Everyone has felt their retinas sizzle as beams of obnoxiously bright headlights from surrounding cars momentarily blind them. If you’ve ever felt like headlights are getting brighter, it’s not your eyes getting worse. More car brands are opting for LED lights, but the stark glow of these lights can create discomfort for other drivers. And even though the brighter lights raise safety concerns, they’re well within the limits of state and federal law.
“It’s not in everybody’s heads,” said Daniel Stern, a vehicle lighting expert, in an interview with CBC News. “It is real. Headlights are getting brighter. They’re getting brighter, they’re getting smaller, and they’re getting bluer.”
Headlights are getting bluer because of the popularization of LED lights. Incandescent bulbs were the go-to for manufacturers in the 1990s and early 2000s. These lights use xenon in a chemical reaction that creates bright yellow-white light. In 2004, Audi became the first brand to use LED lights as part of their daytime running lights system on the R8. By 2007, they introduced a full LED light system from the front to the back of the R8 model. Soon, other car makers adopted the new lights, and LEDs trickled down to more affordable brands. In 2019, Consumer Reports found that 86% of 2019 car models had LED bulbs, a 31% increase over 2018 models.
LED lights have better energy efficiency, burn significantly longer and produce a more focused beam. All around, LED lights are better, except for the extreme brightness they produce when improperly aligned. Rather than a singular bulb, LED lights are an array of much smaller bulbs, and the concentration of light is much sharper, creating a sensation called “discomfort glare.” This is best described as discomfort caused by the eyes’ inability to quickly adjust to a light source. It doesn’t impair eyesight, but it can cause squinting, repetitive blinking and a subtle throb as your eye strains — not ideal conditions for operating heavy machinery.
“Because all of that light is coming through a much smaller space, and so when that’s in your field of vision, it’s really very stabby,” Stern told CBC News.
Dangers of LEDs
Texas has significantly more roads than any other state (683,533 miles), about a third of which are maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation. The maintenance of most other roads lies in the hands of local city governments. In 2020, Dallas spent $17 million on street lights. Rural towns with low budgets, however, often don’t have the money for expensive streetlights. Unlit roads can worsen the effects of discomfort glare.
Discomfort glare is exacerbated when the aim of a light source is directly targeted into the line of sight. LED lights can create pops of extremely bright light on uneven roads because elevation of the light source puts the aim directly in the line of sight. According to Business Insider, two-thirds of all cars have at least one misaligned headlight, increasing the odds of directly targeted light. A few states require cars to have their lights aligned as part of their annual safety inspection. Texas, which will have not require state inspection beginning in 2025, is not one of them.
Mark Baker, president of the Soft Light Foundation, says misalignment is a red herring that takes the responsibility from manufacturers and government agencies and places it in the hands of drivers. The Soft Light Foundation, founded by Baker, has launched several lawsuits against the Food and Drug Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) related to LED headlight regulation. The foundation launched a petition, which has more than 66,000 signatures, asking Congress, the Department of Transportation, NHTSA and the FDA to ban LED headlights.
“This LED headlight technology is a defective technology,” Baker said. “It's too dangerous. People can't see anymore.”
Some especially impacted drivers have resorted to wearing amber-tinted sunglasses at night to filter the blue hues. The glasses are specifically marketed to sufferers of astigmatism, a refractory condition that blurs lights at night. Reducing the brightness of lights can significantly improve night driving conditions for the third of the population that has astigmatism.
“It's not the fault [of drivers] and there really is no adaptation that the general public can do,” Baker said. “It's a regulatory failure and a failure of the car makers to comply with regulations.”
Laws in Texas
Excessively bright lights are considered a safety hazard and have caused the recall of thousands of vehicles in the last few years. In 2020, Ford recalled 200,000 F1 pickup trucks, reportedly the most popular truck in Texas in terms of annual sales, for overly bright headlights. In 2022, GMC recalled over 700,000 SUVs for headlights that were three times brighter than the federal maximum. To comply with the Code of Federal Regulations, headlights must glow between 500 and 3,000 candela, a measure of the brightness of a light source in a specific direction.
Texas has adopted the federal standards for headlight brightness, but some states have started introducing guidelines that differ from the national standards. In Texas, headlights must merely cast a white light and cannot be obscured by a cover or grill. Additional after-market lights are also perfectly legal. Drivers can add more headlights and up to two foglights and two spotlights to their vehicle. Still, the overall light production cannot exceed 3,000 candela on roadways. The state also regulates the height of headlights; lights higher than 54 inches above the ground are illegal. Many trucks with significant lifts and additional light bars on top are in violation of headlight laws. Those issued a ticket for illegal modifications can expect to pay upwards of $200.
Headlights Are an American Issue
Yearly light alignments were adopted by 10 states in an effort to manage the brightness issue, but a lawmaker in Massachusetts is taking bigger steps to tackle hazardous glares. Massachusetts state Rep. Lindsey Sabadosa drafted a bill that would require all cars sold in the state to have Adaptive Driving Beam Headlight Systems (ADBs). This lighting system reshapes the dispersion of light when another vehicle is sensed on the road, essentially creating shadows around other cars while keeping the rest of the road highly illuminated.
ADBs have been commonplace in Europe for decades, but weren't approved in the United States until 2022. For many years, ADBs did not comply with brightness standards. With the adaptive light system, drivers are essentially able to drive with their high beams on at all times while still keeping other drivers safe.
“The American Automobile Association research found ADBs illuminate the road 86% better than current headlight technology but without the glare,” Sabadosa said in a statement.
With the limitations in place, automakers have yet to find a way to produce ADBs in compliance with United States code. Audi, a landmark brand for headlights, was the first manufacturer to produce cars that had only ADBs in 2012. But such vehicles still can’t be sold in the U.S. Texas-based car brand Tesla equips its cars sold in Europe with ADBs.
The issue of headlights falls on the federal government and less on states. The governing bodies that regulate the safety of headlights and set codes operate at the national level. But Baker thinks states will begin to tackle the issue themselves and is working in New York on new regulations. No Texas lawmakers have addressed headlights.
“Pretty soon the states are going to start publishing their own standards,” said Baker. “The automakers are going to go insane because now you've got different regulations in different states. The federal government is totally falling down on this.”
