Blinded by Headlights' Glare? You're Not Alone

Anyone who drives at night has likely been momentarily dazed by the glare of an oncoming vehicle's headlights. There is, not surprisingly, a robust Reddit forum called "f---yourheadlights" dedicated to the issue, populated with driver's-view images. At the Ringer, Nate Rogers takes a deep dive into the issue. In one sense, the story is a simple one: The problem of road glare can be traced to the advent of "vastly more powerful" LED headlights, writes Rogers. Federal highway rules regulating headlights haven't been updated since 1986, roughly 20 years before LED headlights started replacing those of the sepia-toned halogen variety. Bottom line: Headlight brightness has about doubled over the last decade, according to stats from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

In short, "a zap of light causing you to grimace behind the wheel suddenly went from a rarity to a routine occurrence," writes Rogers. So just update the regulations, and end of story? It's not quite that simple, given the difficulty of proving that glare causes accidents, as well as myriad factors at play including proper headlight alignment, which some say is a bigger factor than the lights themselves. And there's this: "The most compelling argument I heard in defense of brighter lights is that, while glare is clearly a hazard, it may not be as much of a hazard as limited vision on the road," writes Rogers. In other words, that annoying glare might prevent more accidents than it causes. (Read the full story, which takes note of a new "adaptive driving beam" technology that automakers say can mitigate the issue, and includes an interview with Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk fame.)