Blinded by the light

thought it was just me becoming an old fart

It drives me mad (pun unintended)

Likewise cyclists with hi-intensity strobe like lamps - are they even legal?

Both a danger

Thoughts?

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Yep those lights dazzle me sometimes. If you look at the related articles then there’s one saying the same thing from 2011, so it’s not a new complaint .

I don’t drive mainly due to my vision I didn’t bother to learn though I believe I could legally. But I really struggle at night with the headlights on the road as a passenger so probably best I don’t bother.

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Yeah I have this issue, when its raining it’s even worse as my field of vision looks like I’m being strobed by a UFO with it’s high beams on. I remember a while back even sidelights used to seem really high intensity like they were burning into my retina. Also if a vehicle is higher than yours you get blinded from behind right in the rear view mirror.

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I heard somewhere that if you hit a bike with a strobe light strobing you can claim that the light was off when you hit them therefore couldn’t see them.

I, perosnally, have 2 lights when I’m commuting on my bike, a steady one and a strobe one, the strobe one does get you noticed more. I also have them pointing on the ground about 2 metres in front of the bike so I don’t dazzle drivers.

Not noticed incredibly bright car lights recently, but then I don’t drive on country roads at night a lot…

Wasn’t much of a fan of the A35 that goes through the Forest during my trips there. Loads of full beamers on a very narrow road with no central reservation. Delicious.

As teenagers, we cycled out to the New Forest once in the middle of the night without lights. We were super paranoid about getting pulled for having no lights, so we’d swerve off the roads on the few occasions we saw a car.

At around 2am, we see what appears to be a behemoth of a vehicle, with a fucking floodlight on the top of it. We definitely thought it was Old Bill. We found this out later, but apparently this is not uncommon. The idea is to scare all the animals out of the nearby trees so they can kill them.

In the panic, my mate cycled into both a ditch, and then a thorn bush. His arm did not look pretty.