I flashed people three times on the way home the other night. Ok, hold it – I don’t mean THAT kind of flashing, and I wasn’t arrested or anything; I’m referring to clicking my headlights up to the high beam setting on account of some moron is coming at me with headlights that are so bleeding bright my retina is melting and so is my windshield.
Apart from the fact that melting whilst driving is not exactly optimal, many vehicle headlights these days blare and glare like they have been stolen from an airport runway and those blasts are downright painful to your vision orbs. Not to mention the fact that you are also basically blinded, and I believe the AMA recommends that you refrain from driving with zero vision.
When I learned to drive (about the time headlights were invented), everyone who wrangled a transportation machine knew the procedure to signal to on-coming traffic that had their brights on was to briefly flash your own high beams thereby sending the message: “Hey there, fellow driver, you have inadvertently left your bright headlights on, so could you kindly click them down to low for me!”
As time went on and the more you drove, attempting to be a diligent defensive driver, the more you experienced painfully dazzling headlights blasting in your face and somehow you became an angry, frustrated headlight flashing demon, occasionally yelling right out loud in your car: “You inconsiderate, stupid, dumb dickweed dweeb your freaking lights are on freaking BRIGHT and I can’t see and I hope you get something bad like shingles!”
And guess what – it’s gotten even worse lately. Nowadays it seems like every third vehicle is shooting laser beams at you, and that’s not all. When you flash these laser dweebs nothing happens! At first, I thought every third person in the world was just a dweeb and liked to torture you with high beams, but then I checked. Those vehicles have torture lasers on the LOW beams too!
Expert Daniel Stern, editor of Driving Vision News, calls it “discomfort glare” and says the problem is real and it’s on account of three things: headlights now are brighter, smaller, and bluer. And, at the risk of saying “and that’s not all” again, that’s not all.
He points out that as we age (and who doesn’t?) we become “more light sensitive” and need “more light to see” – an unsettlingly unfortunate combo. In fact, he says 60-year-olds need triple the light to see compared to when they were 20. (Hmm, so that’s why I have five flashlights in the house!) And now manufacturers have created headlights that use LEDs instead of the old days when headlights only contained something called ‘electricity’. These Light Emitting Deathray headlights would illuminate the surface of the moon if you could get your car to stand on end.
It’s becoming a safety issue on the roads as well as a melted retina issue. In Europe, headlights are inspected, and many cars now have automated beams that reduce what Stern calls “stabby glare”. Here, various governments in North America say they are working on fixing the problem, which means, of course, in 2050, they will still be having meetings trying to decide what to do about it.
In the meantime, there’s not much we beam-clicking drivers can do about it. Back in the 80s, a Canadian singer thought he had the answer, so he wrote a song about it. It was guy who never met a mirror he didn’t like called Corey Hart and you might remember his hit song, “I Wear My Sunglasses At Night”.
Catchy song, and you’d look good, but I don’t think the AMA wouldn’t recommend it.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Reach out to Harley with any thoughts or ideas at harleyhay99@gmail.com.
