The lights are too bright and poorly aligned. I walk regularly, and its more than just the tesla's and mini's at fault (Teslas are definitely some of the worst in my experience though, along with Rivian)
> On a recent episode of the Carmudgeon Show podcast, auto journalist Jason Cammisa described a phenomenon occurring with some LED headlights in which there are observable minor spots of dimness among an otherwise bright field of light. “With complex arrays of LEDs and of optics,” he said, “car companies realized they can engineer in a dark spot where it’s being measured, but the rest of the field is vastly over-illuminated. And I’ve had now two car companies’ engineers, when I played stupid and said, ‘What’s the dark spot?’ … And the lighting engineers are all fucking proud of themselves: ‘That’s where they measure the fucking thing!’ And I’m like, ‘You assholes, you’re the reason that every fucking new car is blinding the shit out of everyone.’”
Teslas are the worst. I try not to speculate without evidence but I cannot shake the intuition that it is intentional to aid the driver assist and self driving stuff, and reflective of a generally sociopathic company.
I've heard it alleged that Tesla simply does not have a QA check for headlight alignment at the factory. Based on my experience on the road, that's entirely believable.
Go for a walk of an evening along a footpath into traffic. I guarantee it'll be Teslas and Minis that are the routinely the culprits of dazzling.
I'd guess it's cheap, lazily aligned hardware in the Tesla, and the ridiculous design of the Mini that cause the problems.
Yes, sporadically you'll be blinded by another model- one that needs an alignment - but it'll consistently be Tesla's and Minis.