"John" Not.responding.@dotcom wrote in message
2.222...
Night driving is made harder by:
People with dirty and poorly aimed headlights.
Houses with exterior floodlights aimed to light up the air.
Buildings with bulkhead type lights that just throw the light everwhere.
Cyclists who deliberately seem to aim their intensive lights at the eyes
of drivers.

Drivers who don't dip their headlights when you can see them coming towards
you. (That goes without saying, which I presume is why you didn't mention
it.)

Drivers who leave their rear (red) foglights on even when it isn't foggy.

Drivers who keep their brake lights on when they are stopped for many
minutes in a queue of traffic, dazzling and "destroying" the night vision of
the drivers behind. (*)

Drivers who don't use full beam when it is safe/considerate to do so (ie
when there's nothing in front of them) which makes it more difficult to see
where the road ahead of them goes when you want to overtake them. I tend to
put my beam on as soon as I'm level with the car, so at least *I* can see
where the road goes beyond the distance that their dipped headlights lights
up.


(*) I was once stuck in a long queue of traffic that had been diverted
because the main road had been closed due to an accident. The diversion has
a staggered crossroads where all four roads are busy so it needs traffic
lights - but because it is staggered, the lights only let traffic in one
direction (as opposed to two facing directions) go at once, so queues
quickly built up. There were long period where the traffic was stationary,
and then occasions when everyone shuffled forward about 100 yards. The guy
in front of me kept his foot on his footbrake all the time he was
stationary, so all I could see was three big red blobs from his brake
lights. I put my sun visor down and closed my eyes. The light was so bright
even through my eyelids that I could see when they went out and knew that it
was safe to move forwards a bit. Even so, it was difficult to see the road
ahead for the first few seconds because my night vision had been "destroyed"
by the bright light and took a while to recover. I'm not sure whether he had
an automatic and was too lazy to put it into neutral and apply the handbrake
whenever he was stopped - after all, it was easy to work out that each time
we stopped it would be for at least a minute. I suffered in silence because
I didn't want to cause conflict, but eventually the guy behind me (who could
see the brake lights through my windscreen) leapt out and yelled "For F's
sake take your foot off the brake when you've stopped", and I heard a few
cheers from other drivers behind me ;-) The offender decided to play silly
buggers so he then took to doing an emergency stop whenever he got close to
the car in front - luckily I wasn't too close when he first did it, and I
was wise to his little game after that. I resisted the temptation (and it
was hard to resist!) to put my headlights on full beam so *he* would be
dazzled like he was doing to me.