The problem with modern headlights

Five seconds. That’s how long headlight glare can disorient a driver. That’s also the time it takes to cross one and a half football fields at 60 miles per hour.

The effects of glare are worsened if the other car’s headlights are misaligned or physically higher than the driver’s own headlights. This is primarily because of headlight misalignment and efficient bright LED headlights in cars.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, however. Complaints about glare even date back to when LEDs weren’t the standard for headlights yet. In 2001, a survey from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found 3 in 10 drivers had experienced “disturbing” nighttime headlight glare.

LEDS have made glare worse, though. Recently, in the UK, 9 in 10 drivers said “at least some” headlights are too bright, and 8 in 10 said headlight glare as a whole is getting worse. Additionally, a Boston.com survey found that 93% of its readers who responded found headlights have become too bright.

Some people simply avoid driving at night for this reason. I completely understand that. I often feel less than safe driving a friend home at night or coming home from a nighttime service at my place of work, First Church Amherst.

As someone with astigmatism, driving at night without my glasses makes light look like it does when I’m crying. This is especially problematic because I don’t feel the need to wear glasses in the daytime, when text as close as a whiteboard or projector screen is legible enough to not warrant keeping my glasses clean all the time.

My problem with headlights isn’t magically fixed by driving in the daytime or walking where I need to go, either.

I can’t get over the trend with headlight shapes in recent years. Here’s a quick experiment: Go on Google Images. Search for “cute cars 2000s.” Then, replace 2000 with 2010. Finally, replace it with 2020.

The trend goes towards sharper, more slanted headlights and wider front grilles over time. They look angrier. The more comically angry ones almost look stupid. One of my least favorite examples is the Prius, which went from curious and lovable to another rageful drone. There are no “cute cars 2020s” to be found, and it’s not Google’s fault.

Cars have faces, if you look at cars for a living, the part of your brain responsible for facial recognition might even be at work, according to a 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Additionally, according to a 2008 study highlighted in LiveScience, people assign traits to cars based on their appearance, and prefer the look of cars with “dominant, masculine, and angry” faces.

Lots of psychology goes into making cars look this way, including shaping the front of a car like a “facial expression from the animal kingdom.” However the road is not the animal kingdom? Do drivers need to be threatening on the road?

I don’t know if I’m too neurodivergent to understand the logic behind these aggressive designs or something. I just want a car with modern safety features that looks like it doesn’t want to kill me by the time I’m out of college.

There may be hope for a less aggressive road in the future. Many cars are coming out (or will) with features to prevent glaresuch as automatically dimming high beams and adaptive driving beams.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has been increasingly rating more cars’ headlights as “good” each year. And maybe, when we start realizing our cars don’t have to look evil or stupid and sharp, we will stop buying evil or sharp looking cars, and manufacturers will be forced to make cute cars again.

It is illegal in the state of Massachusetts to have your high beams on within 500 feet of approaching traffic or 200 feet behind another vehicle. Bad design, however, is not.