By Vaughn Bui
I love driving.
It’s a daily occurrence—hopping in my car, hearing the aggressive engine suddenly ignite and shifting into drive with my playlist sounding from the speakers. Though some consider driving a chore, I consider the privilege to be relaxing …
… until I start driving at night.
What was once a nice drive had turned into a chaotic mess to survive. It’s as if the sun had become a Hydra: you get rid of it at sunset and two more appear to replace it. It ends up multiplying, the countless bright suns that light up the night. But in this case, they’re not suns, they’re car headlights.
Headlights are equipped on cars to illuminate the black asphalt that lines the roads, allowing drivers to see the street lines when it is needed. They do their job well within our suburban area. However, modern headlights have become too bright and have well exceeded their intended purpose. No matter if a car is using its regular night headlights or its high beams, these beams no longer light up just the road markers; they light up: sidewalks, brick walls, bushes, trees, telephone poles, pedestrians, cyclists, cats, dogs and most dangerously, other drivers.
It wouldn’t be a problem if the cars’ lights weren’t intense—but they are. The reason for the overly bright headlights is due to the technology used. Light Emitting Diodes (LED) are the most common type of mechanism used in modern cars. It’s a reliable option, providing efficient energy usage and being cheaper than prior halogen bulbs. LEDs also have greater longevity and higher brightness. However, like the saying, “There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing,” the increased brightness has had unintended functions such as blinding other drivers. The effect is even worse for the elderly who may be sensitive to light.
Some manufacturers have attempted ways to reduce these unintended effects. For example, my Mazda blocks the headlights at a certain adjustable level that illuminates everything below the level and shines nothing above it.
Although this strategy does work most of the time, it often fails when considering all driving conditions. For example, when I was driving home in mid-March, I approached an older-looking pickup truck with a metallic coating on its rear. As I got closer to the truck, my Mazda’s adjustable level lights had still directed light toward the metallic coating, causing all the light from my LEDs to be reflected into my own eyes. It was a painful experience, and I had gotten a taste of how bright my lights truly are.
Additionally, when my car drives across a bump or a ditch, the incline guarantees that all drivers are going to be blinded by my lights. Although these two scenarios are special to me, they no doubt happen with other drivers as well.
Modern pickup trucks of ungodly size also render the leveled headlights useless. Truck manufacturers place the headlights of these trucks towards the top of a truck’s front end. The increased size and height of pickup trucks have practically put the level in which the lights are placed directly at eye level of smaller sedans, crossovers and SUVs. It is only other huge pickup trucks that have any fighting chance of surviving if a gargantuan truck is driving behind them at night.
Fortunately, hope for the future is not lost. Some manufacturers have tackled the challenge of bright headlights by adopting adaptive headlights that have full-time high-beam lights on. When the car senses another vehicle approaching, it will automatically adjust where the lights shine to avoid the approaching vehicle. Adaptive headlights are particularly useful for the medically blind and the elderly who may require bright headlights but do not want to blind other drivers.
However, adaptive headlight technology itself isn’t perfect. Light doesn’t spread out in a defined cone shape like the Toyota demonstration which many manufacturers replicate. An oncoming car far away will still be affected by the bright headlights until it reaches the cone boundary in which the adaptive technology kicks in. So in the end, drivers are still affected up until they come closer to the offending shining vehicle.
Also, adaptive headlights are usually only seen on more luxurious car brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi due to an increased cost as the technology requires more complex mechanisms to function properly. However, the technology has been making its way into more consumer cars. Although it still is not perfect, adaptive headlights are a step in the right direction.
Currently, there’s not much we can do as safe drivers on the road. It’s not like cars have radio proximity chats in which you can tell another driver that their high beams are on. The best bet today is to keep your eyes at an angle away from the bright lights, but just enough so that you may still see the road.
It’s not a great solution, but if car headlights do not get any dimmer, it’s something we’ll have to keep on doing.
