[LeifCarrotson]

My other pet peeve is the opposite - they've got LED daytime running lights, and use those instead of headlights. They're driving around at 11pm with no taillights and abysmal forward lighting, but there's enough of a glow from the DRLs that they assume their lights are on.

Or worse, they're accustomed to "automatic" lights and don't even know where the switch is, so they're driving around at dusk or in fog, rain, or snow in a white, gray, or black vehicle without their lights on.

I have also been tempted to purchase digital billboard space, but not on the side of the road. I want LED signs on my roof rack (one forward, one back) with column or two of buttons on the dash to call up a slate of messages:

1. TURN YOUR BRIGHTS OFF! BLUE MEANS BLINDING.

1b. OW! YOUR HEADLIGHTS ARE MISALIGNED.

2. TURN YOUR HEADLIGHTS ON! THOSE ARE DRLs.

3. TURN LIGHTS ON TO BE SEEN EVEN IF IT'S NOT DARK.

4. MY SAFE FOLLOWING DISTANCE IS NOT A SPOT FOR YOU.

5. YOU ARE TAILGATING. I WILL NOT SPEED FOR YOU.

6. YIELD DOES NOT MEAN STOP.

7. I AM ZIPPER MERGING, NOT CUTTING THE LINE.

8. DRIVE CAREFULLY! I JUST SAW A DEER.

9. GO AHEAD, I SEE YOU.

10. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH YOUR VEHICLE, PULL OVER.

11. THANK YOU!

Plus a few spare slots to be implemented as needs arise.

I've been unimpressed with the automatic high-beams on my wife's newer Toyota and on other rentals I've driven, they usually depend on a direct line-of-sight to the other car's headlights, which means they stay on just long enough to hit the windshield of another car cresting a hill and blind them. Then they courteously turn off a few camera frames and vision analyses after the low beams become visible. If a __competent__ driver is controlling the high/low beams manually, they'll see the headlights of the other car illuminating the trees and such and turn off the high beams a couple critical seconds earlier. But I admit that the automatic systems are miles better at managing it than the __incompetent__ drivers who are all too common.

[webnrrd2k]

This hit on a peeve of mine, that automatic high beam systems really suck for pedestrians. Manual control is genuinely better in this regard. Try walking around at night in a wealthy neighborhood, and about 1/8 of the cars just blind every pedestrian.

[XCabbage]

I assume you're an American? As a Brit, your comment confuses me. Why would anyone ever have high beams on at all in anything reasonably described as a "neighbourhood"? Do built-up areas in the US not reliably have street lighting?

Here in the UK, it is pretty much universally the case that if there are buildings, there are street lights. (Maybe there are occasional exceptions where there's a single building in the middle of nowhere on a rural road; I'm not sure. And I suppose there must be occasional outages of street lighting even in e.g. dense city centres. But such things are rare.) Having high beams on in almost any context where there are buildings around is therefore unnecessary, against the Highway Code, and quite possibly criminal under RVLR reg 27.

[saltcured]

I'm not the one you asked, but I think a lot of 'wealthy' neighborhoods in the US mean suburbia with larger single-family-home lots, and roads often feel a bit more rural. In my area in California, these are often unincorporated (county) lands just outside larger towns.

You sometimes see a very clear boundary. The more middle-class housing is subdivisions built all at once somewhere in the 1960s-2000s, with underground utilities and street lights. This infrastructure was mandated by the city, when the developers were looking to get their newly built neighborhood annexed into it. Around the next corner, darker streets with overhead utilities and more spread out lots with oversized "McMansion" houses. These are following the more relaxed county building codes and had the space available for such construction.

These roads are also more likely to have expensive new cars with all the computerized functions. Walking in this limbo world at the edge of our town, I've also noticed being blinded by cars as a pedestrian with more dynamic effects. I suspect are the car's system actively painting me with more light. It is a little bit like the "fringing" you see when the cutoff of older HID projection lamps sweeps over you due to road undulation. But it happens too quickly and both vertically and horizontally. It feels like being hit with a targeted spot light.

I wish the engineers spent the same care to put a dark halo on a pedestrian face as they do for oncoming drivers. Even when carrying my own flashlight, such encounters can be dazzling enough to basically go blind and not be able to see the dark paving in front of me for a minute. My light is more to make me visible to the cars than to really illuminate my path for myself. It doesn't stand a chance against the huge dynamic range of these car lighting systems.

[webnrrd2k]

Yes, exactly, very well explained.

[jojobas]

I'm pretty sure pedestrians would rather blink a few times than get run over.

[duskdozer]

This is a big reason why "high-beams as default" is not the right choice

[boogieknite]

if you ever visit Portland make one up reading YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. drivers keep it weird here by ignoring the rules of the road for some kind of "no no i insist, after you" as if theyre giving some gift, but instead just confuse everyone

if im biking and waiting at a stop sign: without fail, the last car in a long line of cars will slam on the breaks and insist i go when they have no stop sign. it would have been faster for everyone if they just kept driving and i cross after they pass, like the rules of the road prescribe

[dayjaby]

Defending that particular kind of driver: He might not have known to be the last car. But one thing he knows for sure: a long line of cars in front of him. Speeding up or keeping distance is pointless, so he uses that moment to be friendly instead.

[boogieknite]

i prefer predictability to friendliness every time

[gblargg]

I actually made an LED sign for the rear of my van, with over a dozen messages, including some peaceful ones like yours (sorry, thanks). One was for headlights. I made it IR-controlled and used an older Android smartphone with IR blaster and an app that gave me labeled buttons to show the messages.

https://postimg.cc/06xZ7pP0

[userbinator]

Or worse, they're accustomed to "automatic" lights and don't even know where the switch is, so they're driving around at dusk or in fog, rain, or snow in a white, gray, or black vehicle without their lights on.

The worst: automatic headlights required by regulations, but no corresponding automatic taillights. At least before those regulations one would notice the darkness in front and turn on (both) lights, but now you have drivers thinking their rear is also lit because the front is.

[fouc]

I've long wished we had a standardized communication channel between cars. It could even be fixed status codes.

I've always expected that in the future when all cars are fully self-driving, they would have some kind of communication channel to improve efficiency. Why can't we have this for humans too before that.

[gorgoiler]

12. YES I KNOW THIS IS A GAS STATION AND I COULD JUST WALK OVER AND TELL YOU BUT THIS SIGN THING I MADE IS WAY MORE FUN.

[nrds]

> BLUE MEANS BLINDING

ONLY IF YOU'RE LIVING IN THE '90S! THE REST OF US HAVE MATRIX HEADLIGHTS! ALSO TURN OFF YOUR CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

[Dylan16807]

#3 sounds like you're either nitpicking or maybe having an eye issue?

#7 You're either doing something good or something very bad, so I hope it's the former. If you're trying to pace the lane next to you, then it sounds like it's at least an honest attempt to get things zipper merging. If you're telling yourself that cars need to be in both lanes to zipper merge, while zooming to the end and then hoping maybe a zipper merge will happen, you're getting a big benefit to yourself while still causing slowdown for everyone else.

[randerson]

#3 Plenty of drivers have difficulty spotting a gray/silver/black car under low or high-contrast lighting. Highly visible colors (yellow, orange, white) have a 7-12% lower chance of getting into an accident during the day and up to 47% lower at dusk.[0] Keeping your headlights on at all times reduces this risk.

#7 In many states (e.g. [1]) if two lanes are merging you're expected to merge at the last possible point. This allows more cars to fit on the road to reduce congestion, and it reduces sudden stops.

[0] https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/216475/An...

[1] https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/traffic-safety-methods/work-zone...

[Dylan16807]

> #7 In many states (e.g. [1]) if two lanes are merging you're expected to merge at the last possible point. This allows more cars to fit on the road to reduce congestion, and it reduces sudden stops.

Maintaining smooth merging is far more important than where the merging happens.

The page you linked even says "It is legal to wait to merge until the lane closure devices (cones or barrels) start, but we recommend merging sooner than that to give more time to find a gap, complete the merge, and avoid getting in a pinch when the devices make the closed lane too narrow. Merging sooner also avoids the risk of hitting a closure device or ending up inside the work zone."

It recommends zippering, but nowhere in there does it recommend waiting for "the last possible point".

Someone that has it in their head that zippering is best and zippering needs to be done at the end is likely to cause more harm than good, even if they're working off the purest intentions. Keeping both lanes in use is a distant second priority to making sure the merge is smooth.

[fouc]

By definition, zipper merge means late merge [0]. The problem is that if some cars merge too early, other cars will keep driving down the road and then merging in front of the early mergers, it ends up being disruptive in heavy traffic conditions. If everyone consistently merges at the same point in heavy traffic conditions it's more predictable, leading to better through flow.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_%28traffic%29#Late_merge

[Dylan16807]

> By definition, zipper merge means late merge

Tell that to the site linked above, because even though they say "like a zipper" they want it to happen early.

> The problem is that if some cars merge too early, other cars will keep driving down the road and then merging in front of the early mergers, it ends up being disruptive in heavy traffic conditions. If everyone consistently merges at the same point in heavy traffic conditions it's more predictable, leading to better through flow.

I don't blame the early mergers there. If someone zooms down the empty lane then they are not attempting to zipper merge, they are bad actors.

A proper zipper, at the last moment, is slightly better than early merging. But again smoothness is the important factor. Smoothness is 90% of the solution. Do not give up smoothness for the sake of being more zipper-y. If people think you're cutting in line, you probably are cutting in line.

-

Also, anywhere we want to make sure there's a zipper merge, how about we stop having a favored lane? Cut off half of each lane at the merge point.

[fouc]

> Cut off half of each lane at the merge point.

Good point, even in a situation that necessitates a favored lane, could still setup this half-of-each-lane merge point well in front of that.

[rob74]

#3 ...not to mention situations like fog, heavy rain/water spray etc.

[jaapz]

Regarding #3, in the EU it is normal to have lights on even when it's not dark. Some countries even mandate it. You're just more visible that way.

[sneak]

You forgot THE LEFTMOST LANE IS FOR BRIEF PASSING, NOT DRIVING

[belorn]

The rule for the leftmost lane (highway) is that you must not block for other drivers. It is in the rule book (at least in my country). That mean in very clear terms that if you can't do the overtaking in a timely fashion without blocking other drivers, then you should not enter the left lane.

If there is one thing that tend to cause conflict and trigger dangerous situations in traffic, it is when someone driving at 0.001% faster than the next car enter left lane while maintaining the exact same speed, basically matching the speed on the right. That is just as illegal as speeding.

[throw0101a]

> That mean in very clear terms that if you can't do the overtaking in a timely fashion without blocking other drivers, then you should not enter the left lane.

And then there are the drivers who are in the centre/right lane who, when you try to pass on their left, speed up to try to prevent you from passing them.

[quadyeast]

I'm often on highways were the left lane, for many miles, is the only one without potholes and broken road.

[pixl97]

Then when there's another person behind you, get over in the right and let them pass.

[Dylan16807]

Eh. If there's a speed limit and the left lane is 5+ over it, what's the benefit of keeping it empty?

[scotty79]

If everybody left it, it wouldn't be going 5+ over limit and then it could serve the people who are serious about breaking the law and go big. ... Oh, wait...