Are You Driving Blind Without Knowing It?

COLUMBUS, Ohio—It may sound strange, but it is possible for your car to develop cataracts of a sort.
The lenses of car headlights are made of plastic, and over time, with exposure to sun and other elements, those lenses can cloud up so you can’t see what’s in front of you, NBC 4’s Mike Jackson reported.
NBC 4 analyzed Franklin County crashes in 2008 and found more than 4,600 crashes occurred between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.—more than one in five accidents in the county.
Proper headlights are vital to overall automotive safety, but most people have never heard of car cataracts.
“You know, I’ve been thinking that my headlight visibility is not as good as it used to be and I thought it was because I was aging,“ said Deborah Crawford, an area motorist.
“Now that you mention it, I’ve noticed it on a couple of cars that I’ve had,“ said Vasco Rodriquez, an area motorist.
Car cataracts are a slowly-developing cloudiness to the lenses of your headlight.
“The headlights get very yellow and it actually affects the efficiency of the halogen bulb that’s inside and it will affect how well the driver will be able to see at night,“ said Don Novel, of Boyd’s Goodyear.
About a half-dozen motorists stop at service stations each week to address the problem and it’s a safety condition our parents and grandparents didn’t have to work about.
“The headlight cataract situation is more of a by product of the reliability of the automobile because the headlight assembly is out of the road for a longer period of time than cars used to be,“ Novel said.
To illustrate the point, NBC 4 used the car of a station employee that is developing car cataracts and another that does not have the condition.
Special Projects Producer Chris Booker stood about 200 feet away in the dark and the driver slowly progressed forward until he was able to be seen. That spot was marked.
Then, the same experiment was conducted using the car with cataracts. The second time, the driver passed the first marked location.
At Goodyear and other service stations, a cleanup can be performed for approximately $50.
“We do it for customers every day and it is something customers can do for themselves if they have the time and energy to do it,“ Novel said.
For approximately $15, motorists can purchase a kit that will remove the cloudy yellow look to the lenses.
But you can protect your lenses now and prevent clouding with a simple step.
“When I wax the car, I wax the headlights and if you look at the headlights on my personal car, the headlights still look new,“ Novel said.
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