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The War Against Headlight Brightness
(theringer.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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I drive a midsize sedan an I often have my rear-view and side mirrors lit by these trucks. It's stupid they're even allowed.
Taller vehicles need two kinds of headlight: a higher intensity mounted low to illuminate the path, and a lower intensity mounted high to illuminate retro-reflective surfaces like traffic signs.
If a transport truck can have lights at a reasonable height and angle that don't blind me, so can a standard pick up truck. Many transports actually have their lights mounted lower than pick up trucks and full size SUVs.
You don’t really need a second set of lights for signs. The light reflecting off the ground from your 9 trillion lumen headlights, and the efficiency of reflective signs are plenty.
Most LED lights have a VERY sharp cutoff. Without the light reflecting off other things anything outside of the line of fire is almost pitch black.
Reflective signs are specifically efficient at reflecting light back at their source and nowhere else (retroreflectivity). Obviously it's not perfect, but the fact that that cone is so narrow is part of why it looks so bright (not dissimilar from the cutoff of the LED lights you are describing). Meaning that light reflected off the roadway before reaching the sign will generally be reflected back at the roadway. With how large some vehicle grills are being built nowadays, it may be possible for a low mounted headlight to be far enough away from the driver that retroreflective signs are no longer as effectively illuminated for the driver. Truckers probably already deal with this, I haven't driven in one, but I suspect road signs are not as well illuminated for the driver as in other vehicles. We don't rely solely on retroreflectivity to make our signs visible, so it's not all or nothing, but it may be worth keeping some nominal illumination (could be like moderate flashlight levels of brightness) at driver level so we can continue to take advantage of retroreflective technology