Last week some marketing consultant for HIDXenonHeadlights.com asked me to link to the site, and "in exchange for the link, I can offer you a monetary contribution."
Well, he's got his link. He can send me cash if he'd like.
Xenon headlights are too bright. Around here, in quaint South Orange, we have very dim streetlights, (gas fired, in fact.) For me, this typically means I'm lumbering along in my 10 year old Ford Explorer, when the soccer-mom-on-meth driving a white Lexus is approaching at 70 MPH. (I'm driving the limit, maybe, at 25, she's probably doing 50 on the downhill.) I'm blind. I'm trying to dodge minivans parked on both sides of the street from memory. She can see everything, even the deer in the park a quarter mile away, because, oddly enough, it is stunned like a deer in the headlights!
Sam Peltzman at the University of Chicago made himself famous figuring out just this problem: Seatbelts make worse drivers. (I've regularly proposed solving the NYC cab driver problem by removing the airbags and replacing them with daggers.)
Super bright headlights are even worse. The Xenon packing driver drives more recklessly thinking all she needs is light, and I'm endangered by her boldness.
So, good luck to HIDXenonHeadlights.com. I hope your products don't sell around here.
