Enforce Alaska’s headlight laws

Driving at night is a whole different challenge than daytime driving. Namely, visibility after dark is a fraction of what it is during the day. Oncoming traffic, or drivers following too closely, also can impair visibility.

In Alaska, where darkness rules from October to March, it’s nearly impossible to avoid driving after dark entirely. But other factors impeding visibility can be addressed through increased driver courtesy and existing laws.

If you drive in the Mat-Su Borough, it’s likely you’ve been temporarily blinded by the bright blue in-fashion headlights some Alaska drivers have added to their vehicles. Or, maybe it’s a grill rack of super white LEDs, or the big add-on lights affixed to the roll bars that meant you couldn’t see for a second or two after the car passed while your eyes adjusted.

If these lights’ only impact was to help people see in the dark more clearly, we’d be here singing their praises. Vehicle collisions on the roadways kill a lot of moose. If bigger, brighter headlights were purely a means to prevent the death of moose, injury to people, and reduce property damage, we’d be onboard.

But there is another facet here, the “blinded by the lights” component.

Sure, the driver with the juiced headlights can see, but not the driver meeting them in traffic, and not the driver traveling ahead of them on the road.

We don’t have good statistics for how often this kind of scenario directly leads to traffic accidents. Rarely do law enforcement press releases mention causes for traffic accidents. Usually, it’s just a mention that one driver “crossed the center line” without any deeper explanation. But we have covered at least one criminal trial resulting from a crash in which glare was an issue.

We’ve written about this safety concern before and asked for increased enforcement of existing headlight rules from local law enforcement agencies. But nothing really changed.

Here’s what Alaska’s rules — Article 2, 13 Alaska Administration Code 04.020 — say about headlight use:

(1) when the driver of a vehicle approaches an oncoming vehicle within 500 feet, the driver shall use a distribution of light, or composite beam, so that the glaring or high-intensity portion of the light is not projected into the eyes of the oncoming driver; and

(2) when the driver of a vehicle approaches another vehicle from the rear, within 300 feet, the approaching driver may not use the highest distribution of light.

A separate section of Alaska code prohibits blue forward-facing lights on non-emergency response vehicles.

We don’t need to write more laws for headlight use. But we must insist Alaska State Troopers, Wasilla Police and Palmer Police enforce existing law regarding headlight use.

Here’s what we suggest:

• Enforce headlight usage rules the same way that seat belt rules are enforced, with the goal of raising awareness of the rules and encouraging compliance;

• Treat blue lights like any other malfunctioning headlight, write fix-it tickets to drivers;

• Require that the lights be tested at an automotive shop to verify compliance;

• Further, if lights in a certain spectrum, or beyond a specific brightness are prohibited by existing rules, we should pass a law at the state law prohibiting their sale.

Instead of swearing and shaking your fist at our local headlight scofflaws, take action. Contact your legislator, or write to the director of the troopers and ask him to help protect Alaskans by enforcing existing headlight rules. His address is Col. James Cockrell, Director, Alaska Troopers, 5700 E. Tudor Road, Anchorage, AK 99507.