How should drivers use lights when driving at night?

Currently, the issue of using lights when driving at night is still not paid attention to and implemented correctly by many drivers, affecting driving ability and even endangering people around.

Mr. Nguyen Hong Vinh, a famous racer and a car expert in Vietnam said:

"The most important thing when driving at night is the lights, this part is too bright or too dark can be dangerous".

Regarding the current problem of high-beam headlights, Mr. Vinh also shared an important reason why more and more drivers and car owners are doing this: "Currently, everyone is caught up in a race to make everyone blinded. Originating from the awareness of using high/low beams, many people have the habit of not lowering their high beams when necessary; this makes other drivers try to increase the brightness of their cars."

Using bright lights will cause many people around to lose their vision. Photo: Phap Luat VN

Accordingly, the method of causing glare is determined to be due to the headlights not being lowered and especially the fact that many car owners are adding many light strips with excessive brightness. "Currently, trucks and passenger cars on the road are arbitrarily installing many LED light strips. They themselves will cause a lot of glare to people around them". Mr. Vinh even compared them to be "as bright as squid fishing lights in the bay".

Regarding the solution, this car expert affirmed: "In the immediate future, we need to improve the culture of using high beams and low beams. When encountering oncoming vehicles, we need to lower the lights so that drivers can see the road. Even when there is a vehicle in front going in the same direction, we must do the same to avoid causing glare through the mirrors. And if they try not to blind others, others will also try to respond in the same way."

In fact, last November, the Hanoi traffic police force went on patrol and if they found vehicles using extra lights in violation of regulations, they would be dealt with according to the law. The act of installing additional lights in violation of regulations will be fined from 300,000 to 400,000 VND, while turning on high beams in the city will be fined from 600,000 to 800,000 VND.

In the world today, many car manufacturers pay attention to lighting issues. Leading among them are German manufacturers with smart systems.

The intelligent lighting system on Mercedes-Benz vehicles allows drivers to see the road well.

He said that the current headlight system on Mercedes-Benz cars can replace many of the driver's tasks and help them have good visibility at night, "Mercedes-Benz cars now have a fairly smart lighting system that can take care of all the lighting for the driver, regarding when to use high beam, low beam, wide beam,..."

According to the manufacturer's announcement, the LED lighting system on Mercedes-Benz cars can automatically "glance" according to the steering angle, automatically adjust the high beam range, highway mode - when the car reaches a speed of 90 km/h or more, the light beam will be expanded to both sides, empty road mode - increases the lighting intensity and expands to the opposite lane, fog lights - adjust the driver's side front light cluster to rotate the light beam inward to see the roadside more clearly.

However, this car expert also concluded that no matter how much companies develop those features, the core problem still needs to be solved from the awareness of traffic participants in using lights: "That system will still not be able to completely protect passengers in cars if many drivers continue to install LED strips that increase brightness and shine directly at other vehicles as they do now."