To the woman who was driving last night without her lights on

Dear ma’am,

You were probably wondering why so many people were flashing their lights at you.  I’m sure, initially, that you thought it was a friend flashing to wave at you even though you didn’t quite recognize the car.  After the seventh or eighth unrecognized car, perhaps you should have realized that something else was going on.

The area where you were driving, the Edgewood neighborhood, is not known for having comprehensive coverage by the streetlights.  While the streetlights do exist, the city has been slow to replace broken bulbs or faulty fixtures.  Due to this, there are stretches in this area where it gets very dark at night.  One can’t help but wonder if you noticed that you couldn’t read anything on your dashboard console, such as the speed you were traveling or how much gas was left in your tank.

Now, I haven’t spent my life as a “rules are rules” type of person, obeying everything to the letter of the law, so I’m not going to lecture you about state law requiring headlights to be on when traveling at night.  This seems more like an issue of common sense: having your lights on actually helps you see where you are going when you are driving. 

Perhaps you did this by design.  Maybe you’ve driven this route so many times you remember it by rote and don’t think you actually have to look where you are going.  I can somewhat understand this.  I don’t take pains to keep my rear windshield clean.  I don’t need to see where I’ve been. 

I sincerely hope that you made it safely to your destination last night without incident.  I mean this more for us than for you.