Friday, March 29, 2024

New type of headlights a big problem

I’m old, but it wasn’t age that caused my problem, it was the headlights

I have seven different woman friends that I go out to lunch or dinner with on a consistent basis. They range in age from 41 to 85. Three of them go out with me on a regular schedule and they help me with my writing. One of them comes over to my house on Wednesdays, the second one comes on Thursdays and the third on Saturdays. The routine is the same for each visit. The two of us leave my place together and have a late lunch at a local restaurant. After lunch, we go to a local bar and play E-tabs until late afternoon. The women drink alcoholic beverages and I drink NA beer and virgin Bloody Mary’s.

After we cash in and collect our winnings, we head back to my place, where they help me with my writing by judging my performance. You see, when I retire, I want to be a full-time writer. So, for practice, I write something different each week and then read what I have written to my friends. I’m overly dramatic when I read. Hence, the women consider each reading to be my performance.

But something happened recently, and I was no longer able to perform to their expectations. The youngest woman is quite demanding, always asking me to change the way I make my delivery. She has been very vocal about my declining performance and has started calling me “Old Man.”

The oldest woman is more understanding and sympathizes with my predicament. The woman in the middle is in her fifties. She is a medical professional, and I will call her Sally for this article. (She doesn’t want her real name used because people at the clinic will start to talk.) Sally interviewed the other two women and documented how my performance abruptly declined from fully satisfying to complete disappointment. Sally found that my performance declined with each woman during the same week. And all of them noticed that I was rubbing my eyes a lot before we started our reading for the day.

I gave Sally my latest lab reports from the clinic and the results of my last eye exam. She didn’t find anything abnormal. Many people develop my symptoms after drinking alcohol, but I don’t drink alcohol. Sally is a thinker, and she developed a theory about my performance issues. She proposed that we end our gambling 90 minutes early and head straight to my house. We tried this last week, and oh my God; I performed better than I had in years.

I tried leaving the bar early with the other women and they were amazed at how much I had improved. In fact, the younger woman kept asking for more and I ended up reading the same story to her three times.

After my performance returned to normal with all three women, Sally figured out what had happened. My performance decline occurred the same week that daylight savings time had ended. So that for the first time in almost a year, we were leaving the bar in the dark and driving to my home with our headlights on. A lot of people have bought new cars in the last year and the head lights on newer cars and pickups are very bright. I would flash my high beams at an oncoming car, and they would flash back to show me they were already on dim. A newer car would pull up behind me and their bright lights would blind me. I would adjust the rear-view mirror, but my car’s interior would still be flooded with light. This made it exceedingly difficult to see and I was constantly rubbing my eyes.

When we would get home, my vision was still impaired, and I was not able to read very well for my performances.

When my eyesight is impaired by the bright head lights, I’m not able to read my own writing. Now, things are back to normal, and I have no problem reading. After each performance, the women critique what I have written and suggest changes. They have helped me to improve quite a bit over the last few years.

As I started telling people about my headlight problem, I found out I was not alone. Many people were having the same issues with headlights. I googled “blinding headlights on new cars” and found all kinds of information on the problem. The change in brightness was caused by the switch from halogen lights to LED lights. The problem was so severe on some new models, that General Motors recalled over 750,000 vehicles this past spring to fix the headlights. Traffic deaths are up, and many people believe the increase is related to the new headlights.

The technology to make the LED headlights safer has already been developed, but it is costly, about $3,000 per vehicle. The upgrade to the safer lights is being offered as an option on the more expensive vehicles. The high-tech option focuses more of the light in the driver’s traffic lane and to the side of the road. These lights are connected to sensors that will dim the lights when the vehicle is approaching oncoming traffic. The auto industry expects the cost of the high-tech headlights to drop so that they will eventually become standard on all vehicles.

So, eventually, I will be able to stay out late and still read when I get home.

Photo: Adventures  in Kasson Mantorville Terry Eckstein

 

Dodge County Independent

Dodge County Independent
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301 S. Mantorville Ave.
Plaza 57 • Suite 200
Kasson, MN 55944

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301 S. Mantorville Ave.
Plaza 57 • Suite 200
Kasson, MN 55944

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