The government is to take a closer look at car headlight designs amid increasing complaints from motorists about excessive brightness.

Four in five drivers (82%) are concerned about being dazzled by vehicle headlights as the evenings draw in earlier, according to new research from the RAC.

Have headlights actually got brighter?
Yes. The RAC attributes the increased brightness to modern bi-xenon or LED bulbs, which are becoming more common in new vehicles. The beam from LED headlights is “whiter, more focused and brighter than the more diffuse light from halogen lamps fitted in older cars”, said the BBC. Other factors causing problems for drivers include badly aligned headlights and the relatively higher position of SUV lights, which increases the glare for oncoming traffic.

Are they dangerous?
Dazzling headlights are cited as a factor in between 200 and 300 accidents in the UK each year, according to data from the House of Lords Library, although there are no figures on the type of headlights involved.
But more than a third of the drivers surveyed by the RAC felt less safe driving because of other vehicles’ bright headlights, and half said they had been temporarily blinded by them.

The problem is worse for older people. Between the ages of 15 and 65, glare recovery time increases from two to nine seconds, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. A 2018 study outlined in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that headlight glare particularly affected people with cataracts.

What can be done?
A government-commissioned report on the issue, by consultancy firm TRL, is expected to be published in the coming weeks. The Department for Transport said the aim was “to better understand the causes and impact of glare, which will inform new measures in the upcoming Road Safety Strategy”.

In the meantime, the College of Optometrists recommends ensuring windscreens and spectacles are clean before driving, and then focusing on the edge of the road to minimise the effect of dazzling headlights.

Young people are often accused of spending too much time on their phones, but what if they’re not the biggest offenders?

Half of those between the ages of 61 and 79 are spending more than three hours a day on their phone, according to a survey of 2,000 US baby boomers by AddictionResource.net. And 20% said they regularly clocked up more than five hours a day online.

No guardrails
“Moral panic” is rife in many countries over the impact of digital technology on teenagers, said The Economist. But a “less-noticed explosion in screentime” is occurring among 60-somethings. As older people enter retirement, the time they spend on smart devices goes “shooting up”. And with none of the social guardrails that teachers and parents often impose on teens’ screen time, boomers may disappear down internet rabbit holes, potentially exposing them to scams, hoaxes and misinformation.

That’s not to say older people are inherently more susceptible to fake news. A US study outlined in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly last year found that older Americans “are no worse, if not better, at discerning between false and accurate news” than their younger peers. However, the researchers warned, “calcified partisanship” – long-entrenched political beliefs or party allegiances – makes older people more likely to engage with it and so become “more vulnerable to hyperpartisan news”.

‘Connective power’
Over-50s who regularly use digital devices have lower rates of cognitive decline than those who don’t, according to a meta-analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour. It’s unclear if the technology “staves off mental decline” or if people with better cognitive skills “simply use them more”, said The Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample, but the findings call into question the assumption that increased screen time drives “digital dementia”.

Older people may even “have more to gain from smart devices” than the rest of us, said The Economist. From Zoom church services and book clubs to online GP appointments and e-commerce, the “connective power of the internet is especially valuable to those who struggle to get out”.

A family sift through the wreckage of their home in the Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba, after Hurricane Melissa slammed into the Caribbean island this morning. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the record-breaking storm had caused “extensive damage”.

Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images

Lily Allen has always been known for her candour but the “radical level of sharing” in her latest album makes you feel like you’re “eavesdropping on a private conversation”, said Louis Staples in Harper’s Bazaar.

Allen leaves no room for ambiguity in the tracks that comprise “West End Girl”, recounting the disintegration of her marriage to actor David Harbour in “searing detail”. Despite telling a “very specific story”, the album is “littered with relatable moments” and demonstrates that “vulnerability has become pop’s most valuable currency”.

Allen’s new release plays out like a “suspense movie”, said Chris Willman in Variety. Most divorce albums give listeners “occasional time-outs from the trauma”, but there are no “commercial breaks” here. Allen suggested in an interview that there was a “little fiction mixed in”, but it’s hard to spot in this forensic account of a relationship breakdown.

The London-born singer has “shape-shifted through genres”, said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone, but her strength has always been her voice. Her distinct “airy soprano” is what makes her so unique. Combined with the album’s “fluffy synth-pop” sound, it adds a sort of “gauziness that makes its lyrical swipes land more sharply”.

It’s easy to get “wrapped up” in the lyrics during the first listen, said Willman in Variety, but the music’s “stylistic pastiche” is also noteworthy. From “finger-picking guitar and orchestra” to “wildly up-tempo” beats, the sound is very dynamic. Despite its largely “avenging spirit”, “West End Girl” is a “tremendously touching” album.

People of colour are feeling the flames of racism burning our skins again
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper
“We people of colour” are “being blamed and overlooked in the prevailing national narratives”, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I’m having “sleepless nights” as a result, and “my usual courage is leaving me”. Racism has become “normalised, and pointing it out is considered offensive”. When people “share their panic and fear” with me, “I can offer them no comfort”. Our hard-won rights “are being snatched. Bad times are here. And most of those with power have abandoned us.”

We’ve Forgotten What ‘Soft Power’ Is
Suzanne Nossel on Foreign Policy
Those “mourning the downfall of U.S. soft power” under Donald Trump “should push past nostalgia”, writes human rights advocate Suzanne Nossel. The cultural influence, exchange programmes and aid schemes “will not return”. Instead, “those who believe in the potency of soft power” need to “reimagine” it with a “hardheaded logic that is responsive to the imperatives of today’s geopolitics”. It must be “effective, resource-conscious and measurable”, and it must “match the moment and look to the future”.

Daylight savings is anti-feminist
Kristina Murkett in The Spectator
“I want to embrace” winter’s “cosy” romance, writes Kristina Murkett. But my toddler “loves nothing more in this world than being outside”. Turning back the clocks “disproportionately affects women” and children. Shorter afternoons mean women give up outdoor exercise, parks become “eerily silent” and parents have “hours of darkness to fill” before bedtime. We should be doing all we can “to increase children’s opportunity for play, not shorten it”.