Bulwark Takes - Yes, Car Headlights Are Too Damn Bright!

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Lauren Egan talks with Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez about one of the most annoying and overlooked problems on the road today. They discuss where these overly bright headlights came from, how they impact drivers, and why it is more than just a rural complaint.

Hey everyone, it's Lauren Egan here at The Bulwark. If you've ever been driving on the highway at night and you felt like other cars on the road had oppressively bright headlights, it turns out that you are not alone. In fact, there was a congresswoman from Washington who recently brought up the issue with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee And that woman is here with us today, Marie Glouson-Camperez, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for doing it. Okay, so car headlights.

How did this come across your attention and why are you talking about it? Before being elected to Congress, I had my own independent auto repair and machine shop. And so it's, you know, in my wheelhouse and, and, but also I live in a rural community and the, the brightness, the lumens on these headlights are unhinged. And it's one of those things where you're like, am I getting old, you know, or like is that what, what is happening here?

And you know, it's a safety risk, like, a lot of these headlights, they also like strobe when they start to go out. And it's like, you know, you can't see properly afterwards. Like a lot of people don't properly aim their headlights, but like, that wasn't as much of a problem before headlights got this bright. And so, I was like, I, I'd been like, talking to my team about it for a while. And I mean, you know, a lot of people in DC don't drive, or folks from cities that might not drive, you know, they're just not aware of it. And so I was like, I kept, I kept like sharing some of the stuff that I was seeing, just to be like, look,

I'm not crazy. Like other people think this is a problem too. No, I feel reassured because I've noticed this and yeah, you truly do feel crazy. Is it like a more of a problem in rural areas too? Do you feel like because some of the city, you know, just like light pollution dims it down a bit? Yeah, it I think it is it is more more dangerous. You know, the contrast between a super dark night and and these like, you know, blaring headlights is more it's more difficult for your eyes to readjust. You know, and then I think, too, in in in more urban areas, like a real risk to pedestrians because the contrast between the light and

the dark, it makes it, you know, I think there's there's evidence that it's led to more pedestrian fatalities. Did you hear about this from constituents like when you were campaigning and stuff when people bring this up to you? I did. And actually like a few town halls that came up and I remember people sort of like being like, why is she talking about headlights? Like I think the world's on fire and I think, you know, that's true.

And also these are real problems that people are facing every day and it feels like, you know, if we can't pay attention to the mundane like and solve the mundane how are we going to solve the bigger issues? Yeah do you know why car headlights have gotten brighter because I feel like when I was learning how to drive and like when I was a kid I don't feel like it was this bad or am I just also getting old and going crazy. No, the LEDs truly are. I believe that headlight brightness, the average lumens is like, I think we went from like 3K to like 6 and 12K,

and like it is profoundly brighter in the lumens, excuse me. So like what can actually be done about that? Well, I mean, there could be national standards on how bright the lumens. So the lumens, like the regs haven't changed in 40 years on lumens. And you know, some folks have proposed in Europe, they use these like adaptive directional beams that move with your steering wheel. But you know, I live in an area where there's a lot of ice and I've seen, you know, failure,

like they're quite complex and more difficult to fix. It's also an issue of the tone of the light because the older ones were more yellow. That scale is called Kelvin. The new ones are much higher Kelvin, they're much bluer and your eye perceives that as brighter also. So there's a couple of issues at hand in how LEDs have been implemented in a failure to regulate that has made the situation more dangerous than it otherwise would be. Since you brought this up with the committee, have you heard from folks?

What's your feedback been, especially from other members of Congress? Oh, well, I mean, we did a survey with Mike and his constituents. It was like three out of four. We had like 7,000 respondents to this email survey. And it was like, overwhelmingly, headlights are too bright. But yeah, you know, it was funny. I was in a committee hearing today and, you know, somebody in more seniority was like watching that, watching that clip from the hearing like in another hearing and they're like, someone's finally doing something about this, I hate this so much, you know, it's like

there's things that you think it's just you and but I think the other point here is that like you need to listen to your constituents when they tell you there's something wrong. You can't pretend that people's lived experience is silly because it's not. I think trying to be useful in all of the ways that you can as an elector, that matters. Have you spent any time digging into some of the Reddit threads? There is a truly excellent subreddit that's called Fuck Your Headlights, which I recommend everyone go check out.

Yeah, I've seen some really good memes come out of there. I've also seen like, you know, I saw somebody's tweet that was like, if I'm ever gruesomely murdered, like, like, please, like in my memory, pass a head like a head a bill to like, legislate headlights, whether or not it has anything to do with my death, like, that's like the spirit of my life, like, that this is, and yeah, it's, it's one of those things that like, every time you see it, it's painful. Yeah. Do you think that there actually could be some legislation passing into your point? Like this just seems like it should be a bipartisan conversation at the moment. Yeah. I think there's opportunity here. I think we're looking at ways that we could

do it either through stamp on legislation or through some of the appropriations mechanisms. I mean, I'm hopeful. I think it is, you know, being blind at night is not a partisan issue. Like this is like all of us are impacted whether, you know, whether you're senior or whether in urban or rural community, like this is something everybody hates. Yeah. Have you talked to some Republican colleagues about it? I have. Yeah, no, I was showing Dararyl, so the, that tweet I was referencing about that passing a bill in my memory. Is he into it?

Yeah, he thought it was pretty funny. Okay, there you go. I also feel like people just do like wild shit on the road to like high beams being left on. And I'm curious, do you think that's like dashboards are also just getting like way too complicated and like people just don't realize what they're doing or are people just assholes who leave their high beams on anyways? Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of part of the attention economy and like treating driving

is like a skill worth having and pursuing and something that will save your life and merits attention and development. I think it goes into like driver's ed. I think it goes into, you know, it's crazy because cars have gotten so much safer and fatalities have not gone down. That's crazy. Like that's an insane just piece of data right there. Yeah.

I mean, I think when you rely on a machine, you know, it's fragile. It introduces, I think, more confidence than is responsible to give to a piece of technology as opposed to like the actual human capital of like operating and paying attention and like being present with the task at hand of thriving. Would you ever drive with blue light blocking glasses?

I'm not that crazy, I don't think. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, yeah, that's fair. That's the correct answer, just so you know. But I wanna go back to something else you said about listening to your constituents and about stuff that's actually impacting them day to day. Do you feel like that's something that the Democratic Party as a whole needs to do a better job at? Democrats have been relying too much on the groups and activists to sort of explain the world to them.

I'm curious how you think about that and whether you think this all kind of plays together. Democrats just need to talk to the people they represent, not let it all get filtered through like think tanks or nonprofits. Yeah. So when I used to pull cars into the shop, I would say eight out of 10 times the radio would be on a news station. And now it's like one out of 10 times. And I think I think that, you know, and the data supports this that like, the people who view themselves as politically engaged and view politics as like a necessary part of their life, it's become a smaller pool. People have tuned it out because it's so toxic and polarizing and isolating often.

And I think part of what makes democracy strong is when more people view politics as relevant and reflective of their life and their agenda and what matters to them. And I think like while yes, this is not curing cancer, it is the work of making a political agenda that is more relevant to more people. And I think that is what drives people's decisions like vote or not. Like when they see it as something that their vote influences their life and not an abstract concept,

but in like the tangible and the real. And I think the other part of that is that when you have a body of electeds that is driven places and doesn't themselves drive or that isn't in the vehicles, you have less of a political capital or shared reality with constituents and normal people and you need to live in the same world. You can't legislate a world or an economy that you're not impacted by. Yeah, how much does Right to Repair, which I know is something you've been big on, does that play into this at all with the car headlights? Yeah, a little bit. Like, you know, it's kind of the bigger argument of like in shitification where it like, you know, you like I used to be able to replace a light bulb and a headlight for like $3. That was my cost for that light bulb.

three dollars. That was my cost for that light bulb. And now you have to do the whole of these newer vehicles, you have to do like the whole headlight assembly for seven hundred dollars. And it was something that was like assembled, you know, maybe by slave labor somewhere else. And it's nickel and diming the middle class out of existence. And I think people don't always realize, you know, because on the West Coast, we don't solve, we don't solve the roads. So our cars last longer. Average age of cars I work on is like 20 years old. And I think West Coast, we don't salt the roads, so our cars last longer. The average age of cars I work on is like 20 years old. And I think a lot of folks don't realize how rapidly things are getting worse and less affordable, especially in comparison to what things were like, you know, in the earlier

2000s and the 90s. So yeah, like right to repair and acknowledging and prioritizing the power of fixing shit and like people who have made a life out of making things last longer. That's like, that is, you know, a big, that's why I'm here. Like that's why I'm here. That's why I want to be in Congress is build economic agency and self-determination in the middle class, in my community. And when we move away from parts that are discreetly repairable and get turned into

part swappers, not only does it rob the middle class of a really, the value of one of their biggest assets, but it also, it disrespects and disincentivizes the power of a technician to be a good skilled diagnostician that has agency and can command a higher market rate as compared to a part swapper where we're now competing with bad actors or exploitive manufacturing facilities across the ocean.

Yeah. Well, Congresswoman, thank you for coming on the Bulwark today to talk about this. Good luck getting some sort of legislation passed. Come back anytime and talk to us about it. Thank you. This was really fun. Appreciate your attention to it. It does matter.