Decoder Ring | The Glaring Problem with Headlights

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Decoder Ring | The Glaring Problem with Headlights

Slate Podcasts | Slow Burn Feed | May 21, 2025

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Overview: Why Are Headlights So Blinding Now?

This episode investigates the surge in complaints about excessively bright headlights in the US. Host Willa Paskin and journalist Nate Rogers trace the evolution of car headlights—from early oil lamps to modern LEDs—and unpack how technological advances, larger cars, complex regulatory failures, aesthetic trends, and human behavior have led to record levels of glare and frustration on the roads. Through expert interviews and grassroots activism stories, the episode explores not only how we got here, but why solutions remain elusive.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Personal Headlight Obsession Goes Public (01:34–06:15)

• Nate Rogers’ Experience:
  LA-based journalist Nate Rogers describes a feeling of being “run off the road” (01:56) by blinding headlights. Initially dismissed by friends, he became fixated on the issue, documenting egregious cases and engaging others.
• Cultural Shift:
  By 2024, public memes and rants about too-bright headlights proliferate. The problem turns from a personal annoyance into a mainstream complaint.
  “It seemed like there was kind of a critical mass happening where suddenly it was becoming something that other people were kind of joining in on.” — Nate Rogers (04:17)

2. Historical Context: From Oil Lamps to LEDs (06:15–14:53)

• Enter Daniel Stern:
  Headlamp expert Daniel Stern joins the discussion, emphasizing the distinction between brightness (subjective) and intensity (measurable) (07:48). He confirms the skyrocketing trend in headlight glare complaints:
  “Glare complaints have been increasing all over the world.” — Daniel Stern (08:11)
• Old Problems, New Tech:
  Headlight glare has been an issue since the first electric headlights. The “Goldilocks problem”—too little vs. too much light—has always been present (09:27).
  Early regulations (the “sealed beam” mandate of 1939) standardized headlamp performance and kept glare controlled for decades.
• The LED Revolution:
  LEDs, adopted widely in the late 2000s/early 2010s, are efficient, programmable, and powerful—far surpassing earlier technologies (12:05–14:08).
  • “LEDs, when they were introduced, were a completely different technology that experts in lighting basically consider the most dramatic change in lighting as long as we've been alive.” — Nate Rogers (12:13)
• A Sudden Spike in Problems:
  The advent of LED headlights is pinpointed as the inflection point for unprecedented glare.
  “Headlight glare is definitely and indisputably worse than it used to be.” — Daniel Stern (14:30)

3. Diagnosing the Modern Headlight Glare Crisis (14:55–19:24)

• Key Culprits Identified:
  • Raw Power: LED headlights “at least doubled” in average brightness in the last decade (15:13).
  • Big Cars, Higher Headlights: Large SUVs and trucks put headlights at eye level of other drivers (15:36).
  • Headlight Aim: Maladjusted headlights make the problem worse; LEDs' pixel-like composition throws more light in unintended directions (16:26).
  • Color Temperature: LEDs enable “cool blue” tints desirable for marketing, but blue light is more glaring (17:34).

    “For any given intensity, light with a greater content of blue wavelengths feels more glaring to us than light with less blue in it. …We could snap our fingers and have very effective LED headlamps that were 60% less glaring without changing how well we can see….” — Daniel Stern (18:13)

• Aftermarket Modifications: Regulatory agencies blame DIY and aftermarket LED kits, but “it really is a whole confluence of issues” (19:12).

4. The Grassroots Movement: 'Fuck Your Headlights' (20:28–25:53)

• Paul Gatto’s Story:
  Motivated by a personal connection to a pedestrian car accident, software developer Paul Gatto becomes radicalized against car “centrism” and obsessed with headlight glare.
• Community Building:
  Paul finds a fledgling subreddit ("Fuck Your Headlights") and turns it into a robust community (now 45,000+ members) sharing stories, memes, data, and advocacy (23:16).
  • “It really was more just about complaining and letting people know that they weren’t alone in this.” — Paul Gatto (23:22)
  • Community members reject the notion that only individual aftermarket choices are to blame:
    “There's no way. Everybody is like, all these soccer moms are going out and putting custom LEDs in their SUVs. I just don't see it.” — Paul Gatto (24:07)
• Main Grievance: The forum's consensus becomes: today's headlights are simply too bright.

5. The Debate: Too Little VS. Too Much Light (25:33–31:55)

• Industry's Argument for Brightness:
  Car manufacturers and some regulators argue that brighter headlights save lives (by reducing single-car night crashes by 19% in cited studies).
  “The most compelling argument... is that, yeah, it might be annoying to you, but brighter light could be saving lives.” — Nate Rogers (27:05)
• Challenge in Measuring Harm from Glare:
  There’s no analogous data showing how glare harms safety, primarily because it’s nearly impossible to trace an accident back to glare alone.
  “Trying to measure and quantify them is hideously difficult.” — Daniel Stern (30:32)
• Pedestrian Deaths Rising:
  Pedestrian fatalities have climbed with LED adoption in the US, unlike in countries with stricter glare regulations.

6. Regulatory “Blind Spots” and Industry Trends (31:55–34:12)

• Regulatory Agency (NHTSA):
  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hasn’t updated rules to account for new LED realities. There’s no explicit cap on headlight brightness, and NHTSA blames aftermarket mods rather than manufacturer choices (32:32). “They're not examining if it's too bright. They're not even examining if it's affecting you negatively on the road. They are simply looking at how good it is for the driver.” — Paul Gatto (33:19)
• Consumer Responsibility:
  Drivers often want the brightest headlights possible for themselves, fueling an “arms race” on the road.

7. Possible Solutions and Their Limits (34:44–37:35)

• Divergent Priorities Among Advocates:
  • Paul Gatto: Regulate the overall brightness limit for low beams.
  • Daniel Stern: Mandate proper headlight alignment (aim).
• Adaptive Headlights:
  Car companies are developing “adaptive driving beam” tech (auto-dimming high beams), which is common in Europe but still rare in the US and isn’t a panacea—European glare complaints are rising too.
• Political Headwinds:
  The anti-regulatory environment in current US politics hampers any push for tighter standards.

8. Bigger Lessons: Regulation, Technology, and Trust (38:02–End)

• Why Headlights Matter—Beyond Headlights:
  The difficulty of reaching consensus and regulatory action on this relatively “simple” tech issue is both illuminating and worrisome—what might this portend for even bigger tech-safety challenges? “If this is how they are handling headlights, it is not very comforting in terms of all sorts of new technology.” — Nate Rogers (38:02)
• Solidarity and Fragility on the Road:
  Driving is a constant negotiation of trust with others, and unchecked technological change can fray those cooperative norms. “When we drive, we are simultaneously more powerful and more at the mercy of others than at almost any other time in our lives.” — Willa Paskin (38:22)
• Headlights as a Symbol:
  Even an issue as “small” as headlights can reveal major blind spots at the intersection of innovation, regulation, and everyday life.

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Notable Quotes and Timestamps

• “It felt a little bit like I had to explain to people or they would be like, shut up. Like, what are you? Like, it's not that big a deal.”
  — Nate Rogers (02:58)
• “Brightness is not the same as intensity. Intensity is the amount of light. Brightness is a subjective impression.”
  — Daniel Stern (07:48)
• “Headlight glare is definitely and indisputably worse than it used to be.”
  — Daniel Stern (14:30)
• “You can have a white LED which has a great deal of blue light in it. …For any given intensity, light with a greater content of blue wavelengths feels more glaring to us.”
  — Daniel Stern (17:34, 18:13)
• “I just felt so gaslit. This is dangerous, this is affecting everybody and the regulations do not protect you.”
  — Paul Gatto (24:31)
• “The headlamp that makes us feel like we've got great lighting is not the headlamp that we need in order to see well.”
  — Daniel Stern (33:49)
• “Glare is having a moment. At the same time, the current US administration has a very anti-regulatory bent....”
  — Daniel Stern (37:16)
• “If this is how they are handling headlights, it is not very comforting in terms of all sorts of new technology.”
  — Nate Rogers (38:02)

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Important Timestamps

• Nate Rogers describes his headlight obsession: 01:56–03:38
• Daniel Stern explains difference between intensity and brightness: 07:48
• LEDS enter the market and the problem intensifies: 12:05–14:30
• Key causes of glare—blue light, power, aim: 15:03–17:43
• Rise of Fuck Your Headlights subreddit: 23:13–23:22
• Regulators blame aftermarket kits; activists disagree: 24:07–24:31
• Car companies and regulators’ rationale for brighter headlights: 27:05
• Difficulty of measuring glare-related accidents: 29:14–30:32
• Nate’s major article on the problem: 35:18
• Divergent solutions: cap brightness (Paul); fix aim (Daniel): 36:15–36:23
• Meta-lessons about regulation and tech: 38:02–38:22

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Tone & Style

• Engaging, accessible, sometimes wry or exasperated in tone (“I just felt so gaslit...”)
• Informative but not overly technical; the personal frustration of the speakers comes through clearly
• Peppered with memorable phrasing and humor (e.g., “Are you all on your way to light up a high school football game?”)

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In Summary

The Glaring Problem with Headlights untangles why something as simple as vehicle headlights has become an unexpected battleground for technology, regulation, social norms, and individual safety. As the tools light our way forward, the episode shows, they may also blind us—unless we figure out how to balance innovation with collective well-being.

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Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

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[Willa Paskin]

Before we begin, this episode contains adult language. Nate Rogers grew up in Los Angeles and over the years, like a proper Angelino, he spent a lot of time in cars. But in the late 2010s, he started to notice something on the road that felt new and unpleasant.

[Nate Rogers]

It happens in different degrees, but the experience is having somebody's lights of their car in an emotional sense, kind of running you off the road.

[Willa Paskin]

Nate would be driving and it would feel like the headlights of the car behind him or the one coming towards him, or the one perpendicular to him at an intersection were blasting into his.

[Nate Rogers]

Eyes and the lights will be so bright that they will kind of stagger you and knock you out of your senses.

[Willa Paskin]

The first dozen, two dozen times it happened, they shook it off. Maybe someone had forgotten their high beams.

[Nate Rogers]

Were on, but it happens so much that you start to notice it and then you start to fixate on it.

[Willa Paskin]

He started to take note of the headlights he encountered, trying to clock what exactly was going on with them as they sped by in the night. Everywhere he went, he could feel these lights interfering with his ability to see and with his emotions.

[Nate Rogers]

I was feeling this uncomfortable, like, road rage almost. You know, like, why am I getting blinded by all these headlights?

[Willa Paskin]

Nate started talking about it with friends and acquaintances every chance he got.

[Nate Rogers]

If I was in a car with somebody, whether I was driving or a passenger, I would just start complaining. And it felt a little bit like I had to explain to people or they would be like, shut up. Like, what are you? Like, it's not that big a deal.

[Willa Paskin]

Nate was not deterred. He kept obsessing over it, even taking photographs of particularly bright headlights and showing them to people.

[Nate Rogers]

I would get out my phone and be like, will you look at this? Like, pleading with people to witness my pain. And then for a long time, people would send me stuff whenever they saw anything about, like, a meme about headlights or something. Like, two things I always get sent are like, Nick Cage stuff and headlight stuff. You know, my friends just associate me with those things.

[Willa Paskin]

You just were in their mind. Like the headlight complaining guy.

[Nate Rogers]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Willa Paskin]

It was now 2024, and increasingly there was a lot of headlight stuff to send around.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

Can we please ban those bright as headlights that, like, the new trucks and cars have? Because anytime I'm driving and I see those, I can't fucking see.

[Willa Paskin]

Everyone's lights are too bright. Do you see these? Headlight 10 times brighter than the sun. People were no longer rolling their eyes about how bright headlights were and saying it was no big deal. They had started to complain, too. It's literally causing more accidents. I mean, am I in the interrogation room right now? Are you sure those aren't your brights?

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

I don't think I can reach my destination.

[Daniel Stern]

I think I've gone blind.

[Nate Rogers]

It seemed like there was kind of a critical mass happening where suddenly it was becoming something that other people were kind of joining in on. And it made me feel a little less crazy.

[Willa Paskin]

Nate happens to be a journalist. Up to this point, he largely wrote about arts and culture. But now, after years of aggravation and fixation, he realized he wasn't alone and he needed some answers.

[Nate Rogers]

What is going on here? There has to be some sort of explanation.

[Willa Paskin]

Nate knew there was only one thing to do. He was going to have to figure out what the hell was happening with headlights for himself. This is decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. In a perfect world, the average person would think about car headlights almost never. It would just be a reliable tool, making us all a little safer while working well in the background. But this is not a perfect world. And whether you personally have noticed them or not, headlights have become the number one complaint of Americans on the road. The story of how and why that's happened is confounding and illuminating. In turn, it's about the interplay of an incredible technological breakthrough with market forces, regulatory failure, and human foibles, all of which have made headlights relevant to far more than just our roads. So today on decoder ring, why are we in the dark about headlights? So Nate Rogers decided to embrace his identity as the headlight complaining guy and take on the mystery of the glaring headlight.

[Nate Rogers]

I was like, well, I'm already, like, attached to this, so I might as well just, like, plant my flag.

[Willa Paskin]

It seems self evident to him that headlights had changed for the worse. But when he just, like, googled why very few articles turned up, and the ones that did had no satisfying explanation. He wanted to talk to someone who was steeped in the entire history of headlights, and he found him.

[Nate Rogers]

Daniel Stern. He's like the preeminent authority.

[Daniel Stern]

Here I am, I have this weird fixation with car lights, and I've managed to turn it into my specialty.

[Willa Paskin]

Daniel Stern is the editor of the trade journal Driving Vision News. He has a great big bushy beard, and he's been captivated by headlights since he was 7 years old. And he discovered that his camp counselor's VW Beetle had two settings in a single headlamp.

[Daniel Stern]

And the idea of two filaments in one light bulb had not occurred to me at age 7. So I followed the poor guy around asking pesky questions, and it's just like, yes, yes, Daniel, I have low and high beam. Can you go ride horses or something?

[Willa Paskin]

Daniel never got into horses, and he never got bored with headlights either. Daniel's the kind of person who always uses the correct automotive term like headlamp, which is the entire lighting unit at the front of the car, instead of headlight, which is just a part of the headlamp. He also gets a little exasperated when he hears a word that regular people use all, all the time when talking about headlights. Brightness. Daniel avoids it because brightness isn't something you can measure.

[Daniel Stern]

Brightness is not the same as intensity. Intensity is the amount of light. Brightness is a subjective impression. Something can look brighter than something else, irrespective of how much light is being put out.

[Willa Paskin]

For Daniel, the more precise way to think about the issue is in terms of glare. His reservations about terminology aside, he confirmed to Nate that there absolutely is a problem with headlights.

[Daniel Stern]

Glare complaints have been increasing all over the world.

[Willa Paskin]

And actually, headlight glare is an issue we've been contending with for a long time.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

Some drivers and their lights can be.

[Willa Paskin]

A hazard at night.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

As drivers like this approach. Don't blind yourself by staring into their lights. You don't want to be in the dangerous plight of driving blindly, even for a moment.

[Daniel Stern]

It's interesting, this problem, what we're discussing right now, headlight glare and seeing this problem is almost as old as headlamps.

[Willa Paskin]

The first car was invented in 1885, and the first headlight introduced soon after. They were, by today's standards, laughably bad at helping drivers see. They were literally oil wick lanterns.

[Daniel Stern]

Those were pretty much only to advise others at night that there's a motor car coming down the road.

[Willa Paskin]

The first electric headlight wasn't much better.

[Daniel Stern]

By today's standards. These things were like a flashlight with an almost dead battery, but compared to oil wicks and lanterns, they were amazing.

[Willa Paskin]

By 1915, headlights were becoming a requirement in cars and starting to be more useful to drivers. And it was at this point that they stumbled into the problem that has dogged headlights ever since.

[Daniel Stern]

Even then, they were saying, you have to be really careful. If you encounter another car, you need to throw the towel over the headlamp so that they're not glared, because, boy, the glare potential of these new electric headlights is just astounding.

[Willa Paskin]

The problem then, as now, is a Goldilocks problem. Too little light and drivers can't see. But too much light and other drivers can't see. And while sheer power is important, as anyone who's ever had a flashlight pointed in their face knows, the issue is not just about the amount of light there is. It also matters where that light is.

[Nate Rogers]

Shining, because if it goes out too far in the left corner, that's going to be shining into an oncoming car or super high up in the headlight. And that's more likely to shine, you know, into the back of a car that's in front of you. We want as much light on the road as possible because that is helpful, but we don't want the light in the wrong places.

[Willa Paskin]

In the first half of the 20th century, carmakers and regulators worked out a solution. They got very careful about where a headlight was permitted to show shine. In 1939, they mandated a standardized headlamp for all cars. The sealed beam headlight. It was a light bulb in a container that popped in and out of the front of your car. It wasn't perfect. It was a drag when the light bulb stopped working because you had to change the Whole unit, But it kept glare and visibility in balance by putting light in the right places and keeping it out of the wrong ones.

[Daniel Stern]

They all put out the same beam pattern and same amount of glare, same amount of seeing. And occasionally there were articles saying, you know, we hate our headlights and we wish they were brighter or whatever, but everyone had pretty much the same headlights.

[Willa Paskin]

This is how things were for generations. Even after the sealed beam was destandardized in the early 1980s to give consumers some more choices, Headlights basically just worked. And then, starting in the late 2000s, headlights, just like every other artificial light in our lives, were upended by a new technology. The leading light of the 21st century. The LED. Short for Light Emitting Diode. LEDs are semiconductors. Similar to the chips used in computers, they use far less energy than traditional lighting while providing flexibility in color and intensity. The first commercial leds became available in the 1960s, but it was only in the 90s that a Japanese American electrical engineer figured out how to get them to make white light, an innovation for which he was awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

[Daniel Stern]

It could well signal the biggest advance since.

[Willa Paskin]

Well, since Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879.

[Nate Rogers]

LEDs, when they were introduced, were a completely different technology that experts in lighting basically consider the most dramatic change in lighting as long as we've been alive.

[Willa Paskin]

LEDs are radically different from traditional incandescent light bulbs.

[Nate Rogers]

You know, the type of thing that screws in above your head when you have an idea? That's like a.

[Willa Paskin]

That's what I use my light bulbs for. Just screwing them in overhead when I have an idea.

[Nate Rogers]

Exactly.

[Willa Paskin]

Traditional bulbs emit light and insight by heating up a metal filament, the wire that you can see glowing in the center of. Because they waste so much energy making heat, they're not that efficient at making light. LEDs in comparison, are very efficient. They emit light not by turning it into heat, but by running electricity through a wafer like semiconductor that illuminates a whole lot of tiny controllable diodes.

[Nate Rogers]

It's like a little computer screen. If you zoomed in really close, you would see a bunch of little pixels. And basically, they're programmed. If you go to times Square or something, all these flashing lights, these are all LED screens, right?

[Willa Paskin]

In addition to being highly customizable and far more energy efficient, LEDs are also more durable, cost effective, and powerful than incandescent light bulbs. So starting in the late 2000s, their use was essentially mandated by the government.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

Well, the new year will mark the Beginning of the end for the incandescent light bulb.

[Willa Paskin]

The idea is to phase out regular bulbs and replace them with high tech LEDs by 2014.

[Daniel Stern]

I know light bulbs may not seem.

[Willa Paskin]

Sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise. Over the course of the 2000 and tens, LEDs have replaced incandescent bulbs almost everywhere. Homes, public spaces, on Christmas trees, and in car headlights, where they specifically replaced incandescent halogen bulbs.

[Nate Rogers]

They put this on the front of cars and it just completely changed the way things work.

[Willa Paskin]

So it's fair to say that, like, the transition to LEDs is the biggest change in headlight history.

[Nate Rogers]

It is definitely fair to say that, I mean, maybe outside of the first time that anyone put a headlight on.

[Willa Paskin]

A car, LEDs have a lot to recommend them. But it is exactly when they started showing up in car headlights, that glare became a problem like never before.

[Daniel Stern]

Headlight glare is definitely and indisputably worse than it used to be.

[Willa Paskin]

So how exactly could LED headlights be causing glare? There's actually quite a heated debate about the answer to this question, because, simply put, there are a lot of potential ways. But over the course of his reporting, Nate Rogers became focused on the most blindingly obvious power.

[Nate Rogers]

LEDs have the ability to be much more powerful than your standard light bulbs used to be.

[Willa Paskin]

And this has led to unprecedentedly powerful headlights. Headlights that most of us would describe as way too bright.

[Nate Rogers]

There are various ways to measure it, but the average brightness of a headlight at least doubled in the last 10 years.

[Willa Paskin]

LEDs now throw much more light down the road than halogen headlights ever could.

[Nate Rogers]

It's not like your imagination. You know, the reason that we're having this conversation right now is because brightness has gotten much higher and people noticed.

[Willa Paskin]

The sheer power and intensity. The brightness of current LED headlights is a problem in and of itself. It also exacerbates other problems with headlights. And there are other problems. Like take the matter of car size. In America, cars have gotten much bigger in recent years. So much so that the headlights of an SUV or a truck are basically at the height of the eyes and mirrors of a driver of a smaller car. When headlights were weaker, it might not have mattered so much. But now the drivers of smaller cars are being blasted in the eyes by lights two times as powerful as they used to be. Of course they're experiencing more glare. And then there's headlight aim, which Daniel Stern believes is the most important factor of all.

[Daniel Stern]

Headlight aim has been shown in a mountain of excellent quality research all over the world over many decades. As the primary number one determinant not only of how well the equipped driver can see, but also of how much glare those lights are throwing around.

[Willa Paskin]

Remember, an old halogen headlight had one bulb that kind of like a flashlight was most powerful right in the center. So as long as that bright center wasn't pointing right at your eye, you were pretty okay. But LED headlights are composed of all those very intense pixel like diodes that can be extremely powerful across the whole headlight, like a screen. When their aim is off even a little, you're not getting the relatively dim edge of the flashlight in your eyes anymore. You're getting the full intensity of a wall of light. And there are other, even less obvious explanations for why LED headlights are affecting us so much. One incredible one has to do with color. Since LEDs are basically little programmable computer screens, there is a vast range of colors you can dial up for each pixel.

[Daniel Stern]

This is a new freedom. We've never had this before. You can have a white LED which has a great deal of blue light in it. You can have a white LED that has almost no blue light in it.

[Willa Paskin]

And with this freedom, car manufacturers have mostly settled on making white headlights with a lot of blue in them. And they seem to have done this purely for design and marketing reasons. The bluish white looks cool, futuristic, tactical, expensive.

[Daniel Stern]

When you drive off at night, your next door neighbors are going to be envious because they see this cool blue light coming from the front of your new car.

[Willa Paskin]

And we can assume the motivation is aesthetic because it can't possibly be about safety.

[Daniel Stern]

The sort of the nub of it is that for any given intensity, light with a greater content of blue wavelengths feels more glaring to us than light with less blue in it. We could snap our fingers and have very effective led headlamps that were 60% less glaring without changing how well we can see by them simply by selecting a less blue light color. That's the other thing.

[Willa Paskin]

60%, 60%. Like if we were just like. They have to be yellowish.

[Daniel Stern]

They don't even have to be yellowish. They just have to be so bluish.

[Willa Paskin]

The overall brightness, the size of cars, aim, the blue tinge. These are just a few of the tricky aspects of LED headlights. There are others, including what regulatory agencies insist is the real problem. Not the headlights themselves, but individuals tricking out their cars with DIY aftermarket LED kits. LEDs you put on your car yourself.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

Today we're taking the ultimate headlight upgrade task.

[Willa Paskin]

We're swapping out those dim, outdated stock halogen bulbs with Insane LED lights that.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

Are brighter, cooler, and just better.

[Willa Paskin]

All of this might make it sound like we should just get rid of LEDs and the problem would be solved. But LEDs really are a more advanced technology. They are more efficient, longer lasting, and versatile. And you can make LED headlights that are less powerful, less bright, less blue, harder to knock out of place. You can make ones that are better. So when we come back, we're going to get to the truly tricky part of this case, which is, if we can do all of that, why haven't we? So car headlights are glaring like never before. If you noticed, it's not your imagination. But relatively few people are trying to do anything about it, and almost no one is trying to do as much about it as Paul Gatto.

[Paul Gatto]

I would like to not be blinded at night, and I would like to be not in danger of hitting someone because I'm blinded. I was really like that.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul is a software developer from Newfoundland, and he did not grow up with any particular interest in headlights or really even cars. But that all changed dramatically in the late 2010s.

[Paul Gatto]

The real way that I kind of got into this whole sphere was dating someone who was a pedestrian who was hit by a car.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul's girlfriend, Liz, was crossing the street at a crosswalk when a taxi cab struck her, flinging her several feet in the air.

[Paul Gatto]

If it hadn't been a sedan that hit her, she would be dead.

[Willa Paskin]

She sustained serious injuries to her hip and shoulder, which required the insertion of a metal plate.

[Paul Gatto]

She was able to make a very, very good recovery, especially how bad the accident was. But that being said, she's a violinist. She was a violinist and she made a lot of money teaching and doing concerts. And the metal plate in her arm prevents her from actually holding the violin up in that position comfortably for any length of time.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul and Liz only got together after the accident, but watching what she went through in its aftermath completely changed his perspective on cars.

[Paul Gatto]

Seeing her go through the court proceedings and the recovery and everything, and almost being blamed the entire time despite being a victim, that really radicalized me against the car centrism of our world.

[Willa Paskin]

And it was as he was being radicalized that he started to notice he was constantly getting glared by other cars.

[Paul Gatto]

Headlights almost brought in a new side of my personality that I'd never seen before, which is just unspeakable rage. And I never considered myself to be one of those guys who had full testosterone, just road raging all the time, just flipping off every little thing. But when these lights are in my face, Suddenly, the only thing I can think about is that I'm going to put someone in the same position Liz was in.

[Willa Paskin]

He's enraged because he's afraid, afraid of what a pair of headlights might cause him to do. And he's also infuriated because the person with the headlights will have no idea about the harm they've done.

[Paul Gatto]

I think, you know what, they're going to drive off perfectly fine from this interaction. I might hit somebody and they will never know.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul soon found himself thinking and talking about headlights all the time.

[Paul Gatto]

I absolutely pissed off a couple friends because, like, every time I'd have a couple beers, I start complaining about it. Just like looking at the windows, like, God, can you believe those? Just becoming an old man about it.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul wanted to do more, though, and to find people to do it with.

[Paul Gatto]

I think the only way that you're ever going to solve this problem is if you were to somehow create a mass movement about it.

[Willa Paskin]

And then in 2022, he came across a subreddit about headlights with only a single member. Paul took one look at its name and thought it could be the platform he was looking for. He asked to become a moderator.

[Paul Gatto]

I messaged him saying, I'm serious about it, let's do it. And he said, okay, I actually would.

[Willa Paskin]

Love you to just tell me the name of your subreddit.

[Paul Gatto]

It's fuck your headlights.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul started posting on Fuck youk Headlights immediately. Within a year, it had 10,000 members.

[Paul Gatto]

When we first created that subreddit, it really was more just about complaining and letting people know that they weren't alone in this. There wasn't a coherent theory, like, why is this the way it is?

[Willa Paskin]

As Paul and the other members of the forum tried to figure out what was really going on, they ran into this same problem that Nate Rogers had. There was just very little reliable seeming information available about headlights.

[Paul Gatto]

Originally, when I started Googling this, all the articles that were present on the Internet blamed things, which can all be really be summed up as this problem is caused by individual choices and is not systemic.

[Willa Paskin]

According to car manufacturers, the problem was people driving around with misaligned headlights they should get fixed, or adding Those aforementioned illegal LEDs to the front of their cars. But Paul was skeptical.

[Paul Gatto]

There's no way. Everybody is like, all these soccer moms are going out and putting custom LEDs in their SUVs. I just don't see it. The people who won't touch their own vehicle are suddenly putting in their own headlights. I couldn't buy it.

[Willa Paskin]

But the regulating body that could theoretically restrain the manufacturers. They also said there was nothing wrong with LED headlights. There just was no problem here.

[Paul Gatto]

I just felt so gaslit. This is dangerous, this is affecting everybody and the regulations do not protect you.

[Willa Paskin]

Paul and the other redditors started measuring a headlight output, researching, debating. The forum became a bustling proving ground, its members sharing information, articles, evidence, ideas, as well as videos, memes and calls to action.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

I am begging automobile manufacturers, you have got to do something about these LED headlights lights cuz it's out of control.

[Nate Rogers]

There is no reason for you to.

[Willa Paskin]

Be lighting up my car like this.

[Will (IQ Bar Sponsor)]

What do you need permanent high beams for? Are you driving through the fog of war? Are you all on your way to light up a a high school football game?

[Willa Paskin]

Back up or turn them down? Soon enough, Paul and the other members of the group began to come to a consensus about the overarching cause of glare on the road. One that seemed self evident and yet had been barely mentioned in the existence existing literature. Their consensus was that today's headlights are simply too bright.

[Paul Gatto]

The word brightness was almost. It almost seemed like a faux pas. Like the people in the regulatory positions were almost avoiding any mention of the word brightness.

[Willa Paskin]

But the more Paul learned, the more convinced he became that this was the problem. The LEDs being installed just had way too much power.

[Paul Gatto]

These lights are blinding everybody.

[Willa Paskin]

The fuck your headlights subreddit now has a membership of 45,000 and counting. And it has become the hub of grassroots headlight activism, reaching out to politicians and journalists like Nate Rogers, all to get the word out that headlights are dangerously bright and something needs to be done about it.

[Paul Gatto]

We have both pro car people who want the roads to be fixed and anti car people who want a massive overhaul of our transit systems working together on the same thing. People want this.

[Willa Paskin]

For Paul and much of the fuck your headlights community, the issue is straightforward. All you have to do is believe your eyes. It is plain to see that headlights are emitting way too much light. Reduce that light and the problem is largely solved. But remember how I described headlights as having a Goldilocks problem where you don't want too much light or too little, you just want it in the right amount, in the right places? Well, the players who have made headlights so powerful have a defense against the charge they have put too much light on the road. They say that what you should really be worried about, what's really dangerous, is too little light.

[Nate Rogers]

The most compelling argument that I heard against the citizen activist approach of it's too bright is that yeah, it Might be annoying to you, but brighter light could be saving lives. If there's a super bright headlight and it flashes a tree that's fallen in front of you and you see that just early enough to hit the brakes and not hit it, that is a brighter headlight doing something incredible. And if the offset of that is a headlight that is kind of annoying when you're in traffic, then maybe the balance is not being read correctly by people, because they're only really focusing on the thing that annoys them.

[Willa Paskin]

And so in order to avoid hitting not only trees, but also animals and people, we should be willing to tolerate aggravation and even discomfort. That's the argument for more powerful headlights. They save lives. Whatever agitation they cause, it's worth it. So here we have two diametrically opposed arguments. One is that too much light is causing accidents and hurting people. And the other is that too little light is causing acc and hurting people. Which is it? Well, the side that says there is too little light, the pro bright headlight side, if you will, which includes car manufacturers, would point to a road safety test. A well respected insurance nonprofit studied accidents very similar to the one Nate described. Single car collisions of the kind a driver is likely to encounter on a dark, empty road at night. And they found that headlights reduced accidents like this by 19%. That's a lot. So what safety tests can the people who say there is way too much light, who say that brighter headlights cause accidents, what can they point to? Well, it's here that we have come to a major wrinkle, because they can't point to any safety tests because nobody knows how to measure the consequences of glare.

[Nate Rogers]

It's just so hard for them to figure out a way to empirically prove that headlight brightness is a hazard in the way that people sense that it is.

[Willa Paskin]

It is apparently nearly impossible to recreate a real world scenario in which dozens of drivers with cars of various sizes and headlight intensity are driving past and around each other. And then to isolate from that swirl of interaction the impact of glare alone.

[Daniel Stern]

It's really easy to prove that I hit that pedestrian because I couldn't see them because I didn't have enough light. That's very easy.

[Willa Paskin]

Daniel Stern, the headlamp expert who has been fascinated by them since he was.

[Daniel Stern]

A kid, it's much harder to prove that anything bad happened because I was glared. Obviously, if you are glared and you can't see that pedestrian or that curve in the road and you hit the pedestrian or you go flying off the road, well, there's your link between glare and traffic safety. But if you think about what a dynamic traffic situation looks like, it's going to be really hard to draw that line, because by the time the crash happens, the glare source is somewhere off behind you down the road.

[Willa Paskin]

It's even harder to measure the consequences of what's called discomfort glare. This is not the kind of glare that disables your sight. It just really bothers you. But Daniel says even that could be dangerous.

[Daniel Stern]

Maybe I'm stuck in front of a vehicle with very high glare headlights in my mirrors. If I feel like I can't see while I'm driving two and a half tons of steel at 70 miles an hour, I'm probably going to be somewhat panicked. I am probably fatigued. I might be enraged. And even if none of those are the case, I might very well unconsciously adjust my driving behaviors in unsafe ways. So there are all kinds of plausible links between discomfort, glare and traffic safety, but trying to measure and quantify them is hideously difficult.

[Willa Paskin]

One area where the link between glare and safety is difficult to measure, but seems really important is pedestrian deaths. As headlights have gotten more powerful, pedestrian deaths have not gone down as you might expect they would. They have, in fact, skyrocketed. And this has not been the case in other countries, which have far more regulations on glare. Daniel cautions that this whole issue is extremely complicated. Other countries have a different approach, just about everything about traffic safety, but still.

[Daniel Stern]

It does raise sort of an uncomfortable if US Headlamps and regulations are so superior to what the rest of the world uses, as US Regulators claim, then why are so many more American pedestrians getting hit and killed?

[Willa Paskin]

Overall, it seems very plausible to those well versed in the issue that in some situations headlight glare is doing harm. But because of the underlying data asymmetry, the fact that when it comes to LED headlights, as they currently exist, we can measure how they help, but not how they hurt. Car manufacturers have continued to make stronger and stronger headlights. That leaves one player that could curtail the trend towards brighter headlights. The regulatory agency in charge of them. It's called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or nhtsa.

[Nate Rogers]

They are absolutely in charge of this. And the only governing body with any authority over automotive safety.

[Willa Paskin]

NHTSA has heard the concerns. Multiple sources told Nate it now gets more complaints about headlights than anything else. Nevertheless, it has not updated its regulations about headlights to account for LEDs and at all. And in fact, there is currently no limit whatsoever on the amount of light a headlamp can emit in certain Areas, headlights can legally be as bright as is physically possible. But a representative told Nate they stand by their regulation and blame the bulk of the problem yet again on LED aftermarket headlights. Which seems absolutely outrageous to Paul Gatto of Fuck youk Headlights.

[Paul Gatto]

They're not examining if it's too bright. They're not even examining if it's affecting you negatively on the road. They are simply looking at how good it is for the driver.

[Willa Paskin]

And this brings us to the last player in this whole mess. Even though the lion's share of the blame for all this may belong to car companies and regulators, they do have a helpful partner in spreading these headlights, the drivers, us. Because it turns out we like bright headlights when they're on our own cars.

[Daniel Stern]

You light up the road surface right close to the car and wow, it feels like you've got great headlamps. It feels like you can see everything. But there's a canyon between the light that drivers feel like they like or feel like they want and the light that drivers actually need. The headlamp that makes us feel like we've got great lighting is not the headlamp that we need in order to see well.

[Willa Paskin]

But if you walk into a dealership and you sit behind the wheel and test out the lights, you're probably not thinking about how headlight brightness makes everything outside its cone of light harder to see, or whether your lights are going to blind some imaginary driver at some future date. You're about to spend a lot of money on a long lasting piece of heavy machinery. And the question you ask in that moment is simple. How well can I see? We're in a kind of headlight brightness arms race with ourselves.

[Nate Rogers]

The regulatory bodies allow this to happen, and car companies don't seem to be concerned with that. And this has created sort of a snowball effect that reaches down to the way that we interact with each other on the road.

[Willa Paskin]

Some of us are adding on those LED kits, but even more keep our high beams on all the time.

[Nate Rogers]

Headlights have gotten so bright that they have made people feel like, well, screw this, I'm going to get mine too. If I'm going to get blinded out there, then I might as well have as much light as possible on the road too.

[Willa Paskin]

In the winter of 2024, Nate Rogers published the result of his reporting research and thinking about headlights on the website the Ringer. In the article titled Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness wars, he spoke with Daniel Stern, Paul Gatto and many others about the intricacies of the headlight problem. It was the most high profile piece of reporting on headlight glare yet, which is increasingly becoming a mainstream issue.

[Nate Rogers]

Recently it got to a point where I think just any average person totally understands and has sort of joined the movement, if you will.

[Willa Paskin]

The group of people actively dedicated to doing something about headlight glare can be a fractious one. They may all want the same thing, less glaring headlights, but they can't always agree on how to achieve it because they disagree about which is the most pressing problem. They do agree that regulation of some kind is in order. For Paul Gatto, the co founder of Fuck youk Headlights, that means curbing overall brightness.

[Paul Gatto]

I would hopefully like to see a regulation on the total brightness of a low beam headlight.

[Willa Paskin]

Daniel Stern has a different priority.

[Daniel Stern]

If you give me a magic wand and say you can use it once to improve things in car lighting, then I wave it and make it so that all vehicle headlights get aimed and stay aimed correctly, dynamically.

[Willa Paskin]

If he had two more wishes, he'd get rid of the blue tinge and stop headlights from getting so small, which actually also makes them appear brighter. The car companies, for their part, are promoting their own solution called adaptive driving beam technology. High beams that will be able to dim automatically in the presence of another car. They're not currently available in the US but have been for years in Europe, where, for what it's worth, glare complaints continue to rise. Everyone I spoke to agreed that the pressure to do something about headlights is clearly increasing, though it might be a while yet until anything happens.

[Daniel Stern]

Glare is having a moment. At the same time, the current US administration has a very anti regulatory bent. So if they're deleting whole agencies and saying regulations are bad, it's hard to imagine how we would get better regulations.

[Willa Paskin]

Headlights, in the scheme of the day's problems, seem relatively trivial. But that's exactly why the inability to do anything about them is so disheartening. The details may be complicated, but then what issue doesn't have complicated details? When you really dig into it, they're still just headlights. With a new kind of light bulb, shouldn't we be able to get our hands around this one?

[Nate Rogers]

The worst version of super bright headlights is not going to be like a disaster. It's not going to be end of the world. The worst version of OtherTech is not being regulated is a disaster and it is the end of the world. And if this is how they are handling headlights, it is not very comforting in terms of all sorts of new technology.

[Willa Paskin]

When we drive, we are simultaneously more powerful and more at the mercy of others than at almost any other time in our lives. When you're flying down a two lane highway, any car could swerve into your lane just as you could theirs. When you're driving through an intersection, anyone could blow a stop sign just as you could. It's terrifying the amount of damage you can do and have done unto you in a car. Which makes it all the more incredible that most of the time we instead engage in a collective and collaborative effort to follow the rules of the road, to do our best to keep each other and ourselves safe. These efforts have in no way turned the roadway into some kind of paradise, but that doesn't mean it can't be degraded further, that it can't be made worse if we can't even see. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. You can read Nate Rogers in depth piece on headlights at the Ringer and we'll link to it on our show page. If you're a fan of the show, I'd love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Slate plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring and every other Slate podcast without any ads, and they also get unlimited access to our website. And this week we have a new bonus episode exclusively for Slate plus members. In it we talk to the Slate writer Dan Kois, all about his career quest to rediscover a famous chocolate cake from the 1960s. The first tunnel of fudge I made, which is from a recipe on the Pillsbury website.

[Nate Rogers]

It was a total disaster.

[Willa Paskin]

Like 10 minutes later the thing collapsed.

[Paul Gatto]

Like there had been an earthquake in my house.

[Willa Paskin]

It wasn't just that I'm a bad baker. Pillsbury had fudged the recipe. If you want to hear more and aren't already a Slate plus member, you can subscribe. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Decoder Ring show page or visit slate.comdecoder/ to get access wherever you listen. Member support is crucial to our work, so please sign up. This episode was written by me and Olivia Briley and we produced it with Max Friedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepard and Evan Chung. Our Supervising producer, Producer Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email [e-mail] or give us a shout on the Decoder Ring hotline. Our number is 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show. We'll see you in two weeks.

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