Due to the time of year and also the daft times that I usually have to set out on my daily travels (due in no part to traffic congestion, parking restrictions, draconian council policy and that innate sense of wanting to get home before it’s time to go to bed) I find myself invariably driving in the dark.

Now, nothing unusual there. However, is it me or are car headlights getting brighter these days? Sure, there are the blue-white style lights whose name escapes me (I should know as our recently-sold Mini Cooper S has some) and they are definitely, how shall we say, a different flavour as compared to common-or-garden car lights. However, they’re still in the minority yet despite all of this I reckon that I’m getting dazzled even more than ever.

Perhaps there’s another explanation; perhaps they’re making the dipped/dimmed lights dimmer. Or maybe my ‘auld e’en’ are getting more sensitive to bright lights. Whatever. It just seems to me that perhaps I should drive in shades at night.

Why am I waxing lyrical about this small matter, seeing as it’s almost certainly the least of most of our worries; there is unrest in the world, whole countries are starving and music is going down the pan. Real Serious Issues, and no mistake. However, none of this is going to matter when Ravnikov ploughs at full-tilt off the road and into a nearby herbivore.

So, why do we even need to have ‘full beam’ settings on our cars? Is it really necessary? Well, I generally drive ‘dipped’ and I reckon if everyone else did too, we could do away with full-beam. It’s normally overkill and old Mr Jenkins (rtd.) probably have no clue as to whether they’re dipped, full-beam or no-beam. I come across these guys all the time - 40mph out of town, no signals, oblivious to the rest of the world. Hit the 30 limit in town, still doing 40 and in a wee world of their own.

I put it to you: Do Away With Full-Beam, It’s Not The Answer.

Thus concludes this afternoon’s rant. Brought to you in association with the letters T and X and the number 12. One of these days I’ll surprise you all with a cunning segueway into a call-centre-related analogy and explode in a puff of symbolic logic. Just you see…