Blinding Headlites. For some reason, a lot of cars and SUVs on the road now have four very brite lites, two of them headlites and two, below them, smaller but comparably brite running lites or fog lites or whatever. This is a very recent phenomenon that must be stopped.
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Many cars now are also equipped with overbrite halogen headlites. Put the two together, and you have a potent recipe for danger on the road at nite. There is even one car I have had the misfortune of facing at nite that has only two headlites, but they are side-by-side, no more than a few inches apart, which produces an intense, blinding, dual beam. All such liting should be illegal.

Traffic death rates are three times greater at night than during the day, according to the National Safety Council. Yet many of us are unaware of night driving's special hazards or don't know effective ways to deal with them.

Driving at night is more of a challenge than many people think. It's also more dangerous.

Why is night driving so dangerous? One obvious answer is darkness. Ninety percent of a driver's reaction depends on vision, and vision is severely limited at night. Depth perception, color recognition, and peripheral vision are compromised after sundown. * * *

When following another vehicle, keep your headlights on low beams so you don't blind the driver ahead of you.

If an oncoming vehicle doesn't lower beams from high to low, avoid glare by watching the right edge of the road and using it as a steering guide.

Alas, what this article from the National Safety Council does not say is that glare causes a momentary chemical change in the eye that reduces vision, and trying to avoid oncoming headlites is not always effective at preventing that chemical change.
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Why does government allow boorish, inconsiderate fools to use these horribly dangerous lites anywhere, but especially in urban settings, where hazards are closely spaced? If you are driving in wide open spaces and are momentarily blinded, or your vision is reduced for a second or two, no serious adverse consequences may issue, other than stress. But if you're driving in a congested area and at the very second you are blinded, a pedestrian steps into the road from between parked cars or a car pulls out from an intersection or parking spot, the consequences can be severe, even fatal.
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It is because a very large portion of the general public is too stupid and inconsiderate to do the right thing without being forced to, that government keeps expanding its power. We have to pass laws to stop stupidity! So let's do it.
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Car manufacturers should be FORBIDDEN to install dangerously overbrite headlites and configurations of lites, period. Cars now on the roads with dangerously overbrite headlites should be recalled by manufacturers to have those systems removed. Drivers who use four headlites against oncoming drivers should be ARRESTED and thrown into jail for reckless driving. Their cars should be impounded and the dangerous liting removed by government, at the owner's expense, before the car is returned to the guilty driver.
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Glare is an extremely dangerous problem in nite driving (especially if your windshield isn't perfectly clean, inside and out, or if it is wet from rain or partially obscured by snowflakes between wiper strokes). You have to see to drive, so blinding headlites should be banned and people who use them PUNISHED. People are DYING from glare.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:16 PM