The Department for Transport (DfT) has introduced that it’ll fee an impartial report on headlight dazzle, acknowledging that “further evidence” is required on the difficulty.

The announcement got here in response to a parliament.uk petition calling for MPs to assessment laws about the brightness of automobile headlights receiving greater than 10,000 signatures.

In response, the DfT introduced the plan for the report, saying: “We know that lots of people raise concerns about headlight glare – but also that the police collision statistics don’t show any underlying road safety issue.”

Given the “lack of evidence” on the problems of dazzle and headlight brightness, the report might be used to tell “any further appropriate mitigations”.

The DfT has already moved to sort out the difficulty of headlight misalignment, having raised the difficulty on the United Nations’ professional group on car lighting.

“Proposals to amend headlamp aiming rules were agreed in April 2023, together with requirements for mandatory automatic headlamp levelling, which automatically corrects the aim of the headlamps,” added the DfT.

It mentioned that tightened guidelines on headlight beam alignment are anticipated to return into pressure in September 2027 and these “will help alleviate the number of cases where road users are dazzled”.

The announcement of the report comes simply months after the RAC known as on the DfT to “urgently” look into the difficulty of dazzle.

A survey of some 2000 motorists by the organisation discovered that 28% believed most headlights to be too shiny.

Of those that complained about brightness, 74% mentioned they had been repeatedly dazzled whereas driving and 85% mentioned they believed the issue was getting worse.

RAC security spokesperson Rod Dennis hailed the DfT’s acknowledgement of the difficulty as “a real turning point”.

“The topic has undoubtedly struck a chord with motorists up and down the country, with many people contacting us directly to call for something to be done,” he added.