What is the most important safety feature your car possesses?
Perhaps it is the airbags… Maybe the seatbelts… It has to be the ABS system… right?
As important as all of those things are, there is one more safety feature of your vehicle that many don’t consider a safety feature at all: your headlights.
Most of us think of headlights as those things that you turn on at night so you can see the road in front of you. And indeed, that is one very important use they have.
But, what about during the daytime? Headlights aren’t really necessary… or are they?
They won’t illuminate the road in front of you, even on an overcast day. Even on a relatively foggy morning, you can probably see just about as far in front of you as your headlights would be able to shine anyway.
Headlights are more relevant during the daytime and inclement weather than many people give them credit for. In fact, many states require that headlights be in use during inclement weather, during dawn and dusk, or when you turn your windshield wipers on.
Most people would probably agree that having your lights on during rainy, snowy, or foggy weather would be much more important than having your lights on during broad daylight. That may be the case, but having your headlights on during the daytime, whether sunny or cloudy, could have a more profound impact on your safety than you think.
Let’s say you are walking through the woods. All of a sudden, you walk right through a cobweb you didn’t see. Once you get all the webbing out of your face and eyes, you look back to see the remnants of the web hanging there off a limb. How did you miss it?
The answer is because of the angle and backdrop on which you were focusing your attention as you were walking forward.
You can look back and see the cobweb you walked through because the angle, and therefore the background colors and shapes, have changed, even though you didn’t see the cobweb as you approached it.
The same thing happens when it is foggy or rainy. Visibility is restricted because of the conditions, and lights can be seen much easier in the fog than even a brightly colored vehicle.
Believe it or not, the same effect can happen in broad daylight. An especially dangerous scenario is one in which a driver approaches an intersection, stops, looks both ways, then precedes through the intersection only to have a vehicle come through that intersection without being previously seen.
This is because a vehicle can easily blend into the backdrop of trees, mountains, buildings, the road itself, or even other vehicles, depending on your point of view. Having your headlights on can greatly reduce this risk.
Our eyes are designed to detect color, light, and movement.
Of course, in the scenario above, not recognizing the color differentiation between a vehicle and its backdrop is the main issue here. If the colors of the background and vehicle are close enough, a quick scan of the road ahead and beside will not provide adequate warning to an oncoming vehicle.
Likewise, because of other potential moving objects around you and your point of view, movement may not be detected either, though movement is more easily detected than color – this why camouflage works very well until whatever is camouflaged begins to move.
Light however, is more easily detected than both color – when an object is stationary – and movement – when an object is in motion – especially in our peripheral vision.
The eye is made up of sensory rods and cones, both of which detect all of the three elements we have just discussed. Rods are more sensitive to light than cones which are more sensitive to color, and rods are more plentiful around the outer edges of the eye. This is why our peripheral vision is more sensitive to pick up an object that is giving off light, even in the daytime.
I’m sure you know where this is going.
Because of all this, even a driver quickly glancing both ways before pulling out would be able to pick out a vehicle with its lights on at any time of the day more easily than a vehicle that does not have its headlights on regardless of whether or not it is moving.
All of this is fine and dandy, but that doesn’t explain why headlights make a vehicle safer than airbags, seatbelts, or ABS.
Airbags, Seatbelts, and ABS are all reactionary safety measures. This means that something has to happen in order for them to be triggered. Airbags of course, deploy in the event of a collision. Seat belts, despite being used while driving, tighten in the event of an accident. And, ABS only responds during detected brake lockup.
Some of the newest safety features available in vehicles today like adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot monitoring are not reactionary in nature, but rather preventative. Headlights are the same way… so, how are headlights more important than advanced safety features on vehicles today?
Headlights are already mandated on all vehicles sold to the public. Not all advanced safety features are even offered in every single vehicle on the market. Though not every vehicle has automatic headlights, many do, and at the very least, you just have to remember to turn them on when you turn on your vehicle.
Most people don’t consider headlights to be a safety feature at all. Things like airbags, seatbelts, and other driver assistance technology has the spotlight when it comes to safety.
But, headlights do have an advantage over most other safety equipment. They may not protect your head from hitting the steering wheel or prevent you from flying through the windshield in the event of an accident, but they may just prevent all of those things from happening at all.
Remember to turn your headlights on every time you start your vehicle, and you might be surprised how many times you and others will be thankful you did!
