Anyone else pissed off at Ford's quad headlights?

Some recent model Ford Superduties have quad headlights that have four beams illuminated whether it's in low beam or high. Does anyone else find these extremely annoying? I know that most of the drivers aren't trying to be giant a-holes by blinding everyone on the road, but they do. The headlights are placed so high up on the truck that they can't not blind everybody, they're literally at or above eye level for most drivers. There's one driver of one of these trucks around here who even has the audacity to run his oem fog lights at the same time! I really hope this doesn't become a trend with the other truck manufacturers.

There's nothing wrong with them that cannot be corrected by adjusting them with a 10lb sledgehammer.

This is true for most modern minivan things.  (When your "Super Duty" is used for single-person commuting with an empty bed, congratulations!  It's a minivan.)  Some of the newer Lexuses are absolutely horrible for this, too.

I assume that the DOT is all "Whatever, ain't my problem" and people are no longer told in driver's ed that you are never supposed to use your high beams if there is anybody visibly in front of you.

They don't effectively HAVE low beams. They're always blinding at night. In the day time they are just extremely annoying. 

Hate those damn brackets. [[         ]] 

Incredibly annoying.

Sledgehammer?  Yikes.  

The dealer said I gotta buy the whole thing @ $1200.  GM guys have it online for $850.  I fixed a piece in after Dremel tooling and zip ties until I find one cheaper.  eBay has $500 ones with broken tabs.  
 

A Super Duty only becomes a minivan if its carrying kids and soccer equipment to practice.

These? They are insanely blinding! 

As someone who still drives normal cars, I find most of the newer large trucks to have blinding headlights.

As someone who also drives a Sequoia, I can say that the super duty headlights are so high they even blind me in a freaking SEQUOIA (which has crappy old halogens that literally blind nobody). 

Luckily, when I'm in the Porsche, most of the big truck headlights simply go over the roof....

But yes, it's pretty clear DOT has totally given up on trying to enforce anything at all these days. Half these new trucks have bumper heights taller than clearly stated in our state motor vehicle laws, for that matter. 

These Fords may be the most noticeable, but I find more than half of the new cars on the road have excessively bright low beams. Especially noticeable from my low vantage point in the X1/9, but apparent from the Volvo as well. I see the oncoming driver dip them, but still far too bright. It seems to only be the LED equipped vehicles that are bad.

YES I do!

freetors said:

Some recent model Ford Superduties have quad headlights that have four beams illuminated whether it's in low beam or high. Does anyone else find these extremely annoying? I know that most of the drivers aren't trying to be giant a-holes by blinding everyone on the road, but they do. The headlights are placed so high up on the truck that they can't not blind everybody, they're literally at or above eye level for most drivers. There's one driver of one of these trucks around here who even has the audacity to run his oem fog lights at the same time! I really hope this doesn't become a trend with the other truck manufacturers.

Older quad systems also had four light illuminated on high beam. Unfortunately, unless they were European reflectors w/ H4/H1 bulbs, the lighting was soo poor it didn't matter

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I was recently blinded by LED headlights, compounded by the glare of rain, and I was in my Yukon!

But, yeah, berk those Ford Superduty quad beams! 

Hate the Super Doody lights.  Hate MDX/RDX led lights. New Chev trucks have very aggressive lights coming up behind.

Just so we're all clear here, these trucks had two different headlight systems available. The standard setup was halogen, and there was an optional led (I think) system. BOTH of these systems run four lamps on AT ALL TIMES (when the lights are on of course). Four lamps on low beam, four on with the high beam too.

Modern headlights are aimed

Holy crap I thought it was just me becoming an old curmudgeon. Those light are dangerously bright at that eye level. 

Hey now, those super duty lights may be too numerous,  too berkin' bright and mounted way too high but at least the drivers have the courtesy to also be burning their fog lights at all times too, right?

My car has very bright headlights BUT they are self leveling and turn with my steering and have very distinct cut offs. This results in on coming traffic almost never getting in my headlights. I never get flashed. The auto dimming setting is excellent. It is more conservative than I am when I control them manually. It is absolutely fantastic at identifying both oncoming traffic and taillights that are very far away. Now that being said the high beams are retina melting bright. This was the first year the Mercedes offered LED headlights and I think they may have made them overly bright. Because of this I am very carful with them as blinding drivers coming at me is a real possibility and that is dangerous.  With the auto dimming on this car working so well it is the only way I use the highs and even then I virchally never need them as my lows are more than what I need for virchally all driving conditions.  

Oh the irony.... there are multiple threads on how to swap nasty bright Euro, HID, and LED bulbs and housing into various vehicles on this very site. 
 

Second level irony, I prefer the color temperature of regular halogens.  I find that I can actually see stuff versus washing out everything in front of the vehicle with a super bright, white light. To the point,  I removed the HIDs from my daily and reinstalled a set of halogens.  The car came with the HIDs from the previous owner and HIDs were a factory option so I gave it a try for a couple of months. 
 

In a nutshell, I dislike the super bright low beams on new vehicles, even the ones that I am driving. 
 

 to this entire thread.

I work a lot in the dark, and spend a significant amount of work time driving.   The newer low beams (especially LEDs) are absurdly bright at night.  Especially in rural areas without a lot of ambient light.  And yes, the new Ford superdutys effectively don't have low beams.

I've very recently started wearing yellow lens glasses while driving at night.  The jury's still out on whether I'm going to stick with it, but I have found them to reduce the glare from 'literally painful' to 'moderately annoying'.

As to 'enthusiast modified' headlights... my pet peeve used to be aftermarket HIDs in OEM diffuser lens housings, but the new factory LEDs are far worse...

In reply to tester :

I don't recall many threads about swapping Euro headlights on this forum. VW forums? Sure. Not so much here.

One advantage of usually driving a minivan is headlights typically don't bother me like they do in my regular cars.  Not really sure if lights really go over low cars like my Spitfire or GT6.

tester said:

Oh the irony.... there are multiple threads on how to swap nasty bright Euro, HID, and LED bulbs and housing into various vehicles on this very site. 
 

 

 

 

I've been on this forum for nearly 20 years and I don't remember any threads like that. 

dyintorace said:

These? They are insanely blinding! 

I was wondering about these. They are about the worst for on coming traffic. As you get older the effect of bright headlights gets much worse. Your eyes don't adjust back as fast so you are blinded longer by headlights like those

I have a terrible time meeting any of the current trucks at night, and if it's raining it's far worse. I rely on being able to see the fog lines and they aren't repainted frequently, so I just aim to the right of the oncoming headlights and hope he's in his lane. I ran Hellas or Cibies in my cars in the late seventies and could see just fine. The hard cutoff on them protected oncoming drivers,too. The difference between the old halogens and the recent ones is the quality of the reflectors. The old ones were all glass and round or rectangular. The round ones were especially good at giving you a precise beam.