Blinded by Headlights? Here’s what to do

Headlights can bother your eyes while driving at night due to several factors related to the intensity, color, and contrast of the light, as well as the way your eyes adapt to low-light conditions.

To reduce the discomfort caused by headlights while driving at night, you can consider the following tips:

1. Keep Windshield Clean: A clean windshield reduces the scattering of light, which can help minimize glare. (also clean your own headlights to minimize glare for other people too)

2. Consider Updated Driving Glasses: Due to changes in pupil size, your focus at night may fluctuate and glasses may help improve your eyesight.

3. Anti-Glare Coatings: Some eyeglasses and come with anti-glare coatings that can help reduce the discomfort from bright lights.

4. Eye Vitamin Supplements: Research has shown some improvements in contrast sensitivity and photo stress recovery with supplementing of lutein and zeaxanthin carotenoids.

5. Ask your Eye Doctor about pupil constricting medications: Not all doctors will recommend these but depending on your pupil size, vision, and eye health your doctor may consider it.

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#headlights #drivingatnight #doctoreyehealth

Timestamps
0:00 Blinded by Headlights
0:32 Why Night Driving is hard
2:18 Retinal Bleaching
3:31 Night Driving Glare
6:03 Night Driving Tips
7:46 Wash your windshield
8:04 Update your glasses
8:17 Clean your eyeglasses
8:53 Anti-reflective lenses
9:24 Night Driving Glasses
10:09 Eye Vitamins for Glare
10:43 Eye Drops for Glare
12:12 Dashboard Light

[jimbos]

I am a retired Michigan State Trooper, and over the years I've developed a knack for driving at night. Lights never bothered me much. since the advent of the "blue" led headlights, I have found it much more difficult. Those things should be outlawed, of course, the reality is that they never will be. Much harder now to see at night. If it's raining, the LeD lights make the glare much worse.

[kalimahasarra]

I'm SO glad someone is finally talking about this! I HATE these lights. I thought I was the only one. I feel like they're a hazard at night and shouldn't be legal.

[krab]

Clicked on this just to see other people agreeing with me that LED lights are super annoying. Felt great, thanks!

[stephenkohler]

I used to LOVE driving at night! It was my favorite time to travel. I absolutely dread it now.

[joliebokeh]

For everyone saying to look at the white line - I rely on this when driving at night. The next problem is that oftentimes they're faded, or sometimes absent altogether. Rain especially obscures them.

[r]

I was an over the road trucker, with over a million miles of experience. For long trips, bright dash lights or interior lights will wear you out. For oncoming high beams, I close one eye, that blocks the high beam, my right eye watches the road. It might sound crazy but try it absolutely works.

The other thing that wears you out over extremely long trips is rain and using your windshield wipers. I used to always use Rain-X. Just some tricks I used to use driving from coast to coast.

[JDJeanMichel]

The fact that YouTube audiences skew young, and I haven’t seen a comment yet that thought that the new types of lights are fine is REALLY TELLING. Same experience that I’ve had. I’m still young, but even I have trouble with them.
Another problem is infrastructural: a lot of roads don’t have fresh, reflective paint, so the lines on the road are really dim when looking into these headlights, especially when it’s raining. It also probably doesn’t help that sedans are right in the line of fire with all these huge SUVs shining right in sedan owners’ eyes.

[danreyn]

Optics specialist here: Anti-reflective coatings are wavelength dependent and have a broad range of effects on light of varying colours. A coating that dampens the reflections of blue light, say, may actually amplify the reflections of green light. This has a lot to do with how AR coatings work, which I won't bore you with, but suffice it to say that the standard tech for AR coatings is incompatible with a broad spectrum AR coating.

Because some people can show specific sensitivity to certain colours, putting an AR coating on glasses for those wavelengths makes sense. However, making an AR coating on car windshields doesn't make sense because there is not one specific set of wavelengths that we want to block, and it would likely result in another range of wavelengths being amplified. If headlights were still mostly yellow (say they were sodium lamps), that would be easy to block with an AR coating. However, as they are generally white, there isn't enough of a primary frequency for us to select one wavelength for targeted anti-reflection.

[jamesday]

GLAD TO HEAR SOMEONE ELSE HAS NOTICED THIS. LIGHTS AT NIGHT KILL ME BLIND ME I HAVE PULLED OVER AND STOPPED AT TIMES TO RECOVER. HIGH TRUCKS ARE THE WORST.

[kdtda]

I agree. Those LED headlights are blinding and shouldn't be legal. Several people I know have complained about them to me and I know my eyes don't recover from them as fast as the older headlights. Glad to hear you addressing this!

[llareia]

One of the things that bothers me about the bluer lights is that people want them because they make the road brighter; but conversely, they make it harder to see anything OUTSIDE of the range of the headlights. They just destroy your nightvision SO MUCH that it seems really counterproductive when the primary use is for improving visibility in low lighting conditions.

[billywebb]

Why aren’t anyone doing anything about these bright lights?? Are there any lawmakers doing anything?? Years ago, it was a courtesy to dim your lights, even taught in Driver’s Education in High Schools. Great article.

[jeffbradley]

I've been saying this for years now ! The lights are so bright now they blind people at night! THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS VEDIO!

[calvindavis]

As a truck driver, some more hints and tips for night driving. Clean the inside of the windscreen as well as the outside. And when someone has those bright head lights, look to the side of the road away from the lights, just keep them in your peripheral vision. Then when they pass back to center of the road, That blur is now on the side of the road not in center of your vision. Great video.

[MichaelGolpe]

First eye professional to legitimately explain the issues and understanding of the problems. Yes, ban those headlights. Got my follow!

[tsd]

(UK). Thanks for this video, you have accurately described my experience of night driving in recent years.

LED headlights are becoming more commonplace but at the time of writing are often the preserve of the more expensive models. Many of these have ‘self dimming’ (‘adaptive’) headlights.

As I understand it, these headlights are permanently on main beam, but the headlights adjust their optics to dim the area that would shine in the eyes and otherwise dazzle an oncoming driver.

This means:

A. As that oncoming driver, the lights are not shining DIRECTLY into your eyes, but nevertheless there is still a very bright light coming toward you, which causes the situations described in this video.

B. In order for that car’s systems to adjust the optics of the headlights to prevent dazzling of the oncoming driver it must first detect the presence of the oncoming car. By the time it has done that and the optics of the headlights have changed, it is already too late and the approaching driver has already had the full beams in his/her eyes.

This is why, when you encounter such a vehicle at night its headlights are momentarily blinding, before settling back to being just uncomfortably bright.

[corinth]

The best part of this video is finding out that I'm not the only one having problems with the LED and blue lights. While I'm not a fan of more government regulations, that may be the only way to get this fixed. Thank you!

[franklinlavoie]

I agree %100. I've been complaining about these new fangled lights since the year 2000. It's an outrage. I heard an official, on NPR, claim the new light's intensity is the same as the old lights, according to their instruments. I was yelling at the radio "Listen to the drivers, not your measuring stick!!!" There is no excuse for these new dangerous headlights. They are extremely dangerous. I'm 66 years old, and I avoid driving at night, now, because of these dangerous on-coming headlights.

[debrafiendel-boutilierandd]

I agree with everything you said Doc. One thing I would like to add. Vehicle manufacturers should be made to lower the location of headlights, especially on pickup trucks, large trucks and SUV's and most commercial vehicles, so as not to shine through the rear windows of vehicles directly in front of them. Ever stop at a traffic light and have a large vehicle stop behind you, usually too close, and be blinded by the light not only coming in the rear window, but hitting both outside mirrors. Also, I think if the position of the lights on the larger vehicles were to be lowered, their alignment would not be at the same level as the driver of an oncoming passenger vehicle. Makes sense to me. They had an issue with this before, I think back in the 80's, and some of the vehicle man.'s lowered the position of the headlights. But now they are back to high mounted lights and blinding people driving smaller vehicles. Where is the consideration? And now with the introduction of LED headlights and the pure white light, it's even worse. One other thing, have you noticed on some of the new vehicles, they have lowered the signal lights on the body to the point that if you are in traffic behind a vehicle, the front of you car could obscure the turn lights, leaving you to wonder if they are turning or not. They should be visible at all times to everyone. Just my opinion.

[georgeelgin]

for most people this was really thought provoking, but my uncle was a pioneer in cataract surgery and i actually did a stint in optics grad school ; so i would say the `problem` as you say may lie with xenon lamps, but not really with color.. In fact i wear uv400 polarized sunglasses (goggles ) even at night, but then again i am blind in the right eye which brings up multiple other issues ... some "scattering"
may in fact be a function of aging epithileals (corneal ) and retinal anomalies (blood flow ).