Tips on Night Driving

  • Make sure your vehicle is in good working order, especially your lights and brakes.
  • Dirty, pitted, or fogged windshields reduce your already limited night vision and increase the glare of oncoming headlights.
  • 85% of all information needed to drive is collected by the eyes. Your ability to collect needed information is severely reduced at night. Time is needed to recover from exposure to bright lights.
  • At night, the eyes lose the ability to distinguish color, determine depth perception, and determine contrast.
  • Drive with high beams wherever possible (visibility of 400-500 feet compared to 200 feet for low beams) without creating a traffic hazard for oncoming traffic.
  • Glare recovery is a major concern at night. The average person needs 10 seconds to recover from glare. Recovery time increases as persons age. The average person will travel about 1/4 mile with limited vision when traveling at 60 MPH at night after experiencing glare.