Car headlights are too bright, but the Government can’t do much about it

Bright headlights were back in the headlines last week, with the subject of headlamp glare hitting the news after the recent change of clocks meant that more of us are driving in the dark again.

The Department for Transport is carrying out research that should be published soon, but it’s tricky to see what it can do to improve things.

While retro-fitted and illegally bright LED and xenon bulbs are a small part of the issue, fundamentally new car lights are getting brighter, and newer cars increasingly have tech that doesn’t work as well as it should. 

Full-on pixel LED lights are excellent; these light the road around oncoming traffic, but extinguish a little bubble encircling cars ahead or coming towards you. However, they can be rather costly, and tend to only appear on premium cars, and even then on higher trims or as a pricey option.

The type that auto-dip when they detect vehicles around them, on the other hand, are basically not good enough. I’ve driven cars from several different manufacturers that just can’t react sufficiently quickly, and you end up with oncoming traffic furiously flashing their main beams to make that point. 

As with the likes of lane-keep assist and speed-limit alert tech, it’s lovely when it works, but isn’t consistently good enough to function in everyday driving life. 

Lights generally are getting brighter, and I’ve had flashes from oncoming cars when I’ve been on dipped beam, especially on rolling roads when you can be cresting a bump and then briefly blind the poor soul coming the other way.

Several surveys have found that drivers feel they are being dazzled more now than ever, but how to address this is the big question. Most of the headlights motorists are complaining about are legal. They just use tech that makes them brighter than the warming low glow that cars of previous years could offer. 

Any change in legislation will be difficult – manufacturers won’t re-engineer their cars’ lighting purely for the UK, so it will take some sort of Europe-wide initiative, and there doesn’t seem to be any real appetite for that. 

In the short term, and even beyond, drivers are just going to have to get used to driving at night being a more illuminating experience, because any solution is still some way off.

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