You often read Kent Marts’ columns about light pollution, and I agree that excessive lighting is a waste of money and improperly focused lights disturb people and light-pollute the planet.

But there is another type of lighting that has bugged me. It dates to an event when I had a near mishap with another vehicle. Had the crash occurred, it would have been my fault. But if an existing state law were enforceable - it really isn’t - there wouldn’t even have been a near mishap.

The incident occurred when I pulled out from a side street onto the highway. The weather was dark, gloomy; in fact, rain was falling. I looked both ways and obviously saw nothing. I pressed the accelerator to move forward.

Something, I really don’t know what, caused my peripheral vision to kick in and, where nothing appeared before, a light gray car barreled toward me. Its lights were not on. To make a long story short, the brakes worked, the tires squealed,the gray streak moved past me as I regained control of my emotions.

These near-mishaps occur more often than we believe on rainy, foggy, damp, dreary days when vehicles move along streets and highways, sometimes at speeds that exceed the limit. But what is so galling is the fact that in those conditions a law exists in Arkansas that requires motorists to drive with their lights on. It's not a priority law, however, and does not allow a motorist to be stopped for a violation.

After that gloomy day several years ago, I wrote an occasional column chiding drivers who did not turn on their lights, as required, when windshield wipers are used. I often noted that gray days are particularly questionable since those gray, dark vehicles without lights on blend in so well with water soaked pavement.

There are also early morning hours when, before the sun pops over the horizon and only a filtered light covers the earth, those samegray/black vehicles move silently along, barely visible.

This has been especially true during the recent dreary, and sometimes, rainy days and the dawns of late autumn.

This is the campaign I’ve fostered for several years: Either make the existing law enforceable or, better still, make it mandatory that vehicle lights be on all the time after the ignition engages. Then there would be no room for error.

I know. It would be a pain. There would be a period before we would be comfortable with the law. There would be people who forget. I would probably be one of them.

More laws? More laws really aren’t needed if people would just use common sense. Common sense is all that is required.

So let’s try again: When it’s damp and dreary, when it’s raining, when it’s foggy, when the dawn is just breaking and daylight is not yet bright, when you see other vehicles with their lights on, reach over and flip yours on.

No law really is needed if we all would just flip the switch. Let’s all give it a try, or allow the law to be enforced.

Dodie Evans is the editor emeritus of the Westside Eagle Observer.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 12/01/2010