If night driving feels harder than it used to, you are not imagining it. Modern LED car headlights are brighter, whiter and sharper than the old yellow halogens. They carve a clean tunnel of light for the driver behind them. For everyone coming the other way, they can feel like staring into a welding torch.
Surveys in the UK and Europe show most drivers now say headlight glare has become a serious problem. Many report being dazzled several times on a single night journey. Some admit they avoid night driving altogether because they simply do not trust their eyes any more. For people with sensitive vision, migraine, past eye surgery or early cataracts, one badly aimed LED unit can be enough to trigger panic.
The biology is simple and brutal. Human eyes adapt slowly when moving from dark to bright and back again. On an unlit road your pupils are wide open, trying to drink in every photon. An oncoming SUV with crisp blue white LEDs appears and floods your retina with light. For a second or two you are effectively blind. Your brain fills in the gaps but contrast and depth perception vanish. That is the moment where a pedestrian in dark clothing or a cyclist without lights becomes almost impossible to see.
Drivers talk about dazzle blindness for a reason. Many confess that when a particularly bright set of lights appears, they stop looking at the lane ahead. Instead they glance down and to the verge, using the white line or kerb as a guide until the car has passed. That coping strategy keeps the glare out of their direct vision. It also means they are not looking where hazards are most likely to appear. On narrow country roads that is a scary compromise.
The rise of SUVs and crossovers has made the problem worse. Higher ride heights put headlamp units directly at the eye level of someone in a smaller car. Even a legal, correctly aligned LED lamp on a tall vehicle can pour light straight through the windscreen of a hatchback. Add a full load, a poorly adjusted self levelling system or a retrofit LED bulb jammed into an old halogen housing and you have a perfect recipe for glare.
Crash data tells a more complicated story. Official statistics in countries like the UK record a few hundred collisions a year where dazzling headlights are listed as a contributing factor and a much smaller number of fatal crashes. That is not a trivial toll but it is far below the number of accidents linked to alcohol, speed or distraction. Some studies even argue that overall crash rates have not risen with the spread of newer, more powerful headlights, because better illumination helps drivers avoid hazards they would otherwise miss.
So is this mainly a comfort issue or a genuine safety crisis. The answer sits somewhere in the messy middle. On one hand, glare is clearly causing behavioural change. A sizeable minority of drivers say they slow dramatically, miss junctions or stop night driving altogether because of bright headlights. On the other, regulators and safety bodies insist that properly designed and aligned LEDs improve visibility more than they harm it, especially on rural roads where a good beam pattern can reveal obstacles seconds earlier.
The technology itself is not the villain. High quality LED or matrix headlamps can shape their beam precisely, dipping around oncoming traffic while still lighting the verge and road ahead. The trouble lies with poor implementation and weak enforcement. Cheap aftermarket LED bulbs stuffed into old reflectors, sloppy alignment after suspension work, overloaded cars and a lack of roadside checks all create a wild west of headlight performance.
That is why an outright ban on LED headlights would be a blunt and clumsy tool. It would punish the best systems along with the worst and slow progress on energy efficient lighting that cuts fuel use and emissions. A smarter approach would be to get serious about the basics that have been neglected. Tougher type approval tests that focus on glare as much as raw brightness. Routine checks of headlight aim at annual inspections. Serious penalties for illegal bulb conversions that spray light everywhere except the road.
There is also room for innovation that puts vulnerable drivers back at the centre of the discussion. Adaptive headlamps that automatically lower intensity in built up areas or when they detect older drivers or cyclists are not science fiction any more. Clearer labelling of bulb colour temperature could help people choose warmer, less aggressive light tones for retrofits. Public education campaigns could explain that flicking on full beam at every opportunity and leaving heavy loads in the boot both raise the odds of dazzling someone.
Ultimately the question is not whether LED headlights are good or bad. It is whether night driving should feel like a contest between those with the brightest beams and those trying not to get blinded by them. The technology already exists to light the road without turning every oncoming car into an interrogation lamp. What is missing is the political will to demand it.