To whomever invented LED bus advertisements: I despise you.

Technical education opens doors, or your child.

Please don’t open my child.

In my area once in awhile I'll see this box truck where it's covered in LED screens with animated ads on it that drives around. Annoying at best, a road hazard at worst.

Same here, and great that it’s wasting gas and polluting at the same time! I hate it with a burning passion.
- They drive these up and down the Las Vegas strip, which generally is snarled with traffic. So adding to traffic too.

I’m surprised that’s legal. You’d think it would distract other drivers

freedom of expression does also matter, how much more distracting is this compared to if it was made with retroreflectors? Could these lights be confused for hazards? Is this any different than having a glowing "taxi" sign on a taxi?
- Eat a dirty dick

I think such things are banned in Australia. Clearly not safe for traffic.

Which is strange since we have full size electronic billboards (in WA). I don't believe they can have scrolling text/animations etcs, but they will change once or twice in the time you can see them at fwy speeds.
They are super repulsive to me because they are more vibrant and attention demanding than traditional printed billboards (especially in low light conditions) and feel like late 90's pop-up ads.
Also i dont need a ~25m² screen changing in my peripheral vision when im already busy keeping to keep an eye on some dickhead in a lifted ford raptor or Yank Tank who is cutting through traffic.
- Yeah it's ok on a static object by law, but not on a moving vehicle.
  And yes, even here in Armidale we have about four of them, and they don't seem to have night dimming so can be a bit blinding.

They do need to be that bright at daytime, and most indeed use automatic brightness by default. If only there was a technology that could use daylight instead of fighting it...

I mean, I don't think an advert needs to be illuminated at all, frankly
- They also don't need to be visible, or exist at all for that matter. I despise ads.
- This is in general for LED text signs. The "inventors" (more like engineers because they just combined multiplexing with superbright LEDs) OP mentioned probably didn't specify a purpose, they just wanted a more reliable alternative to mechanical or manual signage but yes, most are for ads.
cons: significantly more expensive, don't work in total darkness, don't catch attention
- They have an LED each in the top-right corner of the corresponding dot. The LEDs use different driving signals (much higher frequency and not just when the display changes) but are kept in sync with the slow-updating display to allow both technologies to complement each other: they do work in total darkness and faulty dots have LEDs as a fallback; the LEDs are half-brightness at night, full brightness at dusk and off in daylight.
  Also, they were significantly LESS expensive than a sufficiently luminous LED display in the 90s before superbright LEDs existed.
  As I said in another comment, they weren't designed for ads but info signage, so they don't actively catch attention, which is what you want to get a visually cleaner environment.

We for real need to start legislating and enforcing brightness laws. These headlights are out of control. This thing is an abomination.

There is no rhyme or reason for anything beyond a reasonable street lamp and headlight. We kept asking could we, it's time to ask should we? If nothing else I miss seeing stars at night

The issue with a lot of LED lights isn't brightness, its beam dip. The light should be angled downwards so it never shines into the oncoming traffic.
Unfortunately, a lot of retrofitted brighter bulbs don't play nicely with the beam dips. Car companies also err towards helping their diver, rather than the oncoming ones.
- The brightness is absolutely a problem, it doesn't matter how well they are adjusted, when the car hits a bump or comes over a crest, it's going to blind oncoming traffic

Ffs of all the colors they could have used too.

It looks like a UK bus. If you want to help make the bus company's life miserable there is a useful trick. This is the sort of thing a lot of parish council members will get disproportionately angry about. They also tend to have far less to do than higher bits of government. They also know a lot more about the inner workings of local government, and who's ear to burn about it. A politely written letter (or a few from several people) can get them up in arms about it.

Once you set that in motion, wait a week or 2, then also contact the local papers about it. I've seen them roll with far smaller stories than this.

Neither group has much/any hard power, but the soft power of the NIMBY croud can be extremely effective against public facing companies.

Edit to add.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/artificial-light-nuisances-how-councils-deal-with-complaints

It could be argued that that light is a statutory nuisance.

Shit that’s bright af.

I'm sure I've seen them with the side panel showing the route the bus was travelling on.

No surprise that they eventually gave that up for ad money.

Next step will be to have that screen in colour and animated. And speakers.

road advertisement in general should be illegal, it's literally MADE to distract drivers

Truly mildly infuriating. Nicely done.

I'm fortunate that the bins on my street are collected twice-daily. The trade-off is that the bins lorries have LED sides. Lights up my entire bedroom when they pull up. I'm also opposite a pub, so every Wednesday morning starting around 7 it's non-stop clanging from barrel deliveries. I live above two shopfronts, so every morning through midnight is bullshit noises. I live under a lamppost, so the council putting up Christmas lights means a cherry picker staring through my windows. I'm just bitching, but the LED buses and lorries are fuckin wild.

How does your city produce enough trash to justify pickups twice daily? That’s fuckin’ wild lol
- It's London mate, twice a day rubbish pickup on my street and the fuckin place is still full of rats. Still, cheap protein in a pot noodle innit! Some of those fuckers are bigger than cats, fearsome bastards.

Whoever*

Whom is an object, who is a subject. An object usually follows prepositions like “to”, so it’s good instinct to use whomever here, but in this case the object is the entire clause “whoever invented …”, so the whoever is the subject of the verb invented.

here just the city lights, and city street high beamers, and tall trucks that have only high beams and higher beams... anyway those are blinding enough as it is

Having been to Manchester very recently, I can think of bigger things to complain about.

(Not that I have room to talk, being in Blackburn.)

How is your move to the UK going? How do you find it compared to the US?
- I love it so much more than the U.S., but I really need to find a job that pays enough to get my wife over here and get my daughter off a tourist visa. But it has only been two weeks.
  Anyway, just the fact that, despite the British having a reputation for rudeness, people here are so nice and helpful compared to everyone's "fuck you, I got my own shit going on" attitude in the U.S. We have had so many people, total strangers, help us in one way or another in the past two weeks.

It's not that they're LEDs, it's that they're too bright.

At the very least, can they not be blue? It's the worst color at night.

Red would be best--it fucks with your eyes the least--but there's often legal limits on red lights (besides brake/turn signals) on non-emergency vehicles. Something in orange or yellow would be less harsh.

Anyway here is how to tell if LED sign is cheap

But what if someone doesn't see it? What then?

I haven't had the displeasure yet.

Stage coach?

What made you unable to look in a different direction?

Sir, this is c/mildlyinfuriating, let me whinge in peace.
Really? Count the things you're not allowed to show in public. It's almost like you can't go through life with your eyes literally closed so the world doesn't bother you.
You have to know that, though, so you must be trolling.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TTAU7lLDZYU