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Is Headlight Glare Making Night Driving Harder?

Lisa Miles

As the clocks went back at the weekend and we're now driving home in the dark, I've noticed that driving at night feels a lot harder lately, and I’m not alone. Many people I speak to all say they find driving at night harder as each year goes past and it's not just because we're getting older! Many of my younger colleagues are feeling the same! 

A recent article on the BBC News highlights how modern LED headlights, while great for personal visibility, are causing serious glare issues for many drivers. 

Some key points in the article stood out to me:  LED lights are much brighter and more focused, but not always well-aligned. Glare recovery takes longer as we age and the RAC says that a recent survey suggested that 75% of drivers find night driving harder now.

I have to admit that there have been times when I've almost had to bring my car to a stop as the light of the car ahead have been so bright that I've been blinded and simply can't see the road in front of me! It's getting to the point where I really don't like having to go out in the car at night and of course as we're in the 'dark' seasons, driving in darkness is pretty much unavoidable. Pensive

So how can engineers help here? Better design? Smarter regulations? More adaptive tech?

Would love to hear your thoughts! 

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  • Hi Lisa

    This topic seems to be DeJaVu.  I am sure this was discussed in the past on the IET EngX forum a few years ago.  Since our first discussion many have added their opinion like the RAC, The Guardian Newspaper and even the UK Government

    www.rac.co.uk/.../

    The Guardian newspaper also report on this

    www.theguardian.com/.../uk-government-review-headlight-glare-drivers-complaints

    My opinion is
    SUVs or CrossOvers have become common place and they have the lights positioned higher on the frame of the vehicle.  4 x 4s can also suffer from this issue.  Some also have self adjusting headlight beam angle.  However all mainstream vehicles are now fitted with LED which is making the issue worse.  The cause and effect is the same.  They are blinding the oncoming traffic be it vehicle or cyclist.  This is made worse by the state of UK roads being lumpy and laden with potholes

    Esteemed fellow IET EngX contibutor MAPJ added some insight way back when by by saying

    I think there is a problem also that the beam shape rules assume a filament source and a parabolic refelctor with a glass lens, and if you define the centre of the bright part, the rest sorts itself out, but that is not really the case for LED and gas discharge lamps, nor with badly fogged plastic with any sort of lamp behind it - there can be a lot of 'splash'
    Arguably such light would benefit from a peaked hat style hood to give a hard cut off to the top of the beam.
    right now gas discharge lamps can  must be self levelling, but that is about it

  • in reply to Sergio Fernandez

    We've had a variety of different Automotive related conversations on EngX over the years Sergio as it is one of my favourite topics to discuss Wink

    The problem I find with the LED lights is as you and MapJ have said, they don't adjust to the road conditions and bounce around around giving the impression of someone flashing their main beams at you. As it says in the article on the BBC News website, there is also a problem with drivers fitting after market LED bulbs to their headlight that were not built or designed to house them.

    I live in a small village surrounded by country roads resulting in many people driving around with main beam on most of the time anyway. Unfortunately with 'auto mainbeam' I find that they simply don't react quickly enough and again blind me for a second as they come around the bends before their sensors see that there's another car ahead. Whereas with a good old fashioned manual option, as a driver you would spot the light beam of an approaching car ahead and would ordinarily have switched back to standard lights BEFORE hitting the bend. 

    Again it brings me back to this question and discussion that we had a while back:  Has automation in the automotive industry made drivers lazy? and the more I ask myself that question, the more my answer is yes...

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  • in reply to Sergio Fernandez

    We've had a variety of different Automotive related conversations on EngX over the years Sergio as it is one of my favourite topics to discuss Wink

    The problem I find with the LED lights is as you and MapJ have said, they don't adjust to the road conditions and bounce around around giving the impression of someone flashing their main beams at you. As it says in the article on the BBC News website, there is also a problem with drivers fitting after market LED bulbs to their headlight that were not built or designed to house them.

    I live in a small village surrounded by country roads resulting in many people driving around with main beam on most of the time anyway. Unfortunately with 'auto mainbeam' I find that they simply don't react quickly enough and again blind me for a second as they come around the bends before their sensors see that there's another car ahead. Whereas with a good old fashioned manual option, as a driver you would spot the light beam of an approaching car ahead and would ordinarily have switched back to standard lights BEFORE hitting the bend. 

    Again it brings me back to this question and discussion that we had a while back:  Has automation in the automotive industry made drivers lazy? and the more I ask myself that question, the more my answer is yes...

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