I remember it was elementary school when someone first brought up the idea–with a kind of knowing air that fascinated me, like the first time you realize the world is really up for debate–that what I see through my eyes might not be the same exact thing someone else sees. To be more specific, my shade of blue might not be someone else’s shade of blue. It could be, say, more red than blue.
Of course, things aren’t as simple as that. We know that light hits our biological visual system with relative parity. But what we don’t know is our own individual changes in vision. They happen too slow for us to realize.
Take for instance my realization, in my thirties, that I had astigmatism. I kept getting these crazy and persistent headaches, lasting days and then weeks. Finally I went to my doctor who summed up his elementary prognostication with, “Have you ever had your eyes checked?”
Even after being diagnosed with mild astigmatism and prescribed glasses, I was constantly moving my new glasses up and down in front of my eyes to see the difference in my vision, which I thought was very minor in terms of text clarity. I felt like a fraud. What I didn’t realize was how good our brain is at processing information from both eyes–one perhaps this amount blurred and the other lesser–into readable or “thinkable” clarity. Even now as I type this, my brain has done a very good job editing my visual awareness so that I don’t usually see the frames of my glasses and the floaters that have slowly built up in my eyes throughout life.
In short, I was getting headaches because my brain was doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make my world seem less fuzzy than it was getting to be.
All this to bring up an article I read, “Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars” by Nate Rogers, on the current brightness factor of headlights partly due to our switchover from halogens to LEDs, our need to see in the dark, and perhaps, like always, some sort of vaunted status symbol.
Before I bought my truck, I was becoming more and more aware that newer cars were really going ham on the brightness of headlights. I first started noticing this whilst stopped at red lights at night.
I’d stop in relative darkness, except for a couple lights on my dash, my own headlights, and whatever ambient lights existed around me. When another car rolled up to get behind me in line, it was like they were shining two massive spotlights into the interior of my car that revealed all, even the errant fries buried in all car seats, while also blinding me with its reflection off of my three rearview mirrors.
Trucks were the biggest instigators of this. And for a long time I could tell what kind of car was behind by whether I was I existed in darkness or pure lightness. Trucks have always been at the perfect height to light up the insides of a sedan, but then I began noticing that SUVs and sports cars were blowing up my car with light too. And now here we are with any potential car–be it a luxury car, a regular sedan, or even an older car sporting aftermarket LEDs–illuminating the night and all of the car interiors in front of them.
Perhaps it was my astigmatism, though I can’t see much of a difference between wearing my glasses at night and not (if that even helps), but every other car on the road at night, either coming at me or directly behind me, blinded the crap out of me.
Now that I have a truck, I have vowed not to shine the duel spotlights of my elevated headlights on those unfortunate sedans below and in front of me at traffic stops. So I always come to a stop before my headlights get past the trunk of a sedan.
Not only am I higher than most headlights that shine at me from behind, some smarty pants person I will be forever indebted to put tint on my back window or on my windshield rearview mirror (or it’s just the fact that I have a truck) as I no longer get blinded from behind at red lights. But oncoming traffic is something I can’t do anything about.
If you read the Rogers’s article, which I recommend, you come away with the same flummoxed attitude as its author in terms of whether this fad to have brighter and brighter lights on cars are really a hazard. Am I just being a grump about all of this? And do I feel that way because I have complained about it whilst audibly cursing the selfishness of other drivers to others in my truck and to myself alone?
Kvetches are everywhere and have been with us since we started discoursing, at least in America, on the most pleasing cereal sogginess or the proper crispiness of chicken nuggets.
But kvetches can build to ungainly sizes in adulthood to the type of kvetching that prompts people to yell at kids to get off their lawns. Whatever the kvetch, adults spend an inordinate amount of their anxiety on small things for some small slight of a reason that we’ve rationalized ourself into thinking is important.
It’s our authority over the sanctity and trueness of kvetches–a place where hubris meets anxiety–that can get us. It’s always important to triage them. For instance, when I worry about some ridiculous update to my smartphone, I am reminded that my wife has no interest in such things and gets through any of my perceived notions of a design flaw just fine and without any added stress or qualms. I should ask myself, “Am I able to affect the resolution of this design flaw?” No. So why invest so much brain space in heralding its flaws in my interior monologues and to anyone else who I think might relate or have an interest?
But then a part of me sees this as giving up, and humans don’t really like that, especially with kvetches.
I think the reason for my kvetch in the headlights situation is the same as Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk fame who Rogers interviews in his article:
Some may genuinely not know they’re driving with their high beams on–digital car dashboards have gotten more complex and less intuitive in recent years–but it’s difficult to believe that most permanent high-beam users aren’t doing it deliberately, in an anti-collectivist kind of way. Magliozzi was bummed out about it. “When I learned to drive, 1,001 years ago,” he said, “we were taught to be courteous and polite. And I think we need to get back there.” Maybe that return toward courteousness has to start with automakers and regulatory bodies, however they decide to move forward with the LED headlight dilemma.
It’s discourteous to jeopardize the health of someone’s lawn by stomping all over it. If you’ve ever bought sod or grass seed, you know a great-looking lawn is expensive. Not to mention the effort involved in seeding, watering, mowing, and trimming.
If I allow my kvetch a bit of criticism, I have to admit that the higher brightness of headlights has not endangered my life very much. I think. They do make me squint and say, “Jeez.” And they do make me wonder if my own headlights are on considering everyone else’s seems so much brighter. But perhaps seeing more of the world at night has saved me more than it has caused me perceived emotional pain. Those brighter headlights mean that the drivers behind them can see my truck or my body if I’m out for a run in the dark. And perhaps I should just accept these very bright moving spotlights of the night because I sure as heck can’t change it, just as much as I can’t solve rudeness in the world, even in myself.
I think this may be wisdom.
Or perhaps it’s the rationalization of the downtrodden–too battered and weak to stand up for what’s right?
Crap. Back to square one.