re: Is it just me or are car lights brighter these days?

My theory is that it has more to do with the color temperature than the brightness. Notice that the most annoying ones have a blueish color (high color temperature) instead of the yellowish color (low color temp) that cars use to all have.

I’m not big on regulation, but I wish there would be a push to have headlights with low color temps.

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It's not just you. Over the past year it seems to have gotten totally out of hand.

It's two things - one is that the bulbs are just too fricking bright. Second though is a lot of people actually have their brights on, you can see the blue icon on their dash sometimes. I think that there are so many mouth breathing fricking retards out there, that a lot of people just don't know about high beams.

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I do a lot of driving and have noticed the same thing. I’m a typical evening I’ll see numerous cars driving either with no lights or their bright lights on. It’s like people have lost the ability to use their headlights.

Plus there are more trucks/SUVs on the road these days. They sit up higher and shine right into your eyes if you are driving a regular sedan.

My biggest gripe is with police lights, especially the ones on the new state police Tahoe's. They're legit dangerously bright.

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I also notice the same difference with flashlights- blindingly bright.

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I just got a new baton type flashlight to go with one of those old style yellow ones that are basically square with the huge battery. Like night and day between the two as far as brightness.

The new flashlight has 3 modes, super bright, not quite as bright and strobe. The first time I hit the button and the strobe came on I had flashbacks of the 70's disco craze in the clubs of the day.

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I do a lot of driving and have noticed the same thing. I’m a typical evening I’ll see numerous cars driving either with no lights or their bright lights on. It’s like people have lost the ability to use their headlights.

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I had a Ford Escape as a work vehicle once. The interior lights were the same whether you had the headlights on or not and the running lights had just enough light to make it look like the headlights were on. Couple that with a headlight switch without an auto feature and it was pretty dangerous. You could be driving in the middle of the night and have no clue that your headlights weren't on. I have no idea how that got past the engineers.

They are brighter

Aftermarket HIDs in halogen housings for which they weren't designed for. It just scatters the beam.

That's because modem cars have their dash lights on all the time and people forget.

The conversation about lights being brighter always makes me think of Peggy Hill


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