21 replies to this topic

[25585]

Most attention is on static lights, but brighter vehicle lights, especially LED and HID/bixenon on busy roads is a major source of light pollution.

 

Dealing with it while driving, when every dipped beam is blinding, and rear red lights, especially brake/stop lights are dazzling. Such miles-long intensely packed light sources are worse than street lighting I find. Going up on hills and looking down to where I live, traffic's light concentration is more intense, more relentess and more polluting. Where roads are not flat and go uphill, its worse still. 
 

As suburbia spreads, both street and vehicle lighting together destroy natural darkness.

[ShaulaB]

I have read that in Europe, car headlights are more tightly regulated regarding brightness and glare than they are in the US. Sometimes driving to and from astronomy events is not fun because of the ridiculous headlights. My favorite spot suffers from massive lighting on big jacked up trucks intruding into the observing space, even though there is a berm and trees separating the telescope area from the road.

[jupiter122]

It’s everywhere. Car headlights, street lights, parking lot lights, porch lights, field lights. Arghhh!

[mountain monk]

I’ve often wondered why people complain about the temporary use of GLP when they happily spend hours driving to and from a dark site with their headlights on. Hummmmm.

 

Dark skies.

 

Jack

[havasman]

Those of us that make road trips benefit from the increased illumination modern headlights provide. Traveling through Central Texas on a 2-lane undivided State Highway a couple of years ago I topped a small hill at highway speeds and saw a big doe standing still in the oncoming lane with plenty of time to get slowed down to @ 25 mph to deal with whatever she might have decided to do. I'm not sure that would've been the case with the old headlights.

 

Traffic at night on State Highways in Texas exposes you to oncoming older vehicles with their antique lights, incredibly dim. I wonder how we ever drove highways at night with those ineffective headlights. I do not ever want to go back to anything like those. 

 

That "astro friendly" little hotel in Marathon down in Big Bend country is right on the major east-west highway in the area and the all-night traffic is a real impediment to observing. But the parallel train tracks @ 100 yards the other side of US90 are much, much worse. Trains have amazing headlights that sweep the area ahead. The motel is a poor site because of all these lights even if you ignore the on-site lighting.

 

So the best solution is to get away from highways to observe. The headlights are unlikely to go away.

[Jon Isaacs]

I’ve often wondered why people complain about the temporary use of GLP when they happily spend hours driving to and from a dark site with their headlights on. Hummmmm.

 

Dark skies.

 

Jack

 

One is necessary for safety, one is for convenience and unnecessary. The GLP is where one is observing.  The headlights, very distant. 

 

Jon

[gwd]

My new car has a feature that if you have the key fob in your pocket and just brush against the door handle the bright LED headlights come on.   I found out about this at Chaco Canyon camp site.    I don’t know how to turn the feature off.   I was that guy the other star gazers were screaming at.  “YOUR APOLOGY IS INSUFFICIENT!!!!”   

[Marcin_78]

A very big concentration of cars can indeed produce lots of light (I never really thought about it), so it's a very bad idea to start observing too early. But this source of light pollution gets much smaller at a certain hour, when most people are already at their homes, and during the night it's almost non-existent. Street lights are the main (and very steady) source of light pollution.

Edited by Marcin_78, 12 November 2024 - 11:42 AM.

[mountain monk]

Jon,

 

Driving to a dark site is not necessary under any ordinary meaning of the term. It’s a choice to put a gazillion units of light into the night sky. It’s a preference, nothing more. And I enjoy that preference, too. I also prefer not to stress or injure my back. But you will be happy to hear that now that I am using a PiFinder I don’t need the GLP. 
 

Dark skies.

 

Jack

[opticsguy]

How bright can vehicle lights be?   Currently there appears to be no restrictions whatsoever.  I see pickup trucks with blinding headlights PLUS 6 to 8 more "running" lights which are still ten? times brighter than the headlights on my car.  SAFETY is the concern here. How many pedestrians will die this year because of blinded drivers?

 

Last night while driving back to home I was totally blinded by a car with bright headlights and two BRIGHT BRIGHT BLINDING yellow running lights, probably 5 to 10 times brighter than the headlights!!  Everyone was slowing down because of being blinded. 

 

Lighting engineers are very stupid.  They place a turn signal light next to a blinding light which makes the turn signal basically invisible. 

The so called auto-dimming feature when an on-coming vehicle appears simply do not work, based on the theoretical flat road surface. Roads are not always flat, hello?  

 

Those so-called old vehicle dim lights are a whole lot safer. There is a "bright" setting when needed.  How complicated can this really be?   

[jcj380]

But this source of light pollution gets much smaller at a certain hour, when most people are already at their homes, and during the night it's almost non-existent. 

One of the joys of observing at Oh-Dark-Thirty.     Very few vehicles on the streets / roads.

 

Although there was one car that went flying down the street on the far side of the pond from me, followed by a very loud crunch.  I noticed a tree at the T-intersection was missing a good deal of bark off the lower trunk the next day.  Headlights didn't save that cabron.

Edited by jcj380, 12 November 2024 - 02:00 PM.

[Jhunt]

Luckly NHTSA has approved adaptive headlights in the US back in 2022 so we should start seeing them on newer vehicles. That should help cut down on drivers being blinded, but only in newer vehicles. Since many Americans are holding on to our cars longer because prices aren't coming down we will see this issue for some time. 

 

 

Now I drive a 2006 Honda Accord, and the previous owner modified the headlights. I can't turn them off, even when the switch is in the off position the lights are on. This becomes an issue when I'm out at my dark spot trying not to ruin to my sight and the scene. I have to cover my hood with a thick black tarp to block all the light. 

[KI5CAW]

"Traffic at night on State Highways in Texas exposes you to oncoming older vehicles with their antique lights, incredibly dim"

We have the same problem in northern New Mexico, except you're lucky if both headlights work.

[Overtime]

My new car has a feature that if you have the key fob in your pocket and just brush against the door handle the bright LED headlights come on.   I found out about this at Chaco Canyon camp site.    I don’t know how to turn the feature off.   I was that guy the other star gazers were screaming at.  “YOUR APOLOGY IS INSUFFICIENT!!!!”   

Google might be your friend? Or check for a website. Or perhaps ask someone at a dealership?

[RLK1]

For those who are interested: a previous thread on the issue:

 

https://www.cloudyni...re-blinding-us/

[DSOGabe]

It seems to me that modern headlights tend to be set to point out more horizontally than older ones, which were orientated more towards the road surface. Even the low beams are hard to deal with in moderately dark streets. I get blinded when I'm  out doing my regular power walks in the evening.

[Jhunt]

Sometimes those are people who install aftermarket bulbs that weren't designed for the lens. Or they swapped out the lens without even trying to recalibrate them. 

 

Nothing worse than the lifted trucks. Lights right in your eyes. 

[Nankins]

It is bad.  I like to keep my headlights on low all the time unless I get the itch to see if any deer near or in the road has any headgear.   I have messed with brights vs. lows a few times at night while driving, and for our one vehicle with LEDs, the only major difference is that with the brights, the light shines much higher into the sky and trees and makes maybe only a few feet of difference on the ground.  I'll stick with the lows otherwise.  Have also discovered that blinking your lights at someone no longer simply means "please turn your lights on low if possible, you are blinding me."  Have had a few vehicles take offense at that and blink back at me only to turn their brights back on, and a few who ignored it.  No longer do it unless the vehicle's lights are annoyingly bright and it's a vehicle that can turn them down.  

 

I get blinded all the time when driving at night - have even slowed down almost to a stop a few times simply because an on-coming vehicle had their brights on and didn't turn them down and they were so bright I was overwhelmed.  Few nights ago that happened on a dangerous, sloped, curving area of a local road - Driver almost got rewarded with a returned "favor" of bright lights getting blinked while they were less than 500 feet away.  State law says you have to turn your lows on when 500 feet from an oncoming vehicle and too many drivers don't do that.  Some LED headlights don't even have much of a difference between brights and lows.  Annoying. 

 

We had a debacle last year with a meteor shower event at a DarkSky site here in IN that is a state park.  The new park ranger organizing the event left the parking lot next to the observing field open for the public to park in and so every single time someone drove in or left most of the field got blasted with light and some of us lost our night vision for the next few minutes, especially those of us near to the parking lot.  Needless to say that left a sour taste in many minds and my club no longer wants to participate in that event unless the ranger changes things for the better or they really really need help.  

[Nankins]

One is necessary for safety, one is for convenience and unnecessary. The GLP is where one is observing.  The headlights, very distant. 

 

Jon

Not at some sites.  Doing a private star party with a few fellow club members at a darker sky area in IN a few weeks ago we got blinded about 5 times by headlights.  We were in a friends' harvested corn field, behind their house which is next to the road.  Thankfully it is way out in a super rural part of the state so traffic was not a problem.  A few cars had low brightness and were not too bad.  But every single time some vehicle with LEDs drove past it ruined everyone's night vision for the next 10 minutes - the headlights weren't distant at all.  No trees within a miles other than those in the farmhouse lawn. 

[BobSoCal]

My new car has a feature that if you have the key fob in your pocket and just brush against the door handle the bright LED headlights come on.   I found out about this at Chaco Canyon camp site.    I don’t know how to turn the feature off.   I was that guy the other star gazers were screaming at.  “YOUR APOLOGY IS INSUFFICIENT!!!!”   

You need to dig through all your menus and submenus in the car's settings. Failing that, you can consult the dedicated forums for your car and ask other owners. Failing THAT, the fuse box holds your solution.

[KD5NRH]

My new car has a feature that if you have the key fob in your pocket and just brush against the door handle the bright LED headlights come on.   I found out about this at Chaco Canyon camp site.    I don’t know how to turn the feature off.   I was that guy the other star gazers were screaming at.  “YOUR APOLOGY IS INSUFFICIENT!!!!”   

First thing to do when getting a new car is find out how to turn off all the stupid "helpful features."  

 

My 4Runner lost the privilege of controlling the door locks the first time it locked me out.

[KD5NRH]

and rear red lights, especially brake/stop lights are dazzling.

 

Sometimes the problem is finding something that isn't pointlessly overdone.  While I'm quite fond of my "600% brighter" (eyeball guesstimate with one of each installed is that they do look at least 4x as bright) backup lights, anybody close behind me when those are on has bigger issues than the bright light.  I'd like to find some LED brake and turn signal bulbs no more than 150% of the brightness of the original incandescents, but I'm not having much luck.