I feel like Prius drivers, sitting as low as we do, have a tough time with the new brighter headlights on most vehicles. Let alone from pickup trucks with additional headlights. Anyone have any suggestions for dealing with this? Example: putting any kind of tint or treatment on your mirrors? It seems to have gotten worse in the last couple years. I'm an '05 driver. Thanks everybody. Matt Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
Lately due to seclusion created by pandemic I've been way angrier about it than usual and resorted to shielding my eyes from the front and the sides by holding up my hand and flipping off the headlights while cursing and kinda hoping they see my hand. Lol... As for long road trips when I'm pushing loads of hours in the dark I adjust my side view mirrors so I have to lean extra far to use them, as well as adjust my driving speed to get way ahead or way behind whichever headlights I'm cursing out at the time. Also, they make glasses for night driving, but I've not tried them, but maybe they could be useful?
A Prius is low??? Only because the yardstick has grown since your car was built. Did you ever drive a 20th Century car? My Prius is taller, with higher seating position, than any 19XX car I ever drove, from a '63 Ford wagon and '63 Rambler, to even a '97 Subaru Legacy wagon that was effectively the first Outback. The Prius isn't low, or at least wasn't so when it was built. Instead, North American vehicles keep getting taller, and taller, and ... This really got started with new-fangled SUVs in the mid-1990s, and hasn't ended. My Legacy was the tallest car (not counting SUVs or pickups) around when I bought it, but could no longer see over the trunk butts of many compact cars by the time it was retired 17 years later. The 1990s F-250s we still use on dad's farm, big and tall back then, are now shorter and smaller than today's F-150s. It seems as if there is an ongoing arms race, to bigger, taller, and meaner looking.
Some new cars have dimming outside mirrors. I'm not aware of a retrofit kit yet. Don't forget that our eyes aren't getting any younger. The effects of glare get worse over time even if the original lighting problem remains stable.
I should add that only my center mirror sees vehicles directly behind. This mirror is easily dimmed with a prism flip switch. My outside mirrors are not pointed straight back, but instead to the sides to provide better coverage of vehicles on my flanks in adjacent lanes, greatly reducing the blinds spots. While not eliminating reflected glare, this does greatly reduce it. I started using this system of outside mirror aim shortly after moving from a rural region of mostly single lane roads with no flanking cars, to an urban region of 3+ lane highways with lots of them. I'll never go back, as I don't need to see 3 different images of the same vehicle immediately behind. How To Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots
Here are some ideas https://www.quora.com/Is-it-dangerous-to-tilt-your-rearview-mirror-up-in-response-to-drivers-who-are-tailgating-you-with-their-high-beams-on
AFAIK, all inside rearview mirrors have an automatic or manual "dimmer" mechanism. Then you adjust your outside mirrors to NOT look directly behind you but into their respective adjacent lanes. This is not a perfect solution but is should help a lot. Unless maybe you are in heavy traffic where the adjacent lanes are also occupied.
Thanks for this! It got me thinking about a rear view mirror dash cam for my '05 R&D Prius. I wonder if anyone on here has tried any of these options: Our 10 Best Rear view mirror dash cam in The US - January 2022 | BestProductsReviews.com
