Aardvark's Blog

There is a little blue light indicator(on new cars)(red on the older ones) on the instrument panel of ones dash board. That little light lets you know that your high beams are on. I would also think that if you're sitting at a traffic light with a vehicle in front of you and your headlight beams are lighting up the back of the drivers head in the vehicle in front of you, that's an indicator ones high beams are on. Another indicator ones high beams are on is when the beam of the head lights are shooting up at the road signs above the road. People now days are only concerned with what's going on inside their vehicle and not beyond the bumpers. If I'm sitting at a traffic light and you come up behind blinding me with the high beams, you can bet your butt I'll let you go right on by and I will run right behind you with my high beams. And if I'm on a 2 lane road and you're coming at me with high beams, if I can't see anything, I'll blind you right back after a couple of flashes of my high beams. There is absolutely no reason why a person can not look down at the dash to see if one has their high beams on.

You know what? One time I was driving down highway 50 coming home from the races at orlando speedworld and the car coming at me had the high beams on. I flashed my lights no response, I flashed them again, no response. I flashed again and the car went passed me and turned around. Now I am thinking great here comes some idiot and they are going to mess with me. All of a sudden the blue lights come on and it was a highway patrolman. He asked for all my paperwork and then asked why I was flashing my lights. I said because your high beams were on and you wee blinding me. He then said I was lucky he was in a good mood because he could write me a ticket for aggressive driving but will only give me a verbal warning not to flash my lights at oncoming traffic. Can you believe that.

ride, don't you know that cops don't have to obey the laws the rest of us mortals have to obey? such as proper use of turn signals, speed, highbeams, stopping at stop signs, red lights, etc. I rarely use my high beams cause traffic is so thick that I don't get the space necessary to obey the distance requirements for use of high beams.

The biggest problem in Kissimmee with high beams are the freakin BUS DRIVERS. I pulled ahead of a bus on hwy 192 a few stops ahead. Proceeded toboard the bus and asked if he had to drive with his high beams on? His response was," Don't tell me how to drive my bus!" Well, I got his name and route # and reported it to LYNX. The response I got from LYNX was rather surprising. "Although our driver's attitude was unprofessional, it is necessary at times to drive with the high beams on due to the lights on some of our busses are not bright enough to use low beams. What a load of crap. Yet you never hear about the law doing anything about it. HMM

Sorry to inform you folks this, BUT IT IS ILLEGAL to FLASH YOUR HIGH BEAMS at ONCOMING CARS, even if they do have their high beams on, you ARE CAUSING A BIGGER PROBLEM and this precedent has caused many a HEAD ON COLLISION!

I DO NOT Flash my high beams at anyone, if they are blinding me, I SLOW DOWN and sometimes may even pull off to the side of the road, BLINDING the other driver right back is an accident waiting to happen and is not a smart thing to do.

If a driver comes up behind me with high beams on I also DO NOT get behind them and retaliate, you're possibly setting yourself up for a road rage incident because in todays me first on the road, your retailiation could very well get you shot and I'd rather make it home alive if you don't mind.

Also, those indicators today are useless, many cars now have driving lights and they use the same style of BLUE icon when they are on, if your high beams are on this icon will turn off and the high beam will turn on, which is usually higher on the instrument cluster, but if it's right next to it, the driver may think it's just their driving/fog lamps and not their high beams!

And I hate the NEW cars, their low beams are almost 10 times brighter than my standard halogen low beams, these new HID lights should be made for OFF ROAD USE ONLY and not for PUBLIC ROADS!

BTW: Car manufacturers, why didn't you make the AUXILLARY lamps icon YELLOW, that would have been more appropriatre than the same exact blue icon that is used for HIGH BEAM indication!

And another thing, wipers on, lights on, so why didn't they also connect the head/tail lamps to the wiper switch, that way if your windshiled wipers are on, so are your head/tail lights. Seems like (and is, I've modified some of my cars to be this way) a very simple fix to me. This way you don't have MORONS driving in the rain (like we have in Florida) WITHOUT their full set of lights on!