So every time I drive my little car at night I'm filled with ungealthy rage afterwards and every time I think about what possible actions to take. This time I swore that I'd share some of my thoughts in order to help the movement gain more momentum. What comes is a collection of more or less well thought out ideas, don't take them too seriously.
- This is not really a political fight, it's about making the world better for everyone. We don't want to take away anything from you. We should try to not get the majority of people into a defensive position but rather educate about the problems and changes in lighting.
- Words are powerful. We need a word or wordmark that is easily understandable and that has a negative connotation without being too confrontational (like fuckyourheadlights).
- We should be cleverly about our strategy and take into account mass psychology. A big proportion of people have annoying headlights but either don't know it or maybe don't know how to make them less annoying. Make it so that the don't feel like they are the enemy but rather part of the solution.
- We should use official petitions or similar direct democracy tools if you have them in your country. Be clever and don't blindly start one. First gather a group of people willing to support it and have a good plan. Don't be confrontational, maybe ask for official investigation instead of bans.
- We should try to have science investigate the issue from a psychovisual point of view. This is all about people and not dry measurements and badly done specs. Try to include drivers eye-level and cars headlight height into the studies. Include spectral issues. White light can have a very different effect than more yellow or reddish light. Petitions could urge for scientific studies instead of bans or direct changes in policy.
- Include bike headlights, they are often as annoying as car lights. This issue highlights the alignment and height offset as parameters to the annoyingness and allows die hard car users to be included in the fight.
- The headlights issue is an issue for people in all groups of society. Be inclusive and use all kinds of platforms or media channels to spread the word. Be sure to consider 2. and use a common branding or word mark so small communities find their ways together into a big movement.
- Create songs, images and jokes to raise awareness of the topic. Don't point fingers but maybe make fun of people who have too bright beams without excluding them.
- Create material to help people to better align their lights or maybe dim them. Experiment with applying transparent foil to slightly reduce strength or change tint.
- Create a common signal to show other drivers that their lights are blinding. This could be for example: two short flashes and one long. Include this signal into your propaganda material. On bikes, remove your light and point into the eyes of the other biker until you have their attention, then point on their light. They will mostly understand the issue (unless they are dumb :/).
I hope to have brought up some interesting points for further discussion. What do you think?
Manual "Exploded view",
Opaque view.
Agreed!