High Beams: Stop Blinding Everyone and Learn When to Use Them

Look, everyone's tired of getting flash-banged by some jackass driving around with their brights on. Yeah, new car headlights are stupidly bright these days, but that doesn't mean everyone should just give up and start driving around like they're landing planes.

Why Everything Looks Like a UFO Convention Now

New cars have these LED lights that basically shoot lasers at your eyeballs. They're way more intense than those old yellowish bulbs, and the light is this harsh, white color that makes you want to throw on sunglasses at midnight.

Then there's the truck problem. Every soccer mom driving a massive SUV has headlights sitting at perfect eye level for anyone in a normal car. Even when they're aimed right, those lights are still hitting mirrors and windshields like searchlights.

The absolute worst are the people who bought some sketchy LED kit off Amazon and stuck it in their 2003 Honda Civic. Those things weren't meant for LEDs, so now they're basically driving around with flashlights duct-taped to their bumper.

When High Beams Don't Make You a Terrible Person

High beams exist for a reason—they're for dark, empty roads where you actually need to see more than ten feet ahead. Country roads, mountain highways, that kind of stuff. When there's literally nobody else around to blind.

The second another car shows up, though? Turn them off. It's not rocket science. Following someone? Off. Car coming toward you? Off. Pretty much any time you can see another human being trying to drive, those brights need to go away.

That Blue Light Means You're Being a Problem

Some people cruise around completely oblivious that they're torturing everyone else. There's usually a blue symbol on the dashboard that looks like a headlight with lines coming out of it—that's the "hey dummy, your high beams are on" light.

Regular headlights show up as green, high beams are blue. If you see blue and there are other cars around, you're doing it wrong.

Most cars use the same stick for turn signals and high beams. Push it away to turn brights on, pull it back to turn them off or flash them. Takes literally half a second.

Just Don't Be That Guy

Nobody wants to be the person making everyone else's drive miserable. If that blue light is glowing and there's traffic around, just flip the stick and save everyone's retinas.

And when someone's blinding you? Try looking toward the white line on the right side of the road instead of staring directly into the death ray. Your peripheral vision can still track what's happening while your eyes recover from being torched.