Raise your hand if you have ever been cruising down any major thoroughfare in metro Atlanta and been suddenly blinded by the searing white headlights of an oncoming car.
Or maybe the car was behind you and the steady beam from the headlights cast a dazzling glare in your rearview and side mirrors.
There is so much to complain about when driving in Atlanta, but the onslaught of cars with high beams blazing on city streets has reached epic proportions.
Last week, while I was driving down Briarcliff Road, a car sped around a curve, its headlights at full blast, leaving me blind for several seconds. Later the same week, I drove a half-mile down Ponce de Leon Ave. with one hand alternately covering my rearview mirror and side mirror to block the blinding light from the headlights of the car behind me.
I thought maybe I was imagining things, but I’m not. Neither are you. Headlight brightness has almost doubled in the last decade, according to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Industry experts say the change is partly due to the introduction of light-emitting diodes, which are now standard in most newer cars.
LED lights are praised for their efficiency but their white or blue light feels like a lighthouse beacon Illuminating the road compared to the warmer, more sepia-toned halogen lights that were the headlight standard for decades.
As one frustrated driver pointed out: We are now caught in a vicious cycle in which drivers of new cars with LED headlights that shine as brightly as high beams force drivers of older cars to turn on their high beams rather than end up driving blind.
“With sunspots in my vision from dazzling beams in my side mirrors and oncoming traffic a couple of thousand feet away, I now have to run high beams like everyone else,” said one driver traveling on I-20 from Austin to Atlanta last year.
If you can’t beat ‘em, I guess you can join ‘em, but that’s how we ended up with too many bright headlights in the big city.
In case anyone is confused, high beams are intended for use on unlit and rural roads. When another car approaches from the opposite direction, it is not just a courtesy to dim your high beams, it’s the law.
State regulations call for dimming high beams within 500 feet of oncoming traffic. If you are following another car, you should dim them within 200 feet.
Some may be driving with high beams without realizing it. Control panels aren’t always intuitive, making it difficult to distinguish between the symbols for high beams and low beams. Hint: it’s generally the headlight symbol with the straight lines.
For drivers with high beam assist headlights, which automatically adjust from high beam to low beam in the face of oncoming traffic, this should be less of an issue, but only if the feature is properly activated.
High beam assist generally engages at speeds over 25 mph, so anyone who wants to use their high beams at lower speeds would have to switch to manual mode. That could be another reason there are so many drivers with high beams on local roads, even when their cars are equipped with an auto-dimming function.
The amount of glare can also be a function of a car’s height or alignment, condition, and size of the headlights — all of which can make headlights seem brighter than they are. But while there is an incentive to increase headlight brightness — more light improves night driving — there is less incentive to do anything about glare.
It’s hard to isolate glare as the sole or primary cause of an accident, and less data on the downsides of glare means less action from federal regulators in addressing the thousands of driver complaints about headlights that are too bright.
One 2022 study estimated that glare from the high-beam headlights of oncoming traffic at night accounts for 12% to 15% of all traffic accidents.
That same year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates automotive safety, approved adaptive driving beams which offer better road illumination while reducing glare to oncoming drivers.
The technology uses LED capabilities to shift a swath of light away from oncoming cars, putting them in a shadow that reduces glare. Drivers in approaching traffic avoid the blinding bright light, but the rest of the road remains illuminated.
Though some car brands are equipped with ADB technology, most manufacturers have not yet enabled the software in the U.S., because regulations are unclear for a feature that qualifies as both high beam and low beam. It could take years before ADB technology becomes a standard feature here.
Even when it does, drivers frustrated by bright headlights still may not find much relief. While ADB technology works with high beams; those super bright low-beam LEDs will still shine as bright as ever.
We’ve come a long way from the early days when cars didn’t have any headlights at all, and people just avoided driving at night.
In the question of which is the greater hazard, limited vision on the road or limited vision due to glare, the auto industry has answered with wider, brighter lights.
But in the race to address one concern, they only seem to have created another and have lagged far behind in finding a solution.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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