Annual Old Man Rant
 

Ok, as winter arrives it is time for the quarterly old man ranting session. There are seasonal things we rant about, year after year. Winter Rant Edition now.

Here is one of mine: WTF is with modern car headlights? I remember when headlights were stringently designed with a sharp cutoff to avoid glare into oncoming drivers’ eyes. Did the rules change? Now every other car has what seem like welding arcs on the front, with the weirdo shaped angry eye headlights the worst. These aren’t lifted trucks with KC Hiliters at head level, these are ordinary soccer moms driving around with dwarf stars on their cars. Maybe we need to do the Blues Brothers and wear sunglasses at night.

My rant concludes. You pick it up.

I think the cars are getting taller and we’re getting shorter!

Headlights have REALLY been bugging me too lately ... both oncoming and approaching in my mirrors ... I feel like Stevie Wonder at times ... it's redonkulous ... and unsafe!

Thread title should be changed to "Weekly OMR" tho ....

Nice rant btw :)

You call that a rant? Why in my day, old guys knew how to rage on about anything you could bring up. Kids these days don't know the first thing about ranting! Standards are slipping!

There are indeed vehicles out there with marginal control of their light pattern. I have two problems. There are folks who seem to forget to dim their GD lights when meeting or following another vehicle. The other problem is with my eyes. It takes longer for my night vision to get up to speed, as it were, so the first 5 minutes after leaving home are not comfortable.

Best
Les

I was wondering about the same.

Are my eyes getting older and I'm a grouchy old bastard???

Are the new lights so strong with scattered light patterns blinding everyone???

For me has become very dangerous at night. Blindly for a few seconds. I hope nothing is on the way.

Arthritis is catching up with me. I take 600 mg of Ibuprofen in the AM just to get my hands going. Any activity that involves a pinching movement using my thumbs (tying shoes, picking up a drinking glass, holding a book, etc) hurts like a MoFo.
Arthritis in my hips makes walking painful.
I've already had the joints in my toes replaced. Hips are next I guess.

I think most newer cars have better, sharper light cutoff than older cars, but the headlights are brighter, and I suspect a big part of it is how older eyes light adapt (more slowly).

I do think that there are folks that drive with their high beams when they shouldn't. I fairly regularly drive the interstate in the wee hours of the morning and I see folks driving with vehicles in front of and behind them in very rural areas turn high beams on and off when there are other vehicles too close to them. I suspect those are 1 clueless people and 2 folks with crappy eyes (that are likely also clueless).

I also wonder if there are folks that have upgraded headlights to brighter lights with older poor cutoff housings, but I think those are not that common.

I had no idea that was a thing.

Keep on keepin' on, sir!

All of the above about headlights.
I actually dimmed the rearview on my 996 last night because of some wanker behind me. Then I sped up and left him in my dust.

I have always thought it sadly ironic that when most of us were young and had sharp reflexes and good eyesight we couldn’t afford a fast car, and by the time we CAN afford a fancy fast car our eyes are shot and reflexes are a memory.

As a corollary to the headlight rant, I see about 5% of the local population who drive in the city with no lights or only automatic running lights, even in full dark and the rain.

I think they are related to the idiots who jaywalk across Washington Rd, Gordon Hwy, and Peach Orchard Rd (all 6 to 8 lane roads) at night while wearing dark clothes. Lately the city has been collecting bodies of these unfortunates at the rate of 1 a week, but the population seems to remain steady.

My commute (~10 days per month) begins at ~440am and ends at 545am, so full dark on I10. I do regularly see folks driving with only DRLs. Probably once per commute, I roll up on someone with no lights in the rear, and they may have headlights running up front or maybe just the dim DRLs. THis is in the middle of no where, so there's often no streetlights. Just pitch black, and few cars. I've even run into that with trucks towing trailers so that neither the truck nor the trailer had any lights in the rear.

I've tried flashing my lights. I've tried turning my lights off and one both from the back and while in front of them. They are clueless.

My wife's Outback has automatic lights (can be set to "On" or "Auto"). I have confirmed that when they come on in Auto, that it's full lights front and back.

This can be easy to do, my Toyota had it’s dash constantly lit, so at night, you can easily think your lights are on. This is how I met the local police one morning! They said it happens fairly often.

Part of the problem is people converting to LED in housings not designed for them.

I've run into a couple of folks that I believe made some sort of upgrade in housings not designed for the light and I suspect there was no dimmer option. Fortunately, I think those are pretty rare..

I consider myself a reasonably progressive person. But if you are a male riding around on an electric scooter, you're a GD fruit in my book.

Lots of cars have auto dimming. They either don't work well or operators do not have them on and do not remember to dim themselves.

My newest car has lights that would melt steel. I was not comfortable with the performance of the auto dim (turned off way too late in my opinion) and have not used it since the first night. It is not nearly as intuitive as a person doing it themselves.

I keep my interior lights very dim and the computer screen off at night so my pupils can adjust...that helps a lot.

It’s your eyes. Yes lights are bright, but the blurring effect because you can’t focus makes it worse.

Seriously. It’s why I wear glasses to drive at night. Helps a lot with the glare.
It’s also pretty much the only time I wear glasses - unless I’m watching a 4K movie.

LMAO!

Not just a member of the old fart club....