The world is experiencing truly momentous events, but that doesn’t mean that the smaller issues are insignificant. One of these is blinding headlights.
Years ago, there was a law that required headlights to be aimed downwards – toward the road. This allowed them to be helpful to the driver without blinding drivers in oncoming traffic. Well, either that law was changed or it’s being ignored, and now every driver has to deal with this issue every time he or she sits behind the wheel. Not only is this unpleasant but it poses a clear danger, particularly at night. Amazingly, few people seem to care.
This problem is getting worse, and there are several reasons why. The main one is that numerous vehicles, particularly the newer ones, are equipped with LED headlights. These are very bright and pose a challenge for many older drivers and others whose eyes are sensitive to bright lights.
When drivers are exposed to these lights, it may take several seconds until their eyes adjust and revert to normal. While that may not seem like a long time, in a fast-moving car it is long enough to experience repeated dangers. And then, just as the driver’s eyes come back to normal, it’s very likely that another vehicle with blinding lights will come along and the pattern repeats itself.
There’s more to this problem than meets the eye (pardon the pun). These days, auto manufacturers are making many vehicles considerably taller than they used to, which means the headlights are perfectly positioned to be at eye-level for drivers in smaller, oncoming cars, exacerbating the glare problem.
According to AI Overview, “Newer vehicles, especially those with LED headlights, often produce very bright beams that can cause significant glare for other drivers, especially at night. The shift from traditional halogen headlights, (which emit a yellowish light) to LED headlights (which emit a bluish-white light) adds to the problem as the human eye is more sensitive to blue wavelengths.”
A report on CNN said that “adaptive driving beam headlights, which can adjust their beam patterns to avoid blinding other drivers,” have been available in other countries for years. Unfortunately, they are slow to be introduced in the U.S. because of regulations.
Worse At Night
Driving accidents are bad news whenever they happen, but are worse at night because they are more likely to be fatal. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that half of the fatal car accidents on U.S. roads occur at night, even though the volume of traffic is lower.
It is said that glare from very bright high intensity and LED headlights may be a contributing factor to some of those fatalities. Incidentally, this problem is caused not just by oncoming traffic. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) survey found that 30% of drivers had sometimes experienced “disturbing” nighttime glare from headlights of vehicles following them, according to an AI Overview report.
The NHTSA receives more complaints about headlight brightness than any other complaint, and following are a sample of the comments from motorists they have received:
*I thought I was the only one annoyed by those bright lights
*I did not know there’s a place I can go to complain about this
*This has the same effect as though you would look into the sun briefly
*It’s totally blinding
*It drives me insane! I experience road rage
Seeing The Light
LED headlights are as much as 300% (or more) brighter than the old halogen bulbs most cars used before 2015. They are 2,000 - 4,000 lumens (lumens are a measure of how much light is being emitted by a bulb). By comparison, the average halogen bulb is only about 1,000 lumens, so they are clearly much brighter. It’s estimated that approximately 80% of new cars have LEDs, and some of them have more than just two lights.
The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) has a lot of influence as to how auto manufacturers can improve safety and thereby earn higher safety ratings. Since automakers vie for good safety ratings, they comply with recommendations issued by the IIHS.
One of their members confirmed that brighter headlights have safety benefits. As a result, car manufacturers want to increase their brightness to get a better safety rating – an idea many drivers take issue with. In fact, they think headlights are already too bright, and they’re using homemade remedies to help cope with the issue.
Although some of these will block light, they may also increase safety risks. For example, some drivers wear sunglasses on top of their regular glasses or wear sunglasses at night or, for lack of a better option, they raise their hands to block out the bright light. However, that also blocks out some of their views.
Fake Stats
One auto journalist who studied this problem said some automakers are engineering dark spots into LEDs to help them pass headlight brightness tests, a practice he calls “lighting-gate.”
Then again, there’s also another side to this story, which is that there are various benefits for vehicles to have very bright headlights. They are, in fact, very important to some motorists, either because they drive in poorly lit areas or in rural areas where there are no lights. Poor vision may be a factor requiring brighter lighting. And faded lane markings may also require bright headlights.
Data show that drivers with good visibility are in 19% fewer single vehicle nighttime crashes per mile than those with poor visibility. However, there is no net advantage if their bright lights impair the safety of other drivers.
On the bottom line, exceptionally bright headlights are a real problem for some drivers that must be addressed by both automakers and the government. Unfortunately, at this time, it’s being swept under the rug. The solution – at least a partial one – is softer lighting aimed down toward the road. This would certainly help, it’s not rocket science, and would not be terribly expensive to implement. But for whatever reasons, some changes, no matter how beneficial, are slow in coming.
At this point, tens of millions of vehicles with bright LEDs are on the roads. Bottom line: This problem won’t go away any time soon, and so, when possible, drivers should limit their nighttime driving, carpool, or change their schedules. At some point, the government agencies involved will probably reconsider this issue from everyone’s perspective and impose guidelines for LEDs. For so many of us, that day cannot come soon enough.
Sources: AI Overview; cnn.com; wbur.org
Gerald Harris is a financial and feature writer. Gerald can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
