Struggling to negotiate a rain-ravaged, rickety, ill-maintained road, the last thing a motorist would want is a blinding headlight coming right at him. But this is exactly what has amplified the risks of city commute, as an avalanche of vehicles with high-beam, glaring headlights invades the roads with no real regulation in sight.
Clearly, such headlights increase the risk of a crash at night, as articulated recently by the Additional Director General of Police (Traffic and Road Safety) Alok Kumar. Mounting road accidents have now pushed him to launch a State-wide special drive from this month. Drivers found violating rules will be booked under section 177 of the Indian Motor Vehicles Act.
The maximum permissible headlight for low beams is 55W and 60W for high beams. Typically, low beams are mandated within city limits while high beams are to be used on highways with no streetlights and poor visibility. But the easy availability of a wide range of LED headlights exceeding well over 100W has played havoc on the roads, with law enforcers often caught napping.
File photo of vehicles with high beam headlights in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH
Risks multiplied manifold
On highways, the blinding glare from an oncoming vehicle can be disastrous at night if the safety standards are not strictly adhered to. This could get riskier during monsoons. But in the city, the multiplicity of narrow, single lane roads and reckless driving increases the danger manifold. While heavy vehicles are found using these high beams, the trend has spread to the mass market with two-wheelers and auto rickshaws sporting such lights.
White LED tail lights and even disco brake lights, seen on many vehicles, could prove extremely dangerous, says a concerned motorcyclist. LED upgrades on reflector headlamps scatter the light, blinding every road-user in the vicinity, he points out.
A magisterial notification had banned the use of high beams in Bengaluru City, reminds M.A. Saleem, Director General of Police, who was associated with traffic and road safety for years. He says, “High beams are required on highways where you have to see for a longer distance, and the distance between vehicles is longer. But they are a nuisance on city roads, particularly on single lane ones where the glare blinds the opposite vehicles.”
Tampering, not standards, is the issue
Standards are prescribed for each and every part of the vehicle, he points out. “Specifications for the headlights and tail lights are clearly provided by the Central Government, and all manufacturers have to follow that. Tampering is the issue.” Section 177 of the Motor Vehicles Act mandates a penalty of ₹500 for the first offence and up to ₹1,000 for subsequent offences.
Until 1989, motorists were required by law to fix a black spot at the centre of the headlight panel to reduce the light intensity. This rule was taken out in the new Act, since it was a manufacturing requirement. Many vehicles had half shades on their headlamps till about 2000 before they were weeded out, as Saleem recalls.
So how does a high intensity headlamp actually impact the driver? Ophthalmologists draw attention to the disorientation high beam LED lights can cause to the eyes. The sudden appearance of a high beam flash while driving can be so shocking that it could cause temporary blindness, a recipe for a crash. The driver loses control of the steering and the vehicle takes a fatal turn, endangering many lives.
Drivers’ sight issues
But there are also other sight issues that aggravate the impact of a high beam glare. “Long hours of driving an AC car, when the AC vents are always on your face, dries up the tear film. This film is one of the first refracting surfaces of your eye. When it gets blocked, it becomes something like a fogged glass. When light hits the eye, it reflects,” explains Dr. Rohit Shetty, Chairman of Narayana Nethralaya and a senior ophthalmologist.
Besides, about 30% of people have issues with the eye muscles. “This is a very important but little understood and diagnosed issue. You need those muscles to be very active all the time. But for many people, the muscles go into fatigue very early, causing binocular single vision. They see multiple images as one. Overlapping happens a lot in the eye retina and in the brain. The smallest of disparity can cause this fusion issue, where the brain receives images in a very erratic way,” he says.
With headlight glare amplifying the risk of accident fatalities, the spotlight has to shift on these rarely diagnosed eye sight issues. As Dr. Rohit warns, “Fusion issues can happen due to extreme amounts of stress, work pressure and other factors which all of us go through daily. If these issues are not addressed seriously, there is a chance that these people will one day end up having an accident or judgment error become an issue.”
This only strengthens the findings of a nationwide study, “Assessment of driver vision functions in relation to their crash involvement in India,” jointly conducted by researchers of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru; Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi; Central Institute of Road Transport, Pune; and National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli.
Minimum visual requirements
Covering 387 Indian drivers from multiple organisations, age groups and driving experience, the 2016 study found that of the 160 Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) drivers tested, 101 had at least one visual defect. “A high 63.75% of the drivers did not satisfy the minimum vision requirements for driving. A simple comparison of the road crash histories of the drivers to the vision test results shows that the crash involvement rates are high (up to 87%) in drivers categorized as ‘unacceptable.’”
The number of BMTC drivers involved in road crashes with unacceptable vision standards was also high (58.3%) when compared to those with acceptable visual standards, the study report said.
For the general public commuting in cars and two-wheelers, the combination of poor road conditions and safety standards, tampering with headlights could prove unacceptably risky. Somasundaram M., a resident of Sarjapur Road area recalls how the glare from an oncoming vehicle led to a near-fatal accident. “I was driving at low speed, but in the glare could not spot a pedestrian who suddenly crossed the road. He fell on the bonnet and rolled on to my windshield, cracking it.”
He is convinced that high beams should be strictly banned within the city, since there are street lights already. “On highways, the high median barricades block the high beam glare of oncoming vehicles on the other lane. But city roads do not have such high medians,” he says, indicating the clear need for safety through robust enforcement of existing rules.
Published - July 03, 2024 09:00 am IST
