In view of the other goings-on in Va. and Commiefornia, flashlights are gonna wind up on some list sooner or later. High lumen counts will be considered weapons as will crenellated bezels. NJ will be first, followed by NY. Just wait and see if I'm not right.
I haven’t had any unfriendly interactions, but a cop did shine his light to get my attention when I was up on a mountain playing with throwers. To cut a long story short, he used his car’s loudspeaker to say “Hiker, if you’re OK, flash your light once.”
Cars headlights are also quite powerful. Sometimes the car just behind mine seems to have the beam misaligned causing discomfort when looking at the rear mirror. In such a case I slow down and let that car go past. I have no way to lwt that car owner know that he needs to fix his lights.
I discovered long ago that just reaching up and wiggling my rear view mirror so it bounces the headlight back at the driver beind me usually gets the message across. Then I wave a “thank you” when he dims it or backs off.
Just today I counted at least 4 douchebags driving with their brights on, and/or with one of those retarded “light-bars” on the front grille (you know the kind, the 2×N array of LEDs about 2’ wide).
One was during the day, about 10ish! Like, seriously??
Interesting, I was talking with a friend the other day about the trucks with added illumination and headlight upgrades. Here is a web page that popped up on a feed of mine. Not sure how legit the information is.
I see that all the time, too. Worse when it’s usually a black minivan/suv.
Once when I was taking the bus home, some idiot in (again) a dark minivan with no lights on, was waiting at a red light, 2nd in line behind another car. Not even DRLs, just dark. He gets impatient when the light turns green and car #1 isn’t getting going quickly enough, so flashes the brights at him!
You’d think the reflected light and then nothing would clue him in that his lights aren’t on, right? Nope.
Yeah, they just want Brighter! but no matter what the cost. Crappy cheap-looking Angry Blue™ LEDs, horrible beam spread and lots of glare, it actually hurts my eyes, too, when I see some of these cars coming at me.
ANY crap on the front surface causes glare by scattering light that should be directed quite precisely. If spotlessly clean, those LED “bug-eyes” lots of cars have nowadays can potentially give a pretty clean beam, but the slightest crap that catches that extremely small area where light comes out from, will scatter light up and into peoples’ eyes.
And you get that strobe effect when a car goes over even a small rise in the road. You think they’re flashing the brights at you, but you’re just in’n’out of the hotspot as their aim shifts.
And you get that strobe effect when a car goes over even a small rise in the road. You think they’re flashing the brights at you, but you’re just in’n’out of the hotspot as their aim shifts.
Is that what that is? I thought it was some kind of cut off shade.
Depends on how sharp it is. Projector lights do in fact have a shade right around where the beam all comes together to give an extremely sharp cutoff, while other types of lights just have the reflectors, etc., designed that way but it’s still a kind of fuzzy transition.
"To ensure that the light produced by these types of headlights is angled properly, there is also a cutoff shield. This helps to direct the light down towards the road. Thanks to the shield, projector headlights have a very sharp cutoff."
My old H4s used to have multiple sets of little “devil horns” at the top end of the beam’s hotspot. Probably from the facets on the front glass, as the reflector was absolutely smoothly curved. So the transition would be more gradual, and weren’t as “strobey”.