Yes, headlights have become blindingly bright in Canada. Here's what the experts are saying

Vancouver city councillor Sean Orr introduced a motion to council recently that he admits is “a little personal.”

“My mom absolutely hates these (head)lights,” he said in council chambers late January, “and from what I’ve been hearing, a lot of people do as well.”

Advancements in North American headlight technology over the last decade or so have undoubtedly made the roads safer for drivers. The trade-off, unfortunately, is that many drivers on the receiving end of increasingly bright low-beam lamps have never felt less safe.

That’s “100 per cent” how Orr feels when he encounters the smaller, more intense, blue-rich light-emitted diode (LED) modules that can cast wider beams on the road.

“It’s one of those things where once you notice it … you just start seeing them everywhere,” he told National Post in an interview. “It kind of becomes even more of a distraction.”

Orr is not alone in his assessment. In the U.S., Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez was so bothered by the issue of bright headlights that she took the matter to the Capitol last year.

“There is a plague in this country of headlight brightness,” she told the House Appropriations Committee in July, Portland’s KGW8 reports. “It is shockingly bright. If you look back to halogen light bulbs, you’re reaching somewhere around 700 to 1,200 lumens. New LED technology, these sons of b—–s get to 12,000 lumens.”

Orr called on the federal government to address the situation, a motion that passed unanimously and will be sent to Transport Canada. It will also be presented at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference Edmonton this June.

Orr said during the meeting, “I remember asking myself when I first started seeing these headlights on the road: how is this legal?”

Have headlights gotten brighter in Canada?

LEDs, which started showing up in the early to mid 2000s and have become almost an industry standard within the past five years, and the high-intensity discharge (HID) headlights that came just before them in the late 1990s, are without question brighter than the halogen bulbs of yore.

But the problem at the core of the headlight brightness issue, according to B.C.-based driving-vision expert Daniel Stern, is a mismatch: automakers are eagerly embracing new technology, but regulations haven’t caught up with the glare these brighter lights produce.

Glare is not addressed in Transport Canada’s Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (CMVSS), which closely mirror U.S. regulations. The Society of Automotive Engineers technical standards also don’t mention glare.

And glare isn’t a simple matter of brightness.

“As in any system with a lot of moving parts, if you touch one, it affects all of them. Many things that you could do to reduce headlight glare will also tend to reduce the driver’s ability to see at night,” Stern, chief editor of Driving Vision News, the global vehicle light world industry journal of record, told National Post in an interview.

“It’s not quite so simple as a one-for-one trade — one unit of glare for one unit of seeing.”

What causes the glare? Is it from headlights alone?

Glare comes in several related forms, all caused by stray light entering the eye.

Human vision depends on contrast and in darkness our pupils expand to take in more light. When a bright source hits, it reduces that contrast and temporarily resets our adaptation to the dark.

That effect — a general wash of scattered light that lowers contrast — is known as veiling glare and it doesn’t come from headlights alone. Tail lights, streetlights, overlit parking lots, glowing roadside billboards and even bright screens inside a vehicle can trigger it.

Veiling glare can lead to two other forms: discomfort glare, which can feel unpleasant or even painful to some, and disability glare, which reduces the ability to see.

“You can have all three present, or two of the three, or just one of them. It just depends on the circumstances,” explained Dr. Ralph Chou, professor emeritus in optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo and editor in chief of the Canadian Journal of Optometry.

Why are newer headlights creating more glare?

Low-beam headlamps are regulated by specific test points that dictate light intensity at precise angles.

Older halogen systems were designed in a way that limited how much light could be sent leftward toward oncoming traffic. LEDs produce a much wider beam pattern with much more intensity than past high beam headlights, making them more likely to shine directly into an oncoming driver’s eyes.

Manufacturers are also adjusting colour balance, making the lamps brighter for the driver but bluer to everyone else.

“The higher the effective colour temperature of the bulb, the brighter it seems to be for the onlooker,” explained Chou.

Stern, meanwhile, pointed to “sturdy research by reputable researchers showing that the bluer light creates 50 to 60 per cent more discomfort glare than the less blue light of the same intensity.”

Because LEDs are so powerful, carmakers can make them smaller, increasing their luminance — the density of the light in a concentrated beam — and making them appear even brighter.

Their heat also radiates backward rather than forward, meaning ice can build up on the lens and scatter light unpredictably.

Wet roads, aging lamps or lenses, aftermarket bulbs and the age of the affected driver can all worsen glare.

“This is really an important thing because it’s going to get worse as our population ages,” offered Chou, explaining that our eyes need to take in more light to see as we age.

Both he and Stern cautioned against easy fixes like night-driving glasses, which Chou said are reducing glare at the expense of cutting overall light and thereby reducing visibility.

How does the position of the headlight impact glare?

For Stern, headlight aim is the single most important factor in how much glare other drivers experience.

There’s static aim — set at the factory — and dynamic aim, which changes constantly.

“The car is moving; it’s going around curves; it’s going over bumps and down dips; the suspension is moving; there are people and cargo inside — and those lights, as a result, are moving around all over the place,“ Stern said.

When the beams shift higher or farther to the left than intended, “other drivers are really going to get zapped.”

Mounting height also plays a major role.

“Instead of having those beams from the oncoming vehicle going down towards the road, the higher position of the lamps on those SUVs is such that you’re getting the light going straight into the eyes of the oncoming drivers,” Chou said.

With SUVS, pickup trucks and minivans accounting for 86.6 per cent of new light-duty vehicle sales in 2024, the impact is widespread.

Stern noted that new technology to automatically maintain correct headlamp aim already exists and is widely used in Europe and other developed regions.

“We don’t make the vehicle owner manually switch on the brake lights every time they step on the brake. We don’t make the vehicle owner manually crank the windshield wipers back and forth,” he said.

“It’s probably time to take headlamp aim out of the list of things to have the car owner think about.”

Why are North American vehicle makers turning to new headlight technology?

Proponents of LED headlights — largely vehicle manufacturers — insist the new technology is safer than older types because they offer brighter, more focused illumination from a more energy-efficient and resilient bulb.

“LED headlights are built to withstand harsh driving conditions, making them a more durable and long-lasting option compared to halogen or HID lights,” reports Carifex . “Their solid-state construction ensures they can handle vibrations, shocks, and extreme weather without compromising performance.”

The U.S.-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety supports the growing adoption of new headlights by North American vehicle manufacturers, but it also incentivizes that willingness to change through safety awards based on its own rating system.

The IIHS has tested well over 1,000 headlight systems since 2016, with each earning a rating of good, acceptable or marginal/poor. Their 2022 study found that those rated in the top tier for visibility resulted in 19 per cent fewer single-vehicle crashes at night and 23 per cent fewer nighttime pedestrian collisions than those with the poorest rating.

“Since the program began, the proportion of headlights earning a good rating has increased from four percent to 29 percent,” IIHS states on its website . “Irrespective of their ratings, the average low-beam illumination distance for all the headlights tested rose from less than 180 feet to more than 200 feet.”

Just over half (51 per cent) of the 2025 systems tested earned a good rating.

IIHS recognizes glare as an issue and excessive amounts can hurt a given headlight system’s rating. Manufacturers have noticed and already started to adapt.

“For the 2025 model year, only three per cent of the headlight systems tested had excessive glare, compared with 21 per cent in the 2017 model year,” the organization said .

Why is Canada ‘on a regulatory island’ with the U.S. when it comes to headlights?

For automatic aiming and other glare-mitigation measures to move forward, North American regulators and industry players would first need to acknowledge it is a problem.

“We here in North America are on a regulatory island,” Stern said.

Most of the world uses the United Nations vehicle and equipment regulations that recognize glare as a sort of “societal ill” and have set limits to contain it.

But in North America, the rules focus only on how well the driver using the headlights can see, assuming glare isn’t an issue if the lamps meet older intensity guidelines.

Ideally, Stern said, regulators would not only mandate auto-aiming headlights but also apply brake light and turn signal luminance standards to headlamps and restrict the amount of blue light allowed. For older vehicles, he suggested stricter enforcement on aftermarket bulbs and degraded lenses, along with periodic headlight aim inspections, all of which, he explained, Transport Canada says fall under provincial and territorial authority.

“It’s a little bit of a sort of a Debbie stole the cookie from the cookie jar type of situation with a lot of sort of finger pointing and gaps,” Stern said.

Any solution, he said, won’t be easy.

“It’s problematic and it will be difficult to fix.”

Orr recognizes Canada’s regulatory attachment to the U.S., but feels there’s a pathway to establish our own way of things, similar to how Canada deviates from the U.S. on food and drugs regulations.

“If other jurisdictions are doing it, like Europe, and considering the sort of political climate anyway between Canada and the U.S., maybe it’s good to sort of look at those other jurisdictions for leadership,” he said.

“Let’s get our elbows up and those lights dimmed.”

• Energy-saving LED lighting backfires as difference between night and day vanishes: analysis
• Five things to know about light pollution, courtesy of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

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