Your Headlights May Make it Unsafe to Drive at Night

March 12, 2010 - PRLog -- Lumina Headlight Restoration, a Denver based mobile headlight restoration service company, has issued a safety warning to all drivers – Your headlights may make it unsafe for you to drive at night.  When your headlights are dirty, cloudy, foggy, hazy, oxidized, yellowed or pitted you can lose up to 90% of the light that is supposed to shine down the road - AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s Headlight Glare Brochure.  (http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/HeadlightGlareBrochure.pdf)  The same AAA study estimates that most driving accidents that occur at night are due, in part, to poor visibility.  Damaged or dirty headlights make night driving unsafe for you, your passengers, and other drivers on the road.  
      How do headlights get damaged and cloudy?  Since the 1980s, in the United States, most headlights are made of polycarbonate which has a lot of the same properties as plastic but stronger (think bullet-proof glass). When cars leave the factory the headlights are coated with a clear coat. This coating from the factory wears off and the sun’s UV rays (and road debris) cause the lens to develop micro-cracks and pitting. This traps the light inside and makes the outside look cloudy or foggy. After extended periods of exposure the unprotected lens can become scorched causing it to yellow.  Almost all damage on polycarbonate headlights is on the outside of the lens.  This damage is what causes decreases in visibility and danger to other drivers.
      “Most people don’t realize how dangerous their lights become over time and that it’s actually a mechanical issue with their car and not just poor eyesight” said Heath Holmes, Lumina’s founder.  “More importantly they don’t know that replacing headlight bulbs with more powerful ones actually shifts the danger to other on-coming vehicles.  Brighter light coming out of a semi-transparent lens gets refracted and can cause major glare for other drivers”.  AAA states that “a dirty [lens] diffuses the light and causes glare that can temporarily blind other drivers, so headlight cleaning [or restoration] becomes a matter of ‘enlightened’ self-interest for you; when you reduce glare for oncoming drivers you improve your own safety as well. After all, everybody shares the same road.”
      According to Lumina there are several temporary options available which clean or polish your headlights.  “Almost every other fix out there will need to be redone every 4-6 months.  Our service will actually restore the headlight’s coating and bring back the perfect clarity like form the factory. It’s one of the only true solutions to a very dangerous problem.”  Holmes finished by asking “Have you noticed your headlights?”