Afraid Your Night Vision Is Degrading? Maybe Your Car Has Cataracts.

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This is a rough draft which is being posted in this form as a matter of public interest. This raw draft will be edited for grammar, quality, brevity, clarity of useage, repetitions, imprecise wording, etc. on the next available workday.
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Walk along an area where your friends' and neighbors' cars are parked. Take a quick look at your headlights, and everyone else's. If your headlamps are obscured by fog, moisture, scratching or other wear, take a minute to try to clean them so your headlamps can shine through with 100% of their intended efficiency. Can't get the junk off your headlight covers? Don't feel bad -- you're about average.

Walk down the line of cars at any parking lot, whether supermarket, shopping mall or the most high end apartment complex. Scan the "clear" plastic covers on the headlight assemblies of the cars parked there, even the newest and most advanced auto designs.

The currently designed headlight assemblies on most American cars -- with their clear plastic covers -- are nearly all scratched, discolored, grey, or otherwise degraded so much that many people PROBABLY CAN'T SEE AT NIGHT as well as they should.

Then ask yourself why nobody is talking about the fairly obvious issue you have identified without much of my help. Do this simple investigation now, then read on, if you like doing your own homework. But if you are pressed for time, read on and let me tell you what I have seen every day of the week wherever I go and cars are parked.

You'll see a vast number, maybe the majority of America's currently driven personal automobiles and SUVs, with headlights that are covered by scarred, scratched, yellowed and/or befogged plastic coverings such that the probable intended light output each night is reduced to 50% or less of optimum brightness -- and the focus of that light diffused, spread out and obliterated, reducing the effective power of the beams to a fraction of their original ability.

In my case, my '97 Pontiac Grand Prix headlights had gotten so bad that I had driven off the road at a railroad crossing in the rain one night. As someone who often works nights in bad weather, this was unacceptable to me.

The problem was so obviously dangerous that I decided to research and buy the best superbright headlamps I could find. I'm not paid to market headlamps, but I will say that I selected a bulb called the Silverstar (I think). The benefits of these new extra-bright, extra-white headlamps were immediately apparent. I was no longer driving as if my headlights were turned off. That's right. The new bulbs were not blinding the oncoming traffic or showing me things in the far distance I had never been able to see while driving at night.

These really nice and deluxe superbright headlamps do nothing more for a guy like me with marred and scratched plastic over his headlamps than to return my ability to see at night to about what it may have been with the old headlamps -- before the clear plastic covers on those headlight assemblies became worn with normal use.

I have a dog, and I walk her in my apartment complex daily, so I began noticing other residents' headlights. And I found what you will find if you take a walk and examine most people's transportation -- without special tools you can easily see that the headlights of most vehicles sold in the last 10 years or so to American consumers quickly deteriorate to the point that focus is blurred and brightness may be less than 50% of the original capability.

You have to wonder just how far below the safe minimum a headlamp is when a foggy grey covering develops over it like a cataract.

Given that the plastic-covered design exists on most trendy cars these days (rather than the older, far more durable glass headlight without the extra cover), I would not be surprised if the majority of vehicles in many parts of the USA are operating at 50% efficiency -- or less, both in brightness and in properly aligned focus.

Once all these plastic covers become badly scratched, which they do very quickly because they are very soft compared to glass and not designed to prevent this kind of easy damage, your headlights can no longer produce a safe level of light on your path at night. Whatever headlamp brightness you DO have left will now be diffused, as I pointed out, all over the roadway including the oncoming lane, which inevitably means (as a matter of simple physics) much less light where you actually need it. And that's why a lot of you find yourselves checking to see if your headlights are turned on while you are moving down the road.

In bad weather like rain or snow, as you may imagine, this very real problem becomes impossible -- a hazard that can easily be the difference between life and death. In fact, as you stroll down your local parking lots looking at all the permanently bruised and befogged plastic headlight coverings, I think you'll begin to wonder as I did not WHETHER, but HOW MANY people have been killed thanks to this nationwide defect.

My old headlamps left me blinded so that I might have to pull off the road for a while in heavy rain, snow or fog. I put up with it for a long time, as I'm sure many others do, before I realized just how anemic and inadequate my headlight beams had become. I frequently, even regularly, found myself checking to see whether my headlamps were turned on, or possibly burned out. I remember being surprised at times that neither of my headlights was off and yet it seemed the road ahead was dark and entirely unlit. I began using my fog lamps while driving in good weather; I checked the alignment of the headlamps.

I venture to say, given the number of obscured headlight coverings I see every day, that most people aren't yet aware of the fact that their own light covers are severely degraded.

Even when I did identify my own risk factor and shop for new and brighter lamps from my car dealership -- I discovered another real problem for many people --

The clear plastic coverings cannot be replaced alone! Thank you, GM.......

Every American driver wishing to replace his or her worn or damaged plastic headlight covers can only buy the entire assembly for each headlight. To get a fresh headlight cover you'll have to change out the entire headlamp assembly at a total cost starting around $100 per lamp.

So most people who DO figure out what the problem is with their view of the road at night find they can't afford to replace the entire assemblies -- and so put off the repair. They are forced bythis compounded problem to continue driving with the dim, unfocused headlights, in some cases for the life of the car -- even though experience has already proved such a driver can't see his or her path properly at night -- even in good weather.

Something should have been done long before now. This design defect has almost certainly been identified years ago by more than one rational auto engineer. We should wonder why the very real danger persists. We should ask why such a large percentage of all cars sold in the US are still being manufactured with these plastic (polycarbonate or other polymer recipe) coverings that are so easy to degrade. We should ask why nobody in Motor City (for example) has identified and taken steps to eliminate the risk that any of us can see, once we've noticed the issue, in every parking lot everywhere -- thousands of cars, perhaps millions, with permanently, seriously impaired headlight assemblies.

Millions of cars, perhaps, blinded by cataracts.

It should be part of the routine maintenance checklist to target and fix dangerous headlight cover conditions. It should become a design requirement on covered headlight styles to ensure that consumers can regularly replace these plastic coverings with fresh and clear parts for safety's sake, as one changes windshield wipers.

One last note. and it is unfortunate but true. Anyone can verify the following with some inquiries to veteran auto designers, engineers, and/or automotive trade magazine veterans:

This is NOT a new, or uncommon, or unanticipated problem with this design, even though these defaced headlight covers have now become routine on autos throughout America.

These clear coverings -- marred, scratched, yellowed, dirtied -- have been well known AND ill reputed in the auto design business for ages. They have been tried over and over again and always discarded for the same well understood reasons. Everyone with even moderate experience in the auto industry knows why this headlight design has been discarded repeatedly in the past.

And the reason, as back issues of countless car magazines can confirm, is that these coverings are well known to deteriorate in the natural course of driving to the point that light can't properly penetrate the damaged covers. Why these are once again so common on American cars is a problem in business ethics -- the elements include uninformed consumers, well-known risks, and an unwillingness to shelve a flawed design at least until the auto maker is capable of making headlight coverings out of a scratchproof, non-discoloring material which is STILL easy to replace.

Evan Bayh of Indiana is "OUT OF IT"

This is what golfers call a gimme. In this case, it's a fookin' Christmas gift.

Evan Bayh, the Indiana-based U. S. Senator, has just announced that he will officially DROP OUT of the Democrat presidential race for 2008.

All I can say, as a politically active Republican American from Indiana, is "Thanks, Evan. We hardly knew ye, but yere misguided and confused stands on matters like our gun rights were not persuasive enough to guarantee that enemies -- like old maid Paul Helmke and his paranoid/alarmist mob -- would be properly and justifiably neutralized during a Bayh presidency."

I guess you should have made me some more promises if you wanted into the Big Game. I don't hate a moderate Democrat, but I do hate one who passes more despicable regulations upon Americans' gun rights.

I still wonder whether you possessed the guts to tell a loose cannon Hoosier politician like Helmke to go to hell on gun control.

I fear you would have felt compelled to GIVE Helmke something. And that would have been out of the question, sir.

............... Out -- of -- the -- question. ---------- Am I getting through ?

"It's a Wonderful Life" -- the Unrated 3-Hour Director's Cut?

I was looking at the TV directory tonight and noticed that "It's a Wonderful Life" is being broadcast. It has been a few years since I've seen the outstanding Frank Capra classic, and the thought of settling down with the TV was just taking hold when I noticed that 3 full hours of time were blocked out of the Saturday night schedule for the movie.

Excuse me while I take a moment. ........

Alright..... Did we just say... Three hours....? With a straight face?

You know, I had forgotten that "It's a Wonderful Life" was a road picture. Funny. I don't even recall where they put the intermission...

Well-justified, cable-directed sarcasm aside for a moment (I may require it again despite my best effort), I do not have an entire evening to waste (time is money, you know, and Americans are busy, busy, busy) seeing an atmospheric cinema favorite that has been fine-tuned with a hatchet.

You see, the actual running time of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, according to Leonard Maltin's expertly edited books, is 86 minutes.

Eighty-six minutes.

For those of you who like things boiled down a bit, 86 minutes is 4 minutes under an hour and a half. Only 90. Minutes.

But NBC sets aside 3 hours... I can only imagine what fabulous and worthwhile DVD extras NBC might provide during the holiday presentation to occupy the remainder of that prodigious hunk of time.

Surely there must be another half of the evening loaded like a Horn of Plenty with rich additional materials.

The alternative would be that NBC's "holiday presentation of a beloved American classic" grinds along at an interminable and indecypherable HALF SPEED. With commercial content as long as the movie. As long as the movie. As long as the movie.

When TV was absolutely free over the air, commercial breaks were shorter than they are now that cable charges at least $60 a month for a marginal, analog, hype-laden product.

Think about that. For this kind of unrestrained butchery of your programs, programs which are why you turn on the TV, some otherwise smart Americans have been conditioned to pay $60-150 a month for a coaxial cable drilled through the siding.

If you're paying a lot of money for MORE commercials than you used to get for FREE with a UHF or VHF antenna in your attic ... You have been given the silver-plated shaft by the cable or dish or fiber-optic business in the last few years. Either commercials finance TV, or we do. But not both.

There is still time to kick the habit before the delusion that we have to pay $150 a month for commercial TV takes hold.

Here's an effective prescription for descriminating viewers -- As long as they insist upon trying to insert ads into your programming -- Go to Radio Shack. Get yourself a $50 attic or roof antenna to attach to your co-axial cable.

Watch commercial TV for nothing, as it was intended.

Commercial TV, or radio, was never supposed to cost money. The ads are the price you pay for free TV. Any other pitch is just cable wire and snake oil.

If somebody wants to SELL me media hardware or software, fine, but I peel off the ad labels when I get home, I put that media into my own personal home theater, and enjoy my media clean and uninterrupted.

If you load your product with ads and other graffiti? -- It's a promotional give-away. Don't expect ME to forget that.