Chapter 5: How to Drive at Night – 9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Safety
Fatigue, shorter days, rush hour, compromised night vision and impaired drivers are among the common risks we face while driving at night.
The risks rise, especially on weekends, with a peak in fatal accidents being reported on Saturday nights according to the National Safety Council.
By knowing what to do when driving at night, we are massively reducing the chances of getting involved in collisions. This is especially true if you are a new driver. It’s been shown that new drivers often feel inexperienced when driving at night time.
Here are 9 simple ways to enhance your road safety at night.
1. Aim Your Vehicle’s Headlights
Most vehicles, including new ones, have their headlights uneven, or pointed much lower than they should. So, when driving at night, you need to aim them properly.
Read the instructions in the owner’s manual if you’d like to adjust the headlights on your own, but be patient. You may need to try a few times before pointing them perfectly. Just ensure your newly aimed lights aren’t blinding the approaching traffic.
Even correctly aimed lights may cast a dim glow if something blocks the light, which is why you should wipe the road dirt from the headlights regularly.
The ideal fix would be to purchase a headlight polish kit for removing the haze to ensure lights shine through brilliantly. Replacing old incandescent bulbs with new ones will also increase the light intensity of your headlights.
2. Avoid Staring at Oncoming Lights
A bright light can severely affect your concentration at night. When inside the vehicle, your eyes are familiar with the dark road in front and the instrument panel’s dim glow.
It’s very easy to get distracted and stare into the headlights of an approaching 18-wheeler without even noticing it. Turn the eyes away from the other lights on the road and avoid looking at any approaching high beams.
3. Dim Interior Lights
Cars have dashboard dimmer switches for a good reason. With big infotainment screens and bright dashboard LEDs finding their way into cars, vehicles have interior sources of distracting and unnecessary light that could affect your vision.
To remove reflections on your windshield, you should dim the dash lights. This will allow your eyes to adjust to the dark environment ahead and improve your night-time visibility. If your car has distracting map lights, you may want to turn them off as well.
4. Wear the Right Classes
Eyeglasses, whether prescribed or otherwise, add a reflective layer between your eyes and the road. Thus, wearing the correct glasses is essential to improved visibility in the dark.
The best option?
Wear prescription lenses that have an anti-reflective coating. The coating prevents extra, unnecessary lighting from reflecting inside the lenses. It also allows sufficient light to get through.
Please, don’t purchase the yellow-tint sunglasses, which are said to help you see better at night. According to the Sunglass Association of America, that’s not true.
Although companies promoting yellow-tint sunglasses claim that the added color promotes contrast, these glasses reduce the amount of light passing through them.
As a result, it becomes difficult to distinguish objects and other hazards along the road. You don’t want that to happen when driving at night, do you?
5. Adjust and Clean the Exterior Mirrors
Dirty mirrors are similar to a dirty windshield – they can reflect and distort lighting that distracts you. Dirty mirrors often reflect lighting from cars at your back in a broader, diffused shape, which can create glare in your eyes. So, be sure to clean these mirrors up.
Besides, aim your exterior mirrors so you can get your head from the lighting path reflected in them. The best way is to aim them down slightly, which helps to see the vehicles behind you by slightly lowering your head forward.
Aiming the mirrors down also helps to keep the headlights from the other cars out of your sight, and ensures they don’t temporarily blind you with their bright beams.
6. Polish Your Windshield with a Newspaper
Windshields that look clean at daytime might show streaks that reveal a glare at night. The recommended trick is to use a newspaper and polish the glass to eliminate residue.
Try not to touch the windshield’s inner surfaces, mirrors, or side windows with your hands. Don’t do it even if you’d like to wipe off some mist.
Your skin’s oil will smear the glass, causing light to glare when shining through any spots that you touched. Instead, you can keep a newspaper, a microfiber cloth, or cotton in the door pocket.
7. Don’t Drive While Tired
For the most part, most of us drive at night after a day of hard work, which means fatigue is beginning to set in. This can make driving a risky venture even if you’re traveling home from work.
Not to mention, the dark quickly and instinctively makes you feel more drowsy and tired. Falling asleep behind the wheel is among the leading causes of collisions.
So, if you have to drive at night, ensure it’s not a long journey, but if it’s a long distance, start early in the night, such as after the rush hour.
Importantly, if you feel drowsy along the way, take a break at a safe spot, such as a service station. While there, you can take a nap and coffee. It’s recommended that you take a break every two hours, especially on those long, night journeys.
8. Watch Your Speed
The quiet road at night comes with the temptation of wanting to crank up the speed of your car a little bit. However, this is the time to drive a little bit slower than you would during the day.
Driving at a reasonably lower speed gives you time to react to a situation and it also improves the safety of other road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. While pedestrians may have their sidewalk, you can barely drop a high speed if something strange happens.
9. Take Your Time to Practice
If you are a new or nervous driver, take your time to practice driving on the road when it’s dark. Do it for a few minutes at a time and you’ll soon increase your confidence and experience level.
The best way to practice is to get an experienced driver to guide and remind you about the basics of driving at night.
For more guidance on driving at night, learn from our expert driving instructors at Pierre Paul Driving School.