I hate headlights – or, more accurately, I am annoyed by the people behind them.  I wrote about this in an article back on August 2004, and the situation has become worse since then.

The bright white lights have proliferated, more people seem to be driving SUVs whose lights hit non-SUV drivers right in the eyes, and more and more vehicles seem to be equipped with an extra pair of lights.  The designers are obviously working very hard to give drivers clearer visibility of the road ahead of them (good) with utter disregard for the effect on drivers coming toward them (bad).

Now, I don't know whether those white lights and extra lights help people to see the road better because I have neither.  I can see very well, except when these lights are in my face.  Drivers who purchased cars with the white lights can't do anything about them, but aren't the extra ones designed so that they can be turned on and off independently?  And aren't they supposed to be used only under certain driving conditions?  Some people have them on all the time.  Night driving for me has become like driving on roads where everyone has high beams on – except me.  To avoid the glare of oncoming headlights, I have developed the habit of watching the shoulder instead of the road, which cannot be the safest way to drive.

I also notice an increased number of cars that have a headlight out or headlights out of line.  It's hard to believe that the same people who feel that they need four lights focused on the road don't notice that they have a headlight out or that one of their headlights is pointed way up in the air or off to the side.  Maybe the same blindness that makes them need the extra lights causes them to be oblivious to what their headlights are (or are not) doing.

A large part of the blame, at least in the state where I live (New Jersey), rests with the vehicle inspection policy.  In the past, a vehicle with misaligned headlights could not pass inspection; now, they don't even check for alignment.  In a recent development, the NJ inspection stations have decided not to fail a vehicle that has a headlight completely out.  The inspector will inform the vehicle's owner that he or she could get a ticket for operating an unsafe vehicle but will not require that the situation be fixed or that the vehicle be reinspected.  This, they say, will save money by cutting down on the number of inspections.  Pretty soon, I suppose, a vehicle will be able to get a valid inspection sticker if it can be driven through the inspection station and stopped long enough for a sticker to be put on the windshield.

The increasingly loose inspection policy depends on the common sense of drivers to be safety-conscious – not very likely when one can already see quite clearly how many scoff-laws and procrastinators are on the roads.  It also assumes that the police will ticket unsafe drivers – not likely since many existing laws are rarely enforced.  New Jersey, for example, requires the use of headlights when weather requires turning on windshield wipers, prohibits the use of hands-on cell phones while driving, and mandates signaling before turning or changing lanes.  Observation shows that these laws are rarely obeyed or enforced.  To be fair to the police, they are so busy investigating accidents that are caused by disobedience of these laws that they can't enforce these laws in the first place.  Indeed, they can only randomly enforce the speed limits since nearly every driver in America thinks that the right to exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph is a constitutional guarantee.

I am not a supporter of the idea that government should act as Big Brother, protecting us from ourselves.  We cannot effectively legislate stupidity out of existence.  However, government and automobile manufacturers can limit our ability to indulge in the kind of stupidity that endangers others.  That can be accomplished by the state's making it more difficult to operate an unsafe vehicle and by manufacturers' designing headlights that consider visibility both for the driver and for the drivers of other vehicles.