Drivers tend to have the same litany of complaints about each other: no one uses their turn signal, any street with a lot of parking on it quickly devolves into lawlessness, and don’t even get me started on the lane-changing choices on the 405 North.

But a newer complaint that’s been cropping up in recent years, in concert with

newer car technology

, isn’t really the drivers’ fault. If you’ve noticed that headlights seem brighter, it’s because they kind of are. Here’s why pedestrians and drivers alike are feeling blinded by the light, and what we can expect in the future.

Led by LED

Halogen headlights have taken a backseat to LED (light emitting diode) headlights in recent years.

Consumer Reports (CR)

points to a few reasons for this shift. Car people are no exception to regular people, and we must first acknowledge that LEDs just got trendy: when a couple higher-end cars—like the Cadillac Escalade—incorporated them, people took notice.

And function followed form. CR notes that LEDs are expected to live a longer life than other kinds of lights, and they also use less energy as they perform their duties. A longer-lasting headlight that isn’t as burdensome to a car’s electrical system: what’s not to love?

Those fashionable LEDs are not so easy on the eyes, it turns out.

The New York Times

notes that an LED headlight feels more stressful than a halogen light because it has more concentrated lumens (a measure of light output). Halogens typically sport around 1,000 lumens, and LEDs, says The New York Times, can range between 3,000 and 4,000 lumens.

Human eyes prefer not to take in too many of these light units at once, and when the difference is in the thousands, you’ll really feel the sting of an LED.

Let Jerry find your price in only 45 seconds

No spam · No long forms · No fees

Find insurance savings

Location, location, location

It’s not just about the crush of lumens on your sensitive retinas. Placement on the car itself plays a large role in this controversy.

We’re continuing to see bigger cars on the road—approximately half of U.S. passenger vehicles are SUVs or pickups, according to The New York Times—and a bigger car means eye-level headlight placement. So encountering an opposing car’s warm halogen, an unremarkable moment in the normal course of driving, has morphed into a nightmarish momentary blindness, courtesy of blue LED light.

In summary: many new cars are installed with blue light LED headlights, a lot of these new cars are SUVs, and SUVs are tall, so it stands to reason that our eyelines are more frequently assaulted by a surfeit of brightness. You’re not making it up.

MORE: The Technological Revolution of Headlights

A bright future

LEDs may help us see better from behind the wheel, but the blindness on the other side of that equation may not be worth it.

Luckily, we’re starting to see a change here in the U.S., as of February 2022. Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlight systems, a mainstay in other markets, are beginning to appear in U.S. vehicles, courtesy of an

NHTSA

ruling. Until recently, proper headlights were required to have a high beam and a low beam, which excluded the all-in-one ADB system.

Now that ADB is allowed here, cars’ sensors will be able to process obstacles in the road and adapt headlight illumination accordingly—dimming slightly as oncoming drivers are detected and increasing in brightness when there is only open road ahead. In theory, this will dramatically reduce the pain of temporary blindness that is experienced by oncoming drivers.

But be forewarned—this won’t make much of a difference for pedestrians, says

Slate

. The inclusion of ADB in cars won’t do much to mitigate the brightness for the walkers among us. So even as drivers feel that sweet relief of a bright light dimmed, pedestrians may not want to ditch the sunglasses just yet.

Need to cut car insurance costs? Keep the coverage and find the savings with

Jerry

. The

car super app

compares quotes from more than 50 insurance companies for you in under a minute, without any long forms to fill out.

Are you overpaying for car insurance?

Compare quotes and find out in 45 seconds.

Try Jerry