I remember my father taking the car to the shop periodically so the headlights could be aligned to meet the law. The lights had to be positioned properly so they do not blind oncoming drivers. The bright lights had to be aligned as well.
Also there was a requirement of the number and color of lights visible from the front. IIRC, two sets of headlights (regular and brights), turn signals and running lights (below or on the front bumper).
Today all bets are off. Anyone can change headlights. No alignment required. Any bulb you want. Any number you want. It’s not uncommon to see a “typical” vehicle approach with eye-spearing blue halogens, and half a dozen running lights (or more!) all across the front. When they hit the brights I swear they are aircraft landing lights. And no one cares if any of this blinds oncoming drivers.
Now with vehicles jacked up on struts it’s even worse.
I vote for a very brief flick of the high beams to communicate that you’re not running with them on. If they paid attention in Driver’s Ed, then they’re already looking at the white limit line on the right and not directly at my lights anyway. I’ve had this happen a couple of times although my headlamps are regularly adjusted and they are not of the blue halogen variety. If the situation were reversed, it’s what I would want to happen.
I’m one of those people. But so are most people who live in the gray of Oregon. You can think I’m a dweeb, by by god, you’ll see me coming before you pull out in front of me onto the roadway.
Properly adjusted, IAW the law, headlights on any vehicle can still put the main part of the beam in another drivers eyes. Roads aren’t perfectly flat or perfectly straight. Proper adjustment is based on angle for the high intensity part of the beam so higher vehicles are more likely to cause issues for others. Simply adjusting the beams to aim lower than the standard minimizes the risks of blinding someone else but increases other risks since the driver of the vehicle adjusted too low has less forward visibility.
If my lights are properly adjusted, I largely ignore someone flashing their brights (aside from being aware of the possibility it’s a warning of some sort.) It’s an imperfect world. Screws fall out all the time and sometimes non-high beam lights shine in other drivers eyes.
Sometimes a vehicle coming the other way can hit a bump in the road that appears to be a flash of the headlights. For some reason this seems to happen to me more often lately.
“Did he just flash me? Is there a cop up there? A deer?” Bump Bump “Oh.”
A very quick flash of your actual high-beams will let the other person know you didn’t stupidly forget to crank back to the regular setting, or (if they were trying to warn you of a speed trap, deer or rabid raccoons hitching rides), acknowledge their warning.
Or you could just shoot them, whatever is allowable in your state/local jurisdiction.
That’s me, too. I always understood that if you were flashed like that, it meant there was a trooper or a checkpoint ahead. Seems to happen pretty regularly…
I had a friend who mounted a couple of 250,000 candlepower aircraft landing lights behind his grill to use as (highly illegal) fog lights. But they also worked well to alert people that their high beams were on.
Slow down. My experience is that if someone flashes their beams when mine aren’t on
a) Something dangerous or something like a speed trap is ahead
b) My headlight is really badly aimed
In case its the first, I cover the brakes. If its the second I can always check tomorrow.
If you’ve got HID bulbs, the “quick flash of the high beams to demonstrate they’re not on” might backfire because the bulbs take a few seconds to warm up to full brightness. So for the brief instant you turn the high beams on, they may actually be dimmer than your (already warm) low beams, making it look like you’re just taunting them by showing that your high beams are indeed on and are going to remain so.
Double off = thank you or double on = thank you in the daylight.
Rapid brake flash = I see you coming fast or I think you are asleep at the wheel and there is some bad stuff just ahead so get your head out and pay attention.
