Inside the War Against Headlight Brightness
owl writes:
https://theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents
The sun had already set in Newfoundland, Canada, and Paul Gatto was working late to give me a presentation on headlights. This, it should be said, is not his job. Not even close, really. Gatto, 28, is a front-end developer by day, working for a weather application that's used by the majority of Canadian meteorologists, he told me on a video call, occasionally hitting his e-cig or sipping on a Miller Lite. As to how he ended up as one of the primary forces in the movement to make car headlights less bright-a movement that's become surprisingly robust in recent years-even Gatto can't really explain.
"It is fucking weird," he said. "I need something else to do with my spare time. This takes a lot of it."
Gatto is the founder of the subreddit r/FuckYourHeadlights, the internet's central hub for those at their wits' end with the current state of headlights. The posts consist of a mishmash of venting, meme-ing, and community organizing. A common entry is a photo taken from inside the car of someone being blasted with headlights as bright as an atomic bomb, and a caption along the lines of "How is this fucking legal?!" Or users will joke about going back in time and Skynet-style killing the Audi lighting engineer who first rolled out LED headlights. Or they'll discuss ways to write to their congresspeople, like Mike Thompson, House Democrat of California, who recently expressed support for the cause.
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