Avoiding light shock
How many times have you heard people say: ‘The headlights on these new cars are too bright, they’re blinding’? Maybe you’ve said it yourself. It’s undeniable that it is both uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous when we are blinded by the headlights of oncoming traffic, so it is worth giving some thought to why it happens and what we can do about it. Something else which is sadly undeniable is that our eyes do not improve as we age. They become less flexible and unable to reshape the lenses, so that we become short or long sighted. Another problem is that they react more slowly to changing light levels. This latter means that if we are driving along a dark road, our eyes will adjust to the amount of light our headlights generate. If we are alone on the road, all can be fine, or at least acceptable, but if a car is coming the other way with headlamps much brighter than ours, (and newer cars often have headlights three times as bright as old cars). Then our eyes simply cannot react quickly enough and we can be blinded for several seconds, which is not good when we are travelling at speed. Even young eyes cannot cope with this, but the problem worsens as we age.
There are some easy and practical ways to minimise this dangerous effect.
Firstly, you will know whether this is something you suffer from and you can be prepared. When a bright car is seen coming towards you, avoid looking at it, and instead keep your gaze just ahead and to the left of your car. This is counterintuitive, but really helps, and that is the part of the road you most need to see at that time anyway. Some people also report that anti-glare glasses (the ones with the yellow lenses) help too. They are inexpensive, so it has to be worth trying to see if you are helped by them.
Ultimately, with the exception of approaching cars with badly adjusted headlights, the root cause of the problem is that your headlights are simply not bright enough. When your lights are just as bright as the ones on the approaching car, then the problem is not there because your eyes are already adjusted to that level of light. So how do you make that happen? Most cars can have the headlights upgraded to use brighter bulbs. If you can upgrade to good quality LED bulbs then your headlights will be equally as bright as new cars, but even the better conventional bulbs will give you a useful increase in brightness that will help reduce the problem.
Since changes to the MoT annual test regulations in 2021, there are restrictions placed on cars registered after 1st April 1986, but this will not affect changing to brighter conventional bulbs. Another possibility is to check whether there were HID Xenon or LED headlight options available for your model of car when it was new. It would be worth doing some homework to see what is available, as this upgrade is unlikely to cause concerns with your local test station, but you could ask them if they would have any objections. If your car is old enough, you can upgrade to whatever you feel will give you the best results and value for money. What will not help is doing nothing other than just complaining that other cars are too bright.