You can go blind from it

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DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikor

How many times have you been driving at night when all of a sudden you’re cursing the guy headed your way who has his bright lights on? You figure you’ll show this illegitimate son of someone who the boss is so you prepare to “fire a shot across his hood” with your own bright lights.


While you’re waiting for him (or her) to get the message…all of a sudden…wham!!!! Your opponent fires back with what turns out to be his real bright lights. You thought you were having trouble seeing before, did you Barry? Now you can’t even see as far as your own speedometer. It’s just like you’ve had a Sylvania Blue Dot (for Sure Shot) Flashbulb go off in your eyes.


I’ve played a game with myself (that doesn’t sound right, does it?) for years. If I happen to see an oncoming vehicle that I think has its bright lights on I’ll flash my own to alert the other driver. If the other driver gets the message and dims his lights I pretend this is the same as a victory in an aerial dogfight (although this dogfight is conducted on concrete and not at 25,000 feet). Every five “victories” makes me an ace.

Since I started this vehicular idiocy I have more victories than The Red Baron, Adolph Galland, Gunther Rall, Richard Bong, Tommy McGuire, Joe McConnell and Robin Olds combined. But a lot of good that does me if I get “shot down” myself. This happens occasionally when I forget to dim my own bright lights. Usually I’m high on Snapple when this rare event occurs. 

A lot of people have some form of night blindness — most not serious enough to “ground them” from driving after dark — but enough to make them cautious (especially if they’re senior citizens). I don’t know what there is about oncoming bright lights that makes you stare at them but it’s an all-too-true phenomenon. It’s particularly bad for the driver I’ve described earlier.

And God help the poor soul if he or she tries a defensive maneuver of flashing his own brights to “ask” the other car to “please” dim your lights and it turns out the next shot are lights so bright that the vision-impaired driver faces the real prospect of losing sight of the road. Let’s also not get into what raindrops will do to problematic night vision.

Just like there are dimming functions in rearview mirrors there should be the same technology used in windshields to lessen the glare and blinding rays of oncoming headlights. This is particularly true when they’re out of alignment or the offender either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that his brights are on and blinding the person coming at him. This should be standard equipment in all vehicles sold in this country.



In quantity the cost can’t be that significant. If it is…then the manufacturers should decontent something else like they did sunglass holders, floor mats, etc. to save money and just amortize the cost. Hell…if they’ll charge over $500 for a “special” paint job, they can charge several hundred dollars more that would enable them to bury the cost of the windshield technology. Any customer unconcerned enough to pay that much extra for paint isn’t going to notice how much deeper their colonoscopy has gotten.

At this point I’m prepared to give a pass to those vehicles with HID headlights. I don’t recall being as bothered by them as I have the standard halogen lights. (However, as Perry Mason often said, “I reserve the right to revisit this at a later time.”) When four headlights became the rage in the late’-50s it was easy to tell if you were facing a vehicle with bright lights burning…count the beams!

Finally, all of you — manufacturer and reader alike — have a stake in correcting all the wrongs I’ve ranted about in my columns; the sooner these things are corrected or eradicated the less use there will be for me to write further columns.