Everything

Everything is a trade-off.

Everything is relative, however, as is an equal exaggeration among what individuals believe represents “everything.”

Therefore, everything is connected to everything, and we can find everything within everything, even the smallest sample. This includes small examples of trade-offs in safety.

LED headlights are now seemingly standard in newer vehicles. They illuminate the road better for the driver of the vehicle that contains LED headlights.

They blind other drivers (or rather make it difficult for others to see clearly), whether oncoming or in front through the reflections of rearview and side mirrors.

Drivers with halogen headlights, or older headlights, would need to activate their high beams to have a similar, albeit still far less, brightness to LEDs. Driving laws in effect for the safety of others require high beams to be dimmed within hundreds of feet of oncoming traffic.

Halogen headlights produce up to 1500 lumens. LED headlights produce 3000 lumens. With such an increase in brightness between the two, and the latter becoming the standard, it appears that LED headlights are an example of how society has grown to focus on the individual. The driver is safe, everyone else is not.

There is a balance, however, though negative through positive intentions. If LED headlights are becoming standard in newer models of vehicles, which makes more and more individual drivers safe, they will be making each other equally unsafe.

Therefore, it could be argued that focusing on the safety of the individual has made everyone, as a whole, unsafe.

One person’s safety makes multiple people unsafe. It is a simple example of a trade-off, but it can be seen as a representation of how society is forming when it comes to each individual’s relative “everything.”

Take that as you will.

It is noted that LED lights have a much smaller carbon footprint and can be considered more environmentally friendly than older bulbs. They are also less costly, but that doesn’t necessarily matter to the driver, but rather to the manufacturer.

That poses a question, that can not be answered through truth, but rather through the trust of people: Do manufacturers care more about the environment or more about the overhead production cost or both? This leads to another question: If LEDs are more cost-effective, why do the prices of vehicles keep increasing?

There’s another societal trade-off in there somewhere… and plenty of other spiraling questions.

This is not an insensitive criticism; the good of the people means the good of all people. However, when good intentions, assumingly good intentions, lead to bad results for all people, even the recipients of good intentions, perhaps we need to slow down before speeding to a final decision.

After all, everyone could become blinded by everything along the way.