[HN Gopher] US safety regulations make it difficult to automaker...
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US safety regulations make it difficult to automakers to add
adaptive headlights
Author : egorfine
Score : 68 points
Date : 2024-02-16 08:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| kbos87 wrote:
| NHTSA instead focuses its resources on forcing a draconian
| "recall" on Tesla to increase the font size of the brake icon.
|
| I know these aren't one and the same and they should be able to
| do two things at once, but there are choices being made about
| where to put resources.
| kj4ips wrote:
| > NHTSA instead focuses its resources on forcing a draconian
| "recall" on Tesla to increase the font size of the brake icon.
|
| An update that probably took an engineer less than a day, and
| CI mere hours to build? The recall terminology is a little
| silly with an agile-ish developed product, but they really
| should have done it right the first time. It's not like the
| standard is hard to read. It probably only bubbled up to the
| top when someone who has designed these kinds of things in the
| past noticed it was out of spec, and complained.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It was in every vehicle back to 2012... And was seen by every
| driver every day.
|
| Hard to argue that this rule breaking is a problem when
| literally millions of people saw the rule breaking on
| literally billions of occasions before the violation was
| noticed.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Tesla is not a martyr, and what everyone saying things like
| this are doing is actually arguing for special treatment for
| Tesla.
|
| Lincoln had a recall on my Navigator that resulted in them
| sending me two pieces of paper and saying "place these pages
| between page 165 and 166 of your user manual". The pages were
| related to something entirely benign, related to adjusting the
| seat for the captain's chairs in the second row.
| dopylitty wrote:
| As far as I can tell the US doesn't regulate cars at all. How
| else would these insane monster trucks and dangerous and barely
| tested "self driving" (into a fire truck) cars be allowed on the
| road?
| kj4ips wrote:
| In most states, cars themselves don't have many
| requirements/checks post-sale. Some states check that emissions
| equipment is still functioning, but because this is often done
| by third parties, cheating is rampant. Still some states
| require safety inspections, but that is far in the minority.
|
| ADAS systems are mostly legal because they are officially
| "assistance" systems, and the driver is still responsible for
| whatever the vehicle does. There is exactly one commercially
| non-assistance "self driving" system that I am aware of in the
| world, and it's made by Mercedes Benz, and is only operable in
| very specific situations. MB takes responsibility for what
| happens when the vehicle is operating in this mode.
| randcraw wrote:
| I've lived in several states with annual safety/emissions
| inspections (VA, PA). Virginia certainly used to check the
| aim of headlights (30+ years ago), but probably don't any
| more. I imagine that the wide range of headlight designs
| today makes adjustment too complex for most inspectors to do,
| much less owners.
| lupire wrote:
| What do you think happens in a non-self driving car wen the
| driver accelerated into a firetruck?
| mplewis wrote:
| That doesn't generally happen with human drivers.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Whitney Houston drove her car into a transit bus.
| klyrs wrote:
| In that case, a person is 100% at fault for pressing the gas
| pedal, and there's a good chance that responsible party gets
| real consequences. In the Tesla case, there's a good chance
| that the meatbag is just a stooge and the algorithm gets to
| keep on driving.
| teeray wrote:
| I would just like for people to get pulled over for the blinding
| illegal LED headlight conversions
| traverseda wrote:
| But I need to keep up with the new generation of blinding legal
| headlights.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| At this point they're so common that I think they're not even
| the conversions, it's just manufacturers putting in lights that
| are misaimed, too bright, or it's the fact that many pickup
| trucks have hoods at my standing eye level.
|
| At least when I see the underglow LEDs I think "ha that's kinda
| cute, wonder when he's getting pulled over". Those don't bother
| me as much.
| saltcured wrote:
| You have to look closely but without blinding yourself!
|
| I see three major categories of blinding lights on the roads
| in California:
|
| New cars that are really bright and with appropriate beam
| shape/cut-offs, but annoying on hills or because of the
| taller cars you mentioned.
|
| New or not-so-old cars where the driver is using the wrong
| light settings. That is fog lights and/or high-beams in
| inappropriate conditions or sometimes the opposite: somehow
| having daytime running LEDs at night instead of proper
| headlight activation.
|
| The aftermarket retrofits which have none of the appropriate
| beam shape/cut-offs or projection. This can be a bit like the
| daytime running LEDs above in being diffuse but much brighter
| and often obviously anachronistic on some older car I know is
| from the basic halogen sealed-beam era. But it also includes
| trucks with various "offroad" lights being inappropriately
| activated on streets.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| In the past few years, police have mostly stopped enforcement
| of minor vehicle laws like window tint, blinding headlights,
| loud stereos, and illegal modifications. While some people are
| assholes, I suspect most people simply don't know how poorly
| aligned and blinding their headlights are. Maybe stores like
| AutoZone will start offering easy tests for customers to detect
| such issues.
| m463 wrote:
| I suspect legal headlights have just become harder on the eyes
| in general. To me older incandescent headlights seemed to have
| a yellower light coming from a much broader area.
|
| Newer headlights seem to have the max lumens possible, much
| bluer/higher energy light, and from almost a point source.
| 0x38B wrote:
| There was a lifted pickup truck that was stuck behind me on my
| road a couple times in the evening. Absolutely blinding
| headlights: my car was sharply outlined by their beams, which
| went on to light up the road far brighter than my brights ever
| could - the brightest lights I've ever been blinded by.
|
| If they ever blinded an oncoming police car, my faith in
| humanity makes me hope they'd get pulled over...
| magnetowasright wrote:
| Low beams are dangerous? Not really the focus of the article but
| that's a baffling statement to me. Like, sure, of course more
| light is better but unless your lights aren't adjusted correctly,
| they're good? Great, even? I don't feel the need to blast my high
| beams into people's windows when driving down a lit residential
| street. That's weird and rude.
|
| Does anyone know if these headlight technologies are used in
| Australia? If it's responsible for people no longer bothering to
| turn off their high beams when noticing other drivers' headlights
| shining over a hill or around a corner (and now blinding others)
| then nah keep that rubbish off the roads. Maybe having warmer
| temperature lights would lessen the impact of these high beams
| being blasted into my skull?
|
| Old man yells at cloud, and it's me. I would just like my young,
| astigmatism-free eyes to not be burned so I can actually drive at
| night again lol.
|
| People have been waiting for the FDA (?) to update several
| regulations around products used in make up for years while other
| parts of the world are a bit better on keeping up with that
| stuff. I just think that's interesting, on the topic of
| regulations.
| thedanbob wrote:
| > Low beams are dangerous? Not really the focus of the article
| but that's a baffling statement to me. Like, sure, of course
| more light is better but unless your lights aren't adjusted
| correctly, they're good? Great, even? I don't feel the need to
| blast my high beams into people's windows when driving down a
| lit residential street. That's weird and rude.
|
| They're definitely dangerous when you're on an unlit county
| road with deer-inhabited woods on either side.
| stonogo wrote:
| No they're not. Driving faster than your light coverage is
| what's dangerous. You can drive on low beams all your life if
| you slow down.
| midasuni wrote:
| Good. Adaptive headlights are won't he U.K. and there are many
| cases when they don't work and end up blinding people.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| > bicyclist by the side of the road can still be seen clearly
| while other drivers sharing the road can see, too.
|
| Ahh yes, my absolute favorite thing, when I'm on my bike and
| drivers turn their highbeams on to see me better, putting me into
| a situation where I have to stop (which isn't really an option
| because I have no brakes on my bike) or continue forward on pure
| faith. Luckily I can cache like 8 seconds of road so it's usually
| fine, but it does make me want to ban cars even more than normal.
| While I'm at it, please ban super bright bike lights too, front
| and rear, they're so antisocial. Very cool that you can see at
| the expense of everyone around you.
| em-bee wrote:
| why do you not have brakes on your bike?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Probably riding a fixie. But to me, basic common sense would
| imply that riding a bicycle on the road or even in a bike
| lane without brakes isn't a wise idea. (But also, of all the
| bicyclist stereotypes, the fixie rider would be the 'worst').
| alphabettsy wrote:
| My biggest concern is the existing vehicles on the road with
| illegal bulb conversions, poorly aimed headlights or just
| inexplicably driving around with the high beams on.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > inexplicably driving around with the high beams on.
|
| It's not inexplicable, it's the "fuck you, I got mine", "I'm
| the most important person on the road". It's the same attitude
| that people will be in a line of cars and they'll pull out to
| get two or three cars ahead, or just bully their way ahead,
| because it's _obviously_ more important that they get where
| they 're going than you do.
| randcraw wrote:
| Based on my strongly negative experience with automatic high
| beams (2019 Honda Ridgeline), I'm very dubious that smart
| headlights will hit the intended target, much less continue to do
| so as the vehicle's hardware ages.
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(page generated 2024-02-17 23:01 UTC)