Monday, January 29, 2007

One headlight

I was driving along last night and I couldn't get over how many cars seemed to have a headlight out. I've noticed this before and I was wondering if this is a problem that is somehow getting worse.

I know it happens to all of us that we're driving along and suddenly a headlight will just go black or maybe the light just "blew" when the lights were turned on. You drive on because you have to get somewhere.

Now, my car's not particularly new so maybe there's something about changing the headlight bulbs in recent models that makes the job more expensive (€3 or €4) or time-consuming (10 mins max to replace).

I always change the bulbs as soon as I can (generally the following morning). Everyone else cannot be doing the same.

If a bulb lasts two years (my guesstimate) then every car will, on average, have one night per year with one headlight. That means that approximately 1 of every 365 cars should have a blown headlight on any given night. Yet, my own observation would be that it's closer to 1 in 20 cars is missing a headlight. What's going on here? Are people just not bothering to change blown bulbs?