I have two theories:
1- They are trying to compensate for their hazed, plastic headlight enclosures. Unfortunately not only are the high beams brighter, they point up.
2- It’s a stick it to the people with newer cars and their obnoxiously bright lights mentality.
Literally cannot drive 10 minutes without encountering a vehicle with high beams on (can tell by the location, not brightness alone). I’m talking about busy urban areas, not the boonies.
This happens far more often than cars with no headlights (which used to be more common).
At first I thought this was some sort of signal for drugs/etc. Of course that makes little sense…
However, in reality it’s probably worse than that…
I have noticed that in the last 5 years more and more people just don't know that your headlights are supposed to be pointed downward and not straight ahead.
This becomes more obvious when you look at bikes, the amount of bikes I have seen with their blinding LEDs pointed straight ahead 'because they want to be seen by cars" is insane. They don't understand that you don't need to be directly in the beam to see a light source.
What I thought was common knowledge seems to have been disappeared