Talk about bright
What the heck is going on with car headlights? Why is it that when I drive at night, I now need to wear welding goggles to stop my retinas from being melted out of their sockets every time some LED headlights come the other way? Who looked at the humble halogen headlight that's worked just fine for many, many years and decided that headlights would be better if they illuminated the entire road network, all the cars coming the other way, and everything else in the county?
I was driving along the other night down a dark A road when a car with what felt like two collapsing stars stapled to the front of it came the other way, making me feel like I’d just been flash-banged to the point I had to pull over until my eyes had recovered from the involuntary laser eye surgery I’d just received.
I saw an advert a while back advertising how bright a certain car manufacturer's headlights were, boasting laser technology or something like that, by shining the lights through a cow, illuminating all its insides. I’m sure this is great for seeing the whole road at night, but it’s bad news for whoever is coming the other way, whose head will be illuminated to the point the cars behind could see the poor driver’s grey matter.
Car headlights haven’t always been military searchlights glued to the front of city runabouts. Once upon a time we had halogen light bulbs, or if you were really fancy, you had high-intensity discharge bulbs, which were seriously bright. But even so, they were angled and aimed in such a way that they illuminated the road in front without blinding anyone. Well, unless you had the brights on, or if they’d been aligned wrong, in which case even the dullest halogen headlight will leave you feeling like a deer.
The other trouble is manufacturers have added prisms and lenses and filters to headlights, making them do things like adjust the light as you turn the steering wheel to illuminate the corner and filters that block the beam when it detects a car coming the other way, whilst keeping the rest of the road illuminated. These are great, until you’re walking down the pavement at night, and instead of avoiding you, the lights move the prisms around and fire a beam of ultrabright light into the back of your eye, totally blinding you. These headlights are really interesting to watch work, though; you can see the little lenses and mirrors fidgeting around inside the headlight, bending and shaping the light from these amazingly bright LED bulbs.
Light bite
These ultra-super-bright laser lights are a nightmare if you’re parked opposite them as well. I was sitting in the car park of a popular fast food establishment this evening, parked nose in opposite a row of cars, which amongst the selection of cars was a new crossover SUV thing. Whilst sitting inhaling a burger, the owner of said car unlocked it, whereupon the sidelights and daytime running lights set about doing some sort of random flashing sequences with all sorts of fancy-looking patterns before sparking up the full headlights, totally blinding me to the point I could only see two searingly bright white lights blasting the entirety of all the light in the universe directly at my cornea, to the point I audibly screeched whilst launching my burger at the windscreen whilst throwing my hands up in front of my face in an attempt to block out the collapsed sun that had just ignited at the end of my car's bonnet. I honestly feel like at that moment, welding without a welding mask would have been less bright than this family crossover's headlights.
My other issue with these new headlights is the total lack of any serviceability. Back in the day when you had a bulb blow, you’d pop down to the local Halfords to get a new one for a few quid, and twenty minutes later your headlights were working again. Nowadays though, it’s all sealed units full of surface-mount LEDs. What's more is that at least in newer cars, their headlight units are sealed units, meaning that if a bulb goes, you’ll have to replace the entire unit.
Now look, I totally understand why they’re using LEDs now instead of traditional bulbs. LEDs last a lot longer than standard bulbs. They’re brighter, which does mean better visibility at night, enabling drivers to see more of the road. Using LEDs also means it’s easier to design headlight units around the design of the car. It also means the car's lights can be programmed to do all sorts of fancy sequences when indicating or locking or unlocking the car, making it feel futuristic. I just wish they could do it without melting people's retinas.