Driving: Headlights

• Make sure they both work. Having only one headlight makes it much difficult for oncoming traffic, or people trying to turn onto your road, to estimate how far away you are or how fast you are going.

• Don't drive with your brights on, if there is any oncoming traffic, or traffic reasonably close ahead of you. During the day, okay... but at night, this is not only literally painful, but interferes with their vision. Not even in fog or heavy rain should you do this. This includes mini-brights mounted under your front bumper! Some people who like them claim that they only illuminate the road, and aren't aimed up high enough to shine in people's eyes. That's true if the road is perfectly flat, or possibly in a dip! On the convex part of any hill or valley, you will be shining them where someone's eyes might be -- and of course that's a Very Bad Place to be interfering with someone else's vision.

• If the weather is bad enough to put your wipers on, even on intermittent, your headlights should be on too! Think about it. Everybody's vision is obscured. Don't you think you should do a little something to let the other drivers know you're there, before they bump into you? At least put on your running lights! (Credit for this item goes to Polly Goldman.)