Public lighting and motor headlamps

The present position in regard to powerful motor headlights is decidedly unsatisfactory. These powerful beams, projected in a restricted radius on pedestrians and other road users, are a source of profound irritation and something will have to be done to regularize or provide an alternative to their use. What is the remedy? Mr. Edward Fryer, of the Automobile Association, states that in New York the use of powerful headlights is forbidden in all streets. A prohibition of that kind, however, can commend itself only as a satisfactory solution when the alternative means of lighting public lamps give the requisite degree of illumination to render street traffic safe. It is an undoubted fact that in many towns, particularly those with boulevards of trees, the shadows thrown upon the road surface are a real peril, compared with which powerful headlights are the lesser of two evils. We do not think, as one speaker suggested at the meeting of Public Lighting Engineers, that the Automobile Association is in the slightest way attempting to shelve some of its responsibilities in this matter. What that Association is out for is a maximum of comfort for its members, which maximum is only realizable coincident with a maximum degree of safety both to motorists and other road-users.