Obviously vivid, blue-hued headlights stuffed my hatchback earlier this yr as I drove 80 miles an hour on the freeway between San Antonio and Austin. The headlights shone so brightly that their reflection in my rearview mirror burned my eyeballs, inflicting me to look away from the street and quickly decelerate. The massive luxurious SUV behind me started using my tail — inflicting an much more intense glare to engulf my automobile — earlier than aggressively whipping round to move me.
For a second, all was fantastic. My eyes adjusted. And I started to choose up pace once more — solely to be visually assaulted by a lifted truck with even brighter headlights and flood lights atop its roof, then an electrical automobile with the whitest lights I’d ever seen, and an onslaught of others. Fearing my automobile being slammed from behind each time I used to be pressured to decelerate and look away from the street, I bought off the freeway and took another route.
The headlights felt like they’d turn into particularly onerous on my eyes lately. Possibly I used to be simply getting previous, I assumed, or my eyes had been weakened by engaged on a pc for a dwelling.
Then a listener of Vox’s Clarify It to Me podcast named Reed known as and requested, “Am I going loopy? Or does each new automobile on the street have the world’s brightest headlights? I’m questioning why that is all of a sudden occurring? And are there any limits? Can individuals simply put no matter they need on the entrance of their automobile and blind everybody else?”
He wasn’t alone. Our present has acquired a number of emails with comparable inquiries from listeners and Vox readers. And there’s even a subreddit devoted to the subject, the place individuals complain, make jokes, and work collectively to search out options. So in hopes of serving to Reed, myself, and the numerous different upset drivers, Clarify It to Me took on Reed’s query.
Are automobile headlights getting brighter?
There are two methods to reply that query, lighting scientist John Bullough, a program director on the Gentle and Well being Analysis Middle on the Icahn Faculty of Medication at Mount Sinai, informed Vox.
The primary has to do with the colour of LED lights, the type now overwhelmingly utilized in automobile headlights. “You’ve most likely seen that plenty of them look much more of a bluish white in comparison with the yellowish white of halogen headlights,” Bullough mentioned, which was once extra widespread in headlights.
The ideas we use to measure mild depth — lumen and candela — had been created by scientists way back, and don’t totally align with how totally different components of our imaginative and prescient have totally different sensitivities to different-colored lights, Bullough mentioned. That implies that regardless that a lightweight meter may say a pair of halogen headlights has the identical mild depth as a pair of LED headlights, our eyes will see the bluish LED one as brighter as a result of it’s extra more likely to be picked by our peripheral imaginative and prescient, making our brains prioritize it as necessary or alarming.
The second issue, Bullough mentioned, is that the depth of headlights actually has elevated during the last 10 to twenty years.
”If we take into consideration the rationale we have now headlights, they’re to not create glare — they’re to assist us see issues alongside the street in order that we are able to keep away from collisions,” he mentioned. However the consequence has been that strikes to make vehicles safer for his or her occupants, just like the ever-increasing measurement of American automobiles and the rising depth of headlights, have created a brand new set of security issues for anybody exterior the automobile.
Who’s accountable for the brighter lights?
“Headlight intensities have really been rising partly due to issues just like the Insurance coverage Institute for Freeway Security’s security rankings,” which the insurance coverage company-backed nonprofit doles out to assist prospects select which automobile to purchase, Bullough mentioned. Carmakers additionally use the rankings as a promoting level.
When IIHS first began evaluating headlights practically a decade in the past, “they had been giving headlights fairly poor grades when it comes to their capacity to assist us see issues at night time.” Of 95 automobile fashions examined by IIHS in 2016, simply two earned a very good score.
A want to enhance security rankings, mixed with the rising dominance of LEDs within the broader lighting market, has pushed carmakers to quickly brighten their lights.
“LEDs are a brand new expertise that took over just about every little thing within the lighting world within the final 15 years. It’s arguably the largest change in lighting expertise since they first fired up an incandescent mild bulb,” mentioned Nate Rogers, a contract author who wrote an intensive story in 2024 about headlight brightness. “LEDs are extra vitality environment friendly. They last more. It was a complete sea change within the lighting world when LEDs got here out, and over time they’ve began to switch just about every little thing, and that features automobile headlights.”
However Rogers additionally believes the federal freeway security czars, the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration (NHTSA), share among the accountability for why vivid LED lights have turn into the norm on roads. “They’re the last word authority,” he mentioned. “Any automobile that’s driving on the street has to satisfy NHTSA requirements.”
“A number of individuals I spoke to [from NHTSA] informed me that essentially the most complaints from drivers that the NHTSA will get are about automobile headlights [and] headlight brightness,” Rogers mentioned. However NHTSA has not created guidelines to restrict the depth of vivid lights.” Nor do federal security rankings for automobile fashions contemplate the protection of anybody exterior the automobile, as Vox contributor David Zipper defined final yr — solely the protection of a given automobile’s occupants is included.
Are brighter lights really harmful?
Throughout his reporting, Rogers mentioned, he by no means actually discovered anybody disputing security issues tied to headlight glare. Whereas he was typically pointed to an IIHS examine discovering a 19 % discount in crashes for vehicles which have good security rankings for his or her headlights, he added, it’s actually onerous to trace whether or not or not another person bought right into a crash after being blinded by one other driver’s headlights. “With out that strict measurement of how harmful automobile headlight brightness is, plainly NHTSA is slightly caught and slightly uncertain about the way to repair it,” he mentioned.
Driver security is only one facet of the issue. The opposite has to do with individuals sharing the roads — pedestrians and cyclists. The variety of individuals killed by vehicles whereas strolling has risen precipitously within the US within the final decade: In line with a new report from the Governors Freeway Security Affiliation (GHSA), pedestrian deaths are up 48 % from 2014. One other GHSA report discovered that in 2022, “roughly three-quarters (77%) of pedestrians killed in deadly crashes had been struck at night time.”
Mark Baker, founder and president of the advocacy group the Comfortable Lights Basis, which goals to guard individuals from the dangerous results of LED lighting, thinks headlight depth, along with the rising prevalence of enormous vehicles on American roads, could be linked to the uptick pedestrian deaths at night time. He theorizes that drivers blinded by vivid headlights at night time battle to see pedestrians, and pedestrians might battle to see as nicely. “There’s simply approach an excessive amount of mild now,” he mentioned. “No one can see you.”
Baker has lobbied Congress to get a listening to on the adversarial impacts of LED headlights, and he’s tried working with states to move legal guidelines limiting headlight depth. He has but to attain a victory, however has gotten greater than 70,000 individuals to signal a petition known as “Ban Blinding Headlights and Save Lives!”
“I’ve filed two petitions to the federal authorities: one to set a restrict on most depth,” Baker mentioned. “Proper now there isn’t a total restrict on most depth. After which there’s no restrict on the blue wavelength mild. That’s essentially the most debilitating mild. It causes glare in your eyes. It’s tougher to see. It’s additionally hazardous to our eyes.”
The struggle is private for Baker. “I bought knocked out of educating,” he mentioned. LED headlights on the street and in his classroom tormented him — an expertise that finally led to a prognosis of delicate autism. “I couldn’t go to work,” he mentioned. “So I began devoting my time to attempt to determine what’s unsuitable with these LEDs. I’ve since met different folks that have comparable reactions so extreme that they’re contemplating ideas of suicide as a result of it’s simply it’s torture for these of us which have autism.”
Will we ever cease headlight glare?
So if security rankings incentivize carmakers to equip new vehicles with vivid LED headlights, what can we do?
There are a few options that would assist defend drivers from glare, Bullough mentioned. The primary has to do the place headlights are aimed. The sunshine that comes from low-lights, the lights we drive round with most frequently, ought to be pointed down and towards the street, and never into the rear window of vehicles. However headlights can turn into misaligned after they’ve been changed, or after accidents.
“Headlight purpose is one thing that some states, however not most, really require as a part of their security inspections,” Bullough mentioned. “So drivers may ask their mechanic yearly to have their headlight purpose checked and to regulate it if wanted.”
Headlight purpose is commonly particularly poor with older vehicles which have aftermarket LEDs on their vehicles, automotive and tech journalist Tim Stevens mentioned. He thinks higher enforcement of visitors security legal guidelines may assist.
“Plenty of states like Michigan, for instance, don’t have any type of annual inspection in any respect,” he mentioned. “So it turns into a difficulty for the police to mainly pull somebody over in the event that they suppose that somebody’s headlights are too vivid.”
NHTSA may additionally create headlight depth limits, which state and native authorities may then use as a baseline for enforcement, Bullough and Baker identified. “Definitely what might be performed is a few higher limits on the general depth from low-beam headlights,” Bullough mentioned.
Stevens mentioned carmakers are introducing new applied sciences that would assist with the issue, like excessive beam help or adaptive beam expertise, that are presupposed to dim headlights instinctively and robotically when the vehicles are arising on visitors, pedestrians, and darkish corners.
“It’s been accessible in Europe and in the remainder of the world for fairly a couple of years,” Stevens mentioned. “It’s solely been made authorized within the US since 2022, however as a result of it takes a very long time for auto producers to carry new expertise to market, it’s nonetheless taking a while for them to have the ability to carry these new headlights to the American market.” For now, he added, the tech “is just going to be on the most recent and highest-end vehicles. So it’s going to be a very long time earlier than we see this on nearly all of vehicles on the street.”
There are different instruments and strategies that the common individual can use to take care of headlight glare, like wanting down and to the proper whereas driving when there are vivid lights passing you, or choosing up a pair of blue light-blocking glasses. However Baker believes significant change will solely come by means of civic motion.
“The empowerment comes from listeners contacting the federal government, contacting me, becoming a member of up with the Comfortable Lights Basis, and getting concerned,” he mentioned. “Let’s repair this systemic downside.”
