Alaska headlight rules warrant legislative remedy

We may be in the minority among our neighbors, but a lot of us at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman drive vehicles that don’t require a running board or small stepladder to enter.

At night, when temperatures drop low enough that defrosters have trouble keeping up, it can get kind of dangerous driving on these roads when you meet a larger vehicle in the oncoming lane.

And if that big, tall truck has large, bright headlights, it can get very dangerous, very quickly.

That’s why our ears perked up Saturday when Capt. Hans Brinke of the Alaska State Troopers started discussing headlights with the crowd assembled for Sen. Linda Menard’s constituent meeting in Palmer.

Brinke first addressed headlight coloration. It’s not OK to have blue headlights, he said, but it’s an open question whether headlights that look blue are technically blue. Manufacturers say they’re white, and the light in the center of the beam certainly is. It’s the illumination from the sides of these lights that’s colored.

Brinke said these lights are easy to obtain in this age of the Internet, including lights that aren’t actually legal for use in the United States. But to figure out if the lights are legal would require a trooper to ask a motorist to pop the hood, and the current rules are all but unenforceable.

What really caught our attention, though, was when Brinke told the crowd there aren’t any laws in Alaska that establish a limit on how bright headlights can be. We just have laws saying how dim they can’t be. Headlight rules in general, he said, are from older statutes that could use an update.

We recognize that these too bright lights may benefit the operator of the vehicle. But they are a safety hazard for other drivers on the road.

It would solve some enforcement-side problems if troopers could just whip out a light meter to measure whether a vehicle’s headlights are in or out of compliance. But first we need to change traffic laws to recognize the full spectrum of headlights available and the risks some of the lights pose to other drivers.

Sen. Menard hosted the public meeting where Brinke fielded this headlight question. In the past she has worked to pass legislation to require that cars in the state’s vehicle fleet drive with their headlights on at all times.

Since driving with headlights in the daytime offers an added degree of visibility, we support this idea. But for safety’s sake, we are equally supportive of a new look at old laws that do not address contemporary issues, including brightness and color of headlights.

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Editor's note: The printed version of this editorial incorrectly stated the status and intent of one of Sen. Linda Menard’s bills. The bill, which would have mandated vehicles in the state drive with headlights on at all times, is no longer in play, having died at the end of a previous legislative session.