and they had to be pointed high because the average speed is fast, and the speed people are driving is definitely way too fast for safety.

If anything, LEDs having MUCH better lifespans than bulbs is saving people.

There are 2 (4 if high beams are separated) incandescent light bulbs in a car without LEDs.
There is at least 1 extra point of redundancy.
Also car light bulbs are made to last longer in automotive environment.

LEDs having better lifespan in a paper. But In real world your mileage may vary.

I’m not against LEDs, but current execution is bad: too bright, too easy to blind other people.

This isn’t strictly true. Even with the same beam pattern, LEDs will inherently have more glare. This is due to a combination of the physics of how LEDs project light in a more directed beam than more uniform halogens, and because they produce a cooler light that our brains interpret as brighter even at the same intensity as a warmer light. But yeah, the height issue has been a problem for a long time, even before LEDs were in use, LEDs have simply exasperated the problem there. And while mismounting them will lead to issues, upgrades are still a relatively small portion of headlights compared to factory ones.

exactly, LED lights aren’t magically bad, car regulations and enforcement of those regulations just suuuuuuuuuuuck.

The only reason you couldn’t make incandescents as bad is because they’d fucking melt.

There are still cars that come with incandescent bulbs. I own a 3 year old base model Civic and it still has regular light bulbs in the headlights and tail lights.

It’s also the way they make cheap LED headlights. The reflectors that direct the beam of light in your headlights expects the filament of the bulb to be in a very specific spot, but LED headlights often have a much wider area where the light emits from than the little filament that traditional headlights do. So when installed in cars that aren’t designed for LEDs, the beam pattern can be off and make the light shine at people instead of down toward the road.

Fuck blue LED’s in general. No I don’t want to be able to see my Wifi repeater doubling as an adult nightlight.

LED headlights can be many times brighter than incandescent bulbs with no significant impact to life expectancy. Physically, incandescent bulbs produce light by heating up an element which decays relatively quickly. LEDs directly convert electricity to light.

In the US, there ARE regulations limiting how bright headlights can be, but aftermarket LEDs can be bought which exceed the limit. I’ve heard the EU and Asia already widely use adaptive headlight technology so it’s a uniquely american car problem