When to Switch Back at Night
Most drivers flip the tab once and forget it exists. Some leave it dimmed all day and ruin their visibility for no reason. Others never touch it and squint through glare. One simple driving tip when driving at night is to flip the tab based on what you see, not what time it is. Street lights and well-lit roads provide enough ambient light that dimming becomes unnecessary, so save it for dark country roads and highways where the contrast between darkness and bright headlights creates the worst glare.
Lane changes feel wrong at first because distances look off. The adjustment takes a few trips, but modern LED and HID headlights can be blinding for several seconds. The slight distortion beats losing vision when switching lanes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration received over 4,000 public comments about headlight glare in 2001, more responses than any other safety concern that year. The problem hasn’t gone away. Headlights shifted from halogen to LED and HID technology, which made them brighter and more likely to cause glare. An online petition asking Congress to regulate these lights has collected over 50,000 signatures because more vehicles now use high-mounted lights that shine directly into rearview mirrors.