of people with older cars will go out
and buy LED light bulbs and put them in their
older cars.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
I remember that with like James Bond movies, they made
it a point for blue lights in the head.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Blue lights, right.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So Daniel said, there's a very big problem with this,
which is the LED lights are not designed to go
in these older cars.
Speaker 8 (20:15):
You can go on Amazon eBay. You can walk into
parts stores all over the place you can buy these
LED bulbs claiming to update your halogen headlamps. In the
United States, the major brands market them with a nudge
in a wink, saying, you know, these are only for
fog lamps. Don't put them in your headlamps, right because
(20:38):
fog light bulbs are not regulated in the United States
where head light bulbs are. Of course, fog lamps and
headlamps use a lot of the same types of bulbs,
and people are you know, people put them in their
head lamps and they think, oh, hey, well now I've
got led headlamps.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
And look how bright they are. It's a different kind
of legs.
Speaker 8 (20:55):
It's very much like putting on somebody else's eyeglasses. You
might find someone else's eyeglasses that look terrific on your face,
but because the lenses are not for your eyes, you're
not going to see properly, and you're going to give
yourself a headache and you're going to injure your eyes
doing it. So in the same way, you put LED
bulbs in a halogen headlamp, you might think they look
(21:17):
terrific and they have that blue white appearance just like
the newer cars, and you might even think you can
see better, but in fact the light distribution is all
screwed up. You've got way too much light in places
where that's dangerous, you've got not enough light in places
where that's dangerous. And most of all, you've got a
whole lot more glare. So and it's very poorly policed
(21:37):
in most of North America. So you know, these things
widely available and nobody's giving tickets. Well, yeah, that's a
major source of glare.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
On the road.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Back on this alignment bit, right, so people are getting
bulbs that aren't meant for their cars. Is there also
just an issue with alignment period with people who have
led headlamps initially, very much so.
Speaker 8 (22:03):
And it's not just with people who have legitimate lab headlamps.
Headlamp aim is, by a giant margin, the primary main
determinant not only of how well the driver can see,
but how much glear they're throwing around. And headlamps, as
they have evolved over the last five six decades, as
they've grown more and more intense, they've grown more and
(22:26):
more sensitive to miss aim.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
This could be from something small like say you have
a lot of people in your car, so you know,
the car shifts a little bit, so not the lights aren't.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Exactly where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
It could be from when you're driving, if you hit
a bump, if the road is angled a little bit,
or it could be something that you know over time,
your headlights shift.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
In the past. You know, a headlamp of the nineteen
sixties or seventies, maybe eighties, if it was aimed you know,
a degree or two this way or that can't really
exert a huge change in the amount of light that
the driver had to see on the road or the
amount of glare they.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
Were throwing around. Might look a little brighter.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
As it passes you, but it's still a low beam headline.
But a modern headlight beam which is very wide and
has a sharp cut off at the top.
Speaker 6 (23:12):
Of the low beam, where below this.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
Cutoff line is very high intensity and above the cut
off line is low intensity is dark. Low beams have
such high intensity below that cutoff, the low beam aimed
a degree or to too high could easily qualify as
a high beam.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But that explains why we were saying. When the first
time we talked right it felt like, why are people
driving around with their high beams on. Right, It's like, oh, no,
they're not. Their alignment is just off and the low
beam now is you know, so much more advanced than
it was in the past that it feels like people
have their high beams on when they're driving at you.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Wow, this is this is nuts. That's huge because I
had no faith in humanity.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Really thought everyone was just driving around.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I thought people were just like their eyesight was getting
worse to something and they're just ripping the lights on
like every time.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, feels like headlight aim is not part of the
inspection process. So when you go get your car inspected,
headlight aim is not something that they're checking.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
Yeah, the the aim is super important, and unfortunately it
is almost impossible in North America. We just don't pay
attention to headlight aim. It's almost impossible anywhere in North America.
Even if you're standing there with a fistful of cash
and saying, somebody, take my money and aim my head
lamps correctly, it's really hard to get it done.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
People had to auto shop aren't trained for that.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
No, it's a really request exactly, at least in the US.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
And some states you don't get your car inspected at all,
like the Great State of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's why people get uh, the car is registrated in Ohio, right,
the shitty cars really?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Okay, So to recap, because led have lamps have such
a small margin of error before they create a ton
of glare, alignment is super important. But in the US
this is not something we traditionally care about. And then, lastly,
so our last rezone. Why is glare more intense now
than it seems like it used to be?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Part of it is.
Speaker 8 (25:26):
Us as we get older, and this is really unfortunate.
This really sucks. As we get older, we need a
lot more light to see any given thing, and at
the same time, we get a whole lot more sensitive
to glare.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
So when we're.
Speaker 8 (25:41):
Sixty, we need about triple the light that we needed
when we were twenty to see any given thing under
any given conditions at night, and we are massively more
sensitive to glare. So, you know, if only one of
those two things were true, it would be really easy
to fix. But both of them are true, and so
(26:02):
if you address the one thing, you aggravate the other.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
So we're more sensitive to light, yes, and need more,
I need it more. Yes, it's not a good place
to be.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Is not a good place going to be.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
This dichotomy sort of speaks to the really, really tough
situation that the United States federal government finds itself in
right now. They have to balance people seeing with also
thinking about lair, which makes it harder for people to see.
(26:35):
So I was curious, like, are is somebody working on this,
you know, someone in the Trump illustration, like going to
create a rule that your headlights can be only but
so bright because you know there's so much claire in
it's causing a huge issue.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And he said that something like.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Lair is both hard to define and then also hard
to make.
Speaker 8 (26:57):
Rules for the fact is this is this is not
symmetrical safety situation. Yes, glare can be unsafe, absolutely no
debate about that, and reach sure can be uncomfortable, but.
Speaker 6 (27:08):
It's not a one to one thing.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
Unfortunately, up to a fairly large degree, more light from
the headlights means better safety, means less likelihood of a crash.
So let me sort of address how this knot is tied.
I think Unfortunately, for a long time, particularly in North America,
there's been a tendency for the official response to glare
(27:32):
complaints to be you'll get used to it or you won't,
but just look away from it, just deal with it,
grate your teeth. It's not actually a safety thing. We
think glair is bad on principle, we're going to regulate it.
Speaker 6 (27:42):
Can't do that in North America.
Speaker 8 (27:43):
You have to say, well, here is concrete proof of
the costs of glare in terms of the crashes that
it actually causes, and so can we can regulate to
the degree necessary to countervail those costs and that damage.
It's essentially impossible, and so that's why we have so
much less regulation of headlight glayer in North America than
(28:07):
they have in Europe and in Asia and Australia and
other countries that use a different regulatory system.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So you're saying that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
so they have not addressed this glare because there's not
a lot of concrete sort of numbers that we have
that glare cause x amount of accidents. Therefore we need
to address it by doing this.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
But it gets a lot more interesting than that, because
for most of the twentieth century from the dawn of
electric headlights on cars. Europe had much more stringent glare
control than the United States did.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Can Europe actually save us? We'll find out after the
break in Europe they have much more stringent their controls. Okay,
(29:27):
so here's three things that Europe does that we do
not do. Number one, so their headlight aim is much
lower than ours.
Speaker 8 (29:38):
You're in your Honda Civic, You're in your Chevrolet Corvette.
You're in You're in a car. Well behind you is
a pickup trucker, an suv, and it's head lamps are right,
and they're way up in the air, and they're right
even with your car's mirrors. Yeah, you're gonna get blasted.
The rest of world regulations do two things to address that.
(30:00):
You can't you can't completely cure it because this is
just physics.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, some cars are taller than others.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Some cars are taller than others. The regulations in the
rest of the world do two things to limit that.
They have a lower maximum headlamp mounting hype and they
say if you have a headlamp that is mounted higher,
it must be aimed lower. Whereas in the American regulation,
the maximum mounting height is higher, which automakers like because
(30:31):
you know, big tough trucks and SUVs, and any given
headlamp gets aimed the same, whether it's way up high
on a forward exclusion or way down low on uh,
you know, on a corvette.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Number two, So inspections in Europe they have headlight aim
as part of that process, you know we talked about
in the US, we don't do that.
Speaker 8 (30:55):
They have periodic vehicle inspections that include headlamp aim and adjustment.
The cars with high output headlamps have leveling systems to
compensate at least for vehicle loading, and the fancier systems
compensate for irregularities in the road.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And in number three, they have this magical system called ADB.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
ADB a dB.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
What is ADB, you.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
May be asking, Am I am actually a dirty bastard?
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (31:28):
ADB Adaptive driving Beam has been around for it's getting
on for two decades now in Europe. A good ADB
system can give the driver thirty meters about one hundred
feet greater seeing distance without more glare than a low beam,
which is a huge accomplishment. I mean, that's you know,
(31:50):
the problem has always been that low beams don't give
long enough seeing distance for the speeds that people actually drive,
so we overdrive our low beams and we hit things,
while high beams produce way too much clear for use
in traffic, and so ADB adaptive driving beam meekly resolves
that problem to a great degree.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
And for those who.
Speaker 8 (32:11):
Don't know what ADB does is it takes that high
beam pattern and it puts dark spots and slices in it,
following the locations of other road users' eyes.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Gotcha, Okay, so there's a if there's an oncoming car,
it'll try to limit the amount of light that's going
into that oncoming drivers.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
Hot, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Listen to the lengths that Europeans go through to just
like have like basic care about each other. It's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
This kind of blew my mind when I found out
this was a thing that existed, especially because we talked
so much about clear Obviously, he said there's some limitations
to it. Yeah, if you get in a city and
there's just cars everywhere, Yeah, there's only so much it
can do, and there's you know, then it.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Just results back to the lot.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
But I was like, oh, this is really interesting because
it's a combination, but it also reduces glare. It seems
like best case scenario, right, It's like you get as
much visibility as possible, but you're also not obstructing other
people driving.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It used to be.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Just in high end cars, but now it's in you know,
like the version of a camera essentially, so it's in
all all the cars. We do not have this technology
in the US, So.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
This isn't it's not like a regulation, is it, Like,
do they need to have it?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
It's optional.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
Yeah, But because it's so, but it's common, yeah, yeah,
I mean why not.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
So if you're, for example, Toyota and you're making the
same fucking car, but one of them is going to
Europe and ones going to the US, they're like actively
keeping ADB in the European one and not in the
American one.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So I looked into it, and this is true. We
have cars in the US that have ADB functionality, but
it's been disabled. As people have been complaining about glare,
there's been a growing movement in the US to get ADB.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
ADB movement in or version of ADB in the US.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
The US devises and promulgates its own regulations, which are
in many cases quite different to the rest of world regulation.
When it looked like ADB was going to gain traction
and be a thing, NITSA went to the Society of
Automotive Engineers.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
So the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration otherwise known as
NITSA told this group, hey, translate to European ADB for
US regulations. And the group was able to do it
in record time.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
And NITSA said, yeah, thanks, but psych we're not going
to use that. And then things got really interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
So here's what we get to President Biden in his
infrastructure bail, which eventually became an infrastructural law, Congress tilled NITZA, Hey,
actually you need to adapt this ADB system that that
group put together. Is this actually Joe Biden's legacy instead
of the stubborn old man who refused to drop out
when it was clear that he shouldn't be running anymore,
(35:11):
can he be the president who saves us from headline
Blair turns out Now NITA said they're not going to
use that system.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
We're instead we are going to devise our own standard.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And they are saying we're not going to do it
because actually we have a version that is more stringent
than the version that you guys found off on. So
I was like, Okay, more stringent, So yeah, maybe it's
even better. Sure, you know, we do a lot of
things better over here exactly, so maybe we're going to
have a better version.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
It exerts requirements that don't exist in terms of system design, construction,
and testing it in the rest of the world regulation,
and so it makes for a more expensive of less
performance system.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
So you're saying that they're thinking that their system is
better because it is more restrictive, but you're saying that
what they're proposing is not going to reduce GLAR more
than the Euro version.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
It's actually going to do.
Speaker 8 (36:15):
It can't because the sort of a key difference is
that the rest of world system says that the shadows
for other drivers on the road that the system creates
shall be as dark as possible.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
The US specification says you.
Speaker 8 (36:33):
May not make that shadow any less intense then a
regular static lo being would be at that same point
in the beam. So if the other driver or the
other road user happens to be in front of your
car in a location where a regular lo being would
be very intense, well there's still going to be very intense.
(36:55):
It will be less intense than it would be from
a high beam, but it'll still be very intense because
it's as though it's a full intensity.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
LOWBOO is the baseline in the US version of what
they're proposing here, that's right. I can't do anything less
than that, whereas in the europe system, like you said,
you can get as close to as dark as possible.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
That's right.
Speaker 8 (37:20):
Maybe NITSA looked at everything and had a good reason
for deciding that the US needs a different ADB system
that that does not reduce glare as much and is
more expensive to make.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I reached out to NISA for comment, but they didn't
respond because it's going to be more expensive and it
seems like not as effective. It doesn't seem like automakers
are going to voluntarily adapt the system in the US
anytime soon.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
Well, I think I think we will see it.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
I mean, and the first US system is on the road.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
The Rivian has it, Okay, I don't know anything.
Speaker 8 (37:56):
About the the how how good the performance might be
of that system by having driven it, so I definitely
think it will be offered on premium, high end vehicles
at a high cost. I don't think it's going to
filter down to the popular priced vehicles.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, no one is. He doesn't have much hope for it.
But there's another curve ball, what's what next run. Even
in places like Europe that have ADB and you know,
(38:35):
think about glare a lot more than we do in
the US, glare complaints are still going up.
Speaker 5 (38:41):
Wow, this is a gut punch.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
This is.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
This is hard to hear. So they've got all these precautions,
all these regulations and all these stipulations are still and
people still feel like we feel.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
The fact that glare complaints, headlight glare complaints are up
all over the world, even in countries with stringent glare
controls and leaving ADB aside for the moment, because it's
it's still most cars still just have low even HIGHBI
all over the world. The fact that the glare complaints
are increasing, both here in North America where we don't
(39:17):
care about controlling glare, and in Europe and Australia and
Japan and all these other countries where they do, that
tells me that it's probably down to aspects that are
not regulated anywhere in the world, which is luminance driven
by headlight size and color, which say the bluer.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
So if you had the wave of magic wand that
it is its first two things you're addressing. You're you're
changing the color of the headlands, and you're you're making
a rule about luminance.
Speaker 8 (39:44):
Ooh, that's a tough question. I often think about it
in those very terms. What you know, how many wishes
do I get with this magic wand before it burns out?
I think it's it's a really tough call.
Speaker 6 (39:57):
If I only get one.
Speaker 8 (39:59):
But if if I only get one, then it really
has to be. I wave the magic wand and poof
all cars headlamps are aimed correctly and kept that way
no matter what.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
Okay, Now if you start to tell me I have two.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Or three, you'll give you three.
Speaker 6 (40:16):
Okay, great, all right?
Speaker 8 (40:17):
So that was that was That was my first one
that you know, I waved the magic wand once poof
all vehicles have their headlamps aimed correctly and they stay
that way.
Speaker 6 (40:25):
No matter what. Ye two and three.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
Yeah, they're probably going to be a limit on luminants,
which is going to mean headlamps have to get bigger again.
They can no longer be this you know, tiny little
strip of light or tiny little you know, three dots
of light and uh, sort of roll back this this
incessant trend towards bluer.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
Light, get a get a warmer white light color.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
So I asked him where do we go from here?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
We just screwed.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
He compared it to kind of like pollution and the
evolution that I had right, Like, pollution was bad for
a while and then eventually people are like this kind
of sucks.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
We don't want to live this way.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, and it was enough of a ground spell and
then things started to change. But he's like, you got
to be careful with this stuff because it's not a
simple solution. And a lot of people think glare is
so easy to solve, just do X, but it's not
science backed. He says, science is slow and incremental. You're
(41:24):
not going to have change overnight, right, so, and you
need to make sure to change that you were asking
for actually backed by science, not motion based.
Speaker 8 (41:31):
And yes, glare is infuriating. It's infuriating. You can't get
in the car and go to the grocery store for
a carton of ice cream without getting assaulted by headlight.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
Claire, that is infuriating.
Speaker 8 (41:42):
And it you know, you spend time on Facebook or
Reddit or wherever, and you want to vent and you
want a rant, and it's easy to get on side
with these charlatans, and they wind up sort of using
up all the oxygen in the room and polluting the
discussion space. I want to make it really clear that
light clear is real. Yeah, it is a problem. It
(42:03):
is a very complex problem because about all these moving
parts and real lives are at stake no matter which
way you go.
Speaker 6 (42:12):
But I am.
Speaker 8 (42:13):
Optimistic because I see political will developing. I see groups
of respectable scientists really thinking about the problem in ways
that they haven't before. And so I mean, leaving aside
the fact that we're at the start of at least
a four year period where regulators and regulatory agencies are
(42:35):
are on the chopping block and scientists are likely to
be muzzled, leaving that aside for the moment, if we
can sort of carve out that luxury, I am optimistic.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (42:48):
I mean it's interesting just kind of honing in on
the why don't we just make them yellow lights instead?
Like I do wonder if that's just a kind of
a taste thing that could seems like the most realistic
thing to actually change like based on just habits or
taste where people might think it's cool and retro even
to have like that more natural light thing. So maybe
(43:12):
just out of that more than the safety glare issue.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Well, they're shooting the new fast and fears now right,
call it then, Diesel. Yeah, let's tell them, Hey, man,
for these l eds, we need to We're gonna do
some yellow light shit, get the kids thinking that yellow
is cool again.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yeah, it's your point.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I think I would love to make yellow cool again.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Maybe that's how we change things.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
Up Fast eleven or twelve, whatever it is.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, I don't know which.
Speaker 5 (43:41):
Were they might be. Yeah, I think it's eleven.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
When they were just like, well, we're gonna shoot this
in La now.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, no such thing. As produced by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman,
(44:13):
and me Devin Joseph. The theme song is by Manny.
Additional music this episode provided by Certain Self. Special thanks
to our guests this week, Daniel Stern. Daniel, thank you
for the countless hours texts, emails you sent back and
forth to make sure we get everything right for this episode.
And we're working on an episode right now about why
(44:35):
guys don't ask follow up questions, So if you have
experiences with this strong opinions, send us a voice memo
to Manny Noah devinat gmail dot com. That's d e
v a N. Make sure you're spelling that correctly. We
getting a lot of people spelling d e v o N.
Sorry that is incorrect. And make sure you go to
(44:55):
no such thing that show. You can subscribe to our
newsletter and we dropped some extras for all the episodes
in there as well. All Right, see you guys next week.
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