Should You Use Low Beam or High Beam When Driving on Highways at Night?
4 Answers
When driving on highways at night, use high beams because highway speeds are high and require longer visibility distances. In dark, relatively unoccupied road conditions without streetlights, high beams are the correct method to ensure adequate visibility. Additional relevant information is as follows: 1. The use of lights on highways depends on specific driving conditions. High beams can be used when driving in areas without streetlights to expand the field of vision, but they must be switched to low beams when encountering oncoming vehicles. 2. High beams can be used on highways at night because highways typically have central barriers that block the high beams while eliminating concerns about oncoming traffic posing a danger. Avoid using high beams when driving in urban areas, as cities have better lighting conditions. The high angle of high beams can easily dazzle oncoming drivers and pedestrians, impairing their vision and creating unsafe conditions. Moreover, it is considered an impolite driving behavior.
My experience on highways is: decisively switch to high beams when there are no other cars. Unlike city roads, highways have fewer streetlights and lack protective barriers in the median. Low beams only illuminate about 30 meters ahead, which is insufficient for reaction time at 100 km/h. Last month, while driving at night, I encountered tire debris in the middle of the road. Fortunately, the high beams lit up the debris from 200 meters away, allowing me to change lanes in time. Of course, always check the rearview mirror—if there’s a car within 500 meters behind, switch back to low beams. When overtaking, observe the distance to the taillights of the car ahead and only switch back to high beams once you’re beyond 150 meters. In rain or fog, you must use low beams, as high beams reflect off water droplets and create a blinding white haze. In fact, Article 47 of the Road Traffic Law clearly states: high beams are only permitted when there are no vehicles within 150 meters ahead in the same lane.
A personal lesson taught me that high beams are a must for nighttime highway driving. Last year, I nearly hit a construction warning barrier while driving with low beams on the highway—when the low beams illuminated the obstacle, I had only 2 seconds to react. Tests on mainstream car models show that low beams provide about 3 seconds of braking buffer time at highway speeds, while high beams offer over 8 seconds of life-saving time. Pay attention to three key signals: the blue high beam indicator on the dashboard confirms successful activation; if reflective road signs appear glaring, it's time to switch to low beams; and immediately turn off high beams when scattered glare from headlights appears behind you to avoid being flashed. Special caution is needed when overtaking large trucks at night: switch to low beams within 100 meters of the vehicle ahead, and only reactivate high beams after completing the overtake and maintaining a 200-meter distance.
As a seasoned driver with ten years of experience, here's a crucial point many overlook: using high beams on highways isn't just for better visibility. Last year when I had a tire blowout on a Hunan highway section, it was the continuous flashing of high beams that alerted following vehicles to slow down in time. While modern cars come with automatic headlights, don't rely on them completely: light sensors have delays when entering/exiting tunnels, and automatic switching often fails on long downhill stretches. Here's a lesser-known fact: many new cars' adaptive high beams automatically avoid lighting up rearview mirrors of preceding cars, but if you notice sudden brightness in your rearview mirror, it means your high beams are dazzling others - shut them off immediately.
