Are car headlights too bright? Let us know.
Should brightness be regulated?
It’s happened to every driver at least once: you’re cruising down a pitch black road at night when all of a sudden, the bright headlights of an oncoming car temporarily blind you.
It’s a story too well-known in New England, where there are woodsy streets everywhere that are not as well-lit as main roads or highways. Bright beams can be disruptive and dangerous if drivers don’t dim them for oncoming traffic. The Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, an organization focused on the prevention of car crashes and injuries, notes the importance of safe nighttime driving — half of all fatal car crashes and over 70% of all pedestrian deaths occur at night.
In 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a ruling that would allow automakers to fix new vehicles with adaptive beam headlights, which “shine less light on occupied areas of the road and more light on unoccupied areas.” Essentially, these headlights would still illuminate objects in the road, such as pedestrians or animals, without compromising the vision and visibility of other drivers.
While adaptive beam headlights are a step in the right direction for the United States — they are already in use in Canada and Europe — they may take decades to reach American roads in significant numbers. Automakers are allowed to install these headlights in new car models but not in existing ones, according to Axios.
Tell us what you think about the brightness of headlights and how, or if, they should be regulated. Share your thoughts with Boston.com by filling out the survey below or e-mailing us at [email protected] and we may feature your response in a future Boston.com article.
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