Blinded by the Light: When Brighter Headlights Decrease Safety

If you’ve noticed car headlights being extra bright recently, you’re not alone. In a piece for Vox, Hady Mawajdeh explains how LED technology and safety concerns have led to increasingly brighter headlights.

Brighter headlights can make conditions safer for drivers, but cause new problems for people (and animals) outside the vehicle (or in other vehicles). Because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has no limits on how bright headlights can be, carmakers are incentivized to make them as bright as possible. “Nor do federal safety ratings for car models consider the safety of anyone outside the car, as Vox contributor David Zipper explained last year — only the safety of a given car’s occupants is included.”

However, bright headlights can be deadly for pedestrians. “Mark Baker, founder and president of the advocacy group the Soft Lights Foundation, which aims to protect people from the harmful effects of LED lighting, thinks headlight intensity, in addition to the increasing prevalence of large cars on American roads, might be linked to the uptick pedestrian deaths at night.”

To mitigate the issue, carmakers and owners can take steps to make headlights safer by aiming them downward to avoid blinding other drivers and pedestrians. “NHTSA could also create headlight intensity limits, which state and local authorities could then use as a baseline for enforcement.”