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Report: How Headlight Glare Became Such a Big Problem
If you’ve been driving for a while, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that headlamps have gotten so ludicrously bright that they’ve become a safety issue. Consumer complaints about on-road blindings continue to climb and, in the absence of any true regulatory response, a grassroots push back has begun. The problem stems from many issues. Light-emitting diodes (LED) and high-intensity discharge (HID) headlamps are significantly brighter than the units used in previous eras. Older halogen…
And as they were rolled out en masse at a rapid pace, any potential repercussions would have to be discovered on the fly.“We’re all like human experiments,” said Mark Baker, when I called him to talk about his nonprofit, the Soft Lights Foundation, the mission of which is to advocate “for the protection of people and the environment from the harms of visible light radiation emitted by products that use light-emitting diodes.” Baker’s concern is with the broader integration of LEDs in society, but he shows up regularly in the headlight world, having recently organized a petition that gathered nearly 60,000 signatures demanding that NHTSA limit headlight intensity. Chris Trechter, an engineer who previously worked for Magna International, told The Ringer that “there are giant [regulatory] loopholes that allow you to throw basically unlimited light,” provided you’re using LEDs and managed to meet the baseline safety standards. It often glosses over how the sizing disparities of modern vehicles change accident survivability rates and it’s heavily encouraging the implementation of more connected driving aids that remove control from drivers, while simultaneously monitoring them to hold them accountable, specifically because it’s what insurance groups want.
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