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