Saskatoon optometrist Rachael Berger has seen an increase in the number of patients concerned about their vision when driving at night.
“I’m seeing an alarming number of perfectly young, healthy individuals coming in and saying, ‘I’m having a hard time seeing at night, what’s going on,’” she told The Current guest host Peter Armstrong.
She tells patients it’s not them — it’s the LED headlights increasingly used on vehicles.
When it’s dark, Berger explains, the rods in our eyes turn on to help us see better.
“When you’re driving at night and your rods are activated, and all of a sudden this blast of light comes, it can be very jarring, because our night system isn’t prepared or necessarily expecting that,” she said.
Advocates are calling on the federal government and car manufacturers to adjust their regulations and industry standards around bright headlights because there needs to be a better balance between solutions to help drivers see while not compromising other’s safety.
In every comment thread every time this topic comes up.
The factory ones are blinding now. This isn’t a misalignment issue anymore. At one time you could say that and have a good chance of being right.
Factory ones on a jacked up pickup truck with lightbar or 3 on the front… Absolute fucker…
Another major issue is the color spectrum. LED’s in modern cars have more blue them than the older types. Those had more yellow colors.
Our daytime vision shifts to being more sensitive to the blue side. Our nighttime vision shifts toward the yellows.
The high blue color lights triggers our night vision back and forth between day and night. So the exact same lumens can fuck up our night vision more.
Lightbars drive me wild. Fucking guys running those on the highway make me want to choose violence. How incredibly fucking oblivious do you have to be to have that turned on when on road.
Nissan Rogue, I think, the lights are up very high on body and just blasting straight forward
I used to accept that explanation, but even “perfectly adjusted” headlights become super blinding when an oncoming car approaches at even a slight upward hill, which is super noticeable now that most new cars seem to come with LED headlights as standard.
I would say it is kinda both. Either people have misalingned lights, they are too fucking bright or they do both at the same time.
I passed LED cars that were great in terms of brightness and those that were not. Same with regular lights.
There is also good number of people who use these lower fog lights every time they drive.
If poor alignment is enough to blind someone when driving then the headlights are too bright. Driving is a very dynamic activity and inclines and bumps change where headlights are pointed constantly. Your headlights need to be dim enough that people can actually look at them without losing all their nighttime vision.