I did this one time on a dark rural road, and not only did they blast my retinas with the equivalent of ten thousand supernova when they turned on their brights, but they also turned on their flashing blue-and-red lights on top of their car for a second.
Dude, police flashers are criminally bright now. I had a cop blow past me a couple weeks ago with his flashers on, and he lit up the road for a 1/4 mile in all directions.
Cop pulled the guy right behind me over 2 weeks ago. It was cloudy and had rained like an hour before so there was a little water on the ground, early morning (730ish)
It blinded me a little off of the reflections in the water. Why are they that bright
Because they only care about protecting cop lives. If it reduces the chance of them being hit by a car 1%, but increases the chance of a blinded driver causing an accident that hurts someone else by 50%, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make.