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Comment by NikolaeVarius | Hacker News Reader

Actually enforce already existing laws

The existing laws are insufficient. Most headlight regulations specify an angle of light emitted, not an absolute height.

> none of the high intensity portion of the light shall, at a distance of 25 feet ahead of the vehicle, project higher than five inches below the level of the center of the lamp from which it comes, or higher than 42 inches above the level on which the vehicle stands at a distance of 75 feet ahead of the vehicle.

The 75 foot regulation is the only one that gives an absolute height, and is irrelevant for a car directly behind me at a red light. Five inches below the center of the lamp at 25 feet means that a high truck will illuminate the entirety of my rear-view mirror, because those trucks are more than 5 inches taller than my car.

[1] https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/816.050

The entire article could be “have police fine people”. I don’t know why governments don’t go after people that keep their high beams on or LED bars for more government revenue.

It's too difficult I guess. Police just want to sit at speed traps and give tickets for speeding, and ignore all other traffic infractions, because speeding is the easiest to enforce.

You also have to have the courts on board. No point in ticketing if the courts just throw everything out.

Well yeah, but why would the courts not be on board? Generally, traffic courts in this country automatically side with the cops unless you have a really, really good reason why the cop was wrong (or if the cop doesn't show up for the hearing). Traffic tickets are big money-makers for municipalities, so it's in their best interest to make it very hard for people to get out of them.

Good question, but that has happened here enough that the cops don’t enforce certain things.

These days they have ALPRS and stare at their phones until the computer sends them after warrants and assorted registration offenses.

Yeah they do this to enforce noise regulations, I don't see why they can't just stop people with outrageously blinding headlights and fine them, as well.

As I recall, this was actually enforced maybe 10 years ago, at the NHTSA / US Customs level. They worked with ebay etc to remove such listings, stop bulk shipments coming in, etc. It wasn't fully successful, so eventually they just gave up.

Obviously cops could pull over and ticket people with terrible headlights, and sometimes they do (I've actually been pulled over for "failing to dim" in Colorado. My low beams were inoperable and I was roadtripping and so had to reach somewhere to camp). But in general there doesn't seem to be an enforcement will, even against patently ridiculous colors (blue, purple, yellow, pink, etc) that are quickly distinguishable as non-DOT-conforming.

You would think pulling people over based on headlight color would be even easier than having to look at a radar gun, but apparently not. Maybe the problem is there's no alert to make cops look up from their phones.

The cops would need a calibrated tool to test headlight emissions. The manufacturer would have to be able to provide a theory of operation and other documentation, and be able to support cops who have to testify in court over the fines.

This is all possible, and actually I would love to build something like this for the police so that I can stop people from blinding me while I'm driving.

You're drastically overstating the effort to get a lot of low hanging fruit - colored headlights can be done visually, as there are no headlights that meet DOT requirements that are purple or yellow. There are very few properly certified aftermarket headlights to begin with. And many non-approved aftermarket ones will simply omit any DOT self-certification mark, another slam-dunk.

Yeah, you're probably right given how easy it is for cops to justify any stop at all.

> there are no headlights that meet DOT requirements that are purple or yellow.

FMVSS 108 doesn't directly define a permissible color for headlamps. It references some SAE documents that define it, but you have to pay money in order to access them.

Headlamps can have a range of permissible color output (e.g., halogen vs HID vs LED), and, apparently, bulb manufacturers like Sylvania manufacture halogen bulbs with a blue filter that apparently complies with FMVSS 108 even though they have a bluish color.

The trouble is the existing laws require lights to be certified. Plenty of people do responsible headlight upgrades that do not increase glare, but those are also formally illegal; if they aren't certified, they're not legal even if they fulfill the functional requirements.

Just because there are asshats driving around blinding everyone I don't think it's a reasonable response to go back to a situation where people whose cars were manufactured with shitty halogen headlights have no recourse except buy a new car.

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