Nate Rogers at The Ringer: There appear to be two types of drivers in North America these days: those who think about headlights only when one of theirs goes out, and those who fixate on them every time they drive at night. If you’re in the first camp, consider yourself lucky. Those in the second camp—aggravated by the excess glare produced in this new era of light-emitting diode headlights—are riled up enough that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any other topic, several insiders told me.
It’s not just in the aggrieved drivers’ imaginations. Going by data compiled by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, headlight brightness has roughly doubled in the past 10 years—although you probably don’t need convincing if you’ve been paying attention over that span. Something happened out there, and a zap of light causing you to grimace behind the wheel suddenly went from a rarity to a routine occurrence.
As opposed to the sepia-toned halogen lights we had mostly been using for generations of vehicles, LED lights—which are now used for the vast majority of new cars—come out blazing white or blue, like an omnipresent police flashlight shining at you during a traffic stop. And in what can be seen as a flawed attempt to match LED capabilities on other vehicles, it’s also become not uncommon, anecdotally speaking, for people to have their high beams on even on crowded highways and streets—something that’s technically illegal because it’s deemed to be a danger to other drivers. The strange thing is, though, I can’t say I notice much of a difference between one car’s high beams and another’s low beams anymore.
More here.
